Sebastian Stoskopff was from Alsace and brought up in the independent Protestant republic of Strasbourg. In 1615, after serving his apprenticeship in the studio of the miniaturist and engraver Friedrich Brentel the Elder, he became the pupil of the painter and architect Daniel Soreau (d. 1619) in Hanau, near Frankfurt-am-Main; after Soreau's death Stoskopff completed the paintings left unfinished in his master's studio. He remained in Hanau until 1621. There he came across examples of still-life painting from Flanders and the Netherlands, an influence so strong that he devoted himself to that genre for the remainder of his career. In 1621 he went to Paris, remaining there until 1640, leaving only in 1629 for a trip to Venice, where he met his future biographer, the historian Joachim von Sandrart. Like other Protestant painters Stoskopff frequented the Saint Germain-des-Prés district of Paris and came into contact with the still-life painters Lubin Baugin and Jacques Linard. In 1641 he settled in Strasbourg, where he was accepted as a master. In the work of his maturity, much of it done for his patron, Graf Johann von Nassau-Idstein, Stoskopff began to employ more overtly moralizing themes, with little pretence at the narrative element found in his Paris paintings.

Stoskopff's paintings fall into two types: those done in Paris, which are more clearly influenced by the French school; and the later works, where the German aspect of his artistic background reasserts itself. The present painting clearly falls into the first group, and is clearly linked both in content and spirit with Lubin Baugin's Dessert with wafer-rolls, datable to circa 1630-5, in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (fig. 1).

In what is arguably his most famous still life, Baugin reduces a poor man's frugal meal to the elements of the Eucharist. Both paintings reveal a dark wall and bare surroundings that force the eye to focus on the simple objects in the foreground: a wineglass, a pewter plate of pies, a knife and a loaf of bread.

Again, in both paintings the edge of the pewter plate overlaps the table ledge, projecting into our space and thus giving the paintings greater spatial depth. These everyday objects are not merely beautiful to look at, but the artists have imbued them with a transcendent significance. A remarkably similar version of the present composition on panel, essentially rearranged without the plate of pies, was sold in London, in December 1999. Birgit Hahn-Woernle dates that painting to circa 1630 (fig. 2; also cf B. Hahn-Woernle, Sebastian Stoskopff, Stuttgart, 1996, pp. 144-5, no. 19, illustrated in color), and proposes a similar date for the present work. In the painting sold in 1999, the knife juts out into our space, while in the present painting the knife is almost hidden behind the fabulous Melendez-like bread roll, and it is the plate of pies that invades our space. These works, whether they are meant to remind us of the Eucharist or not, are bathed in soft golden light and surely rank among Stoskopff's most successful and sensitively observed still lifes. Dr. Birgit Hahn-Woernle has confirmed, on the basis of a color transparency (February 2006) the attribution to Stoskopff and the date of circa 1630.

Fig. 1 - Lubin Baugin, Dessert with wafer-rolls, c. 1631. Paris, Musée du Louvre, RF 1954 23.

Fig. 2 - Sebastian Stoskopff, Still life of a wine-casket, a wine-glass, a loaf of bread and a knife, all resting on a tabletop, oil on canvas, 42.3 x 55.2 cm. Sold Sotheby's London, 16 December 1999, for £507,000.00