Fish Stall

Frans Snyders painted enormous still lifes of Antwerp market stalls: fish, game, fruit. His fish paintings are so anatomically accurate that modern ichthyologists have used them to identify over 30 species of North Sea fish by fin, tail and scale — turbot, cod, ray, eel, dogfish, herring, garfish, and species now regional or extinct. Snyders painted from real specimens laid out in his Antwerp studio. Rubens (who lived a few streets away) sometimes commissioned Snyders to paint the animal still lifes for Rubens's own compositions. This Hermitage version is one of the largest at 210 × 341 cm. Now at State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg @hermitage_museum