Jacob Marrel (1613/1614 – 11 November 1681) was a German still life painter active in Utrecht during the Dutch Golden Age.
A still life (pl.: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or human-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, etc.).
With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Greco-Roman art, still-life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then. One advantage of the still-life artform is that it allows an artist much freedom to experiment with the arrangement of elements within a composition of a painting. Still life, as a particular genre, began with Netherlandish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the English term still life derives from the Dutch word stilleven. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted.
Still life occupied the lowest rung of the hierarchy of genres, but has been extremely popular with buyers. As well as the independent still-life subject, still-life painting encompasses other types of painting with prominent still-life elements, usually symbolic, and “images that rely on a multitude of still-life elements ostensibly to reproduce a ‘slice of life’”. The trompe-l'œil painting, which intends to deceive the viewer into thinking the scene is real, is a specialized type of still life, usually showing inanimate and relatively flat objects.
A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value.
In literature, the epic was considered the highest form, for the reason expressed by Samuel Johnson in his Life of John Milton: “By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions.” Below that came lyric poetry, and comic poetry, with a similar ranking for drama. The novel took a long time to establish a firm place in the hierarchy, doing so only as belief in any systematic hierarchy of forms expired in the 19th century.
In music, settings of words were accorded a higher status than merely instrumental works, at least until the Baroque period, and opera retained a superior status for much longer. The status of works also varies with the number of players and singers involved, with those written for large forces, which are certainly more difficult to write and more expensive to perform, given higher status. Any element of comedy reduced the status of a work, though, as in other art forms, often increased its popularity.
The hierarchies in figurative art are those initially formulated for painting in 16th-century Italy, which held sway with little alteration until the early 19th century. These were formalized and promoted by the academies in Europe between the 17th century and the modern era, of which the most influential became the French Académie de peinture et de sculpture, which held a central role in Academic art. The fully developed hierarchy distinguished between:
History painting, including historically important, religious, mythological, or allegorical subjects
Genre painting or scenes of everyday life
Landscape and cityscape art (landscapists were called “common footmen in the Army of Art” by the Dutch theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten)
The hierarchy was based on a distinction between art that made an intellectual effort to “render visible the universal essence of things” (imitare in Italian) and that which merely consisted of “mechanical copying of particular appearances” (ritrarre). Idealism was privileged over realism in line with Renaissance Neo-Platonist philosophy.
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