Landscape with a Vine
Ca. 1645. Oil on canvas.Room 018
One of the distinguishing features of Tomás Hiepes´ oeuvre is his thematic versatility and the variety of formal solutions he used to exploit the possibilities of the still-life genre. This work is proof, with one of the subjects most frequently used at the beginning of still-life painting in Spain: grapes. Instead of depicting single bunches of grapes indoors, he shows them in the countryside, hanging from the vine where they grew. The masterful depiction of these grapes, and the sense of juiciness they transmit, justify the praise he received from Marcos Antonio de Orellana in the eighteenth century: “a basket full of grapes whose diaphanous and transparent grains, with their tendrils, could fool the birds”. Here, Hiepes abandons the meticulous and precise brushstrokes of his earliest works, using a looser and more rapid technique that corresponds to his more advanced periods.