This painting is a still life of hunting birds.
A still life is a painting which depicts food such as fruit, vegetables, birds and other objects.
The author of the painting is Clara Peeters.
In the centre of the painting is a basket with a sparrow hawk.
The sparrow hawk is a predatory bird that sometimes was domesticated and raised for falconry.
Falconry is a sport for hunting other birds.
Falconry was popular among the kings and nobles of the time.
In the painting are several dead birds of different sizes.
The birds in the painting are a duck called a mallard, a hen, a rooster, pigeons, a bullfinch and a thrush.
There is also a group of birds called finches.
Finches hang by the neck from a branch.
On the red plate are two plucked pigeons ready for cooking.
The sparrow hawk is the only animal that is alive.
Several white porcelain plates and bowls are on the right side of the table.
One of the plates is made of blue porcelain, but the colour has faded over time.
These plates are called Kraak, and European nobles imported them from China.
There are also 4 shells on the table.
The red shell comes from the Indian and Pacific oceans.
The brown and pink shells are from the west coast of Africa.
The black and white shell is from the Caribbean.
The nobles collected shells because they enjoyed the exotic objects that European explorers brought back from their travels around the world.
During this time, it was common to see shells in paintings.
