still life

still life, a pictorial representation of inanimate objects. The term derives from the 17th-century Dutch still-leven, meaning a motionless natural object or objects.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• East Asian Still Life
• Still Life in the Twentieth Century
• Still Life in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries
• Evolution of Still Life
• Bibliography

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2025, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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