Still Life with Game, Vegetables and Fruit by Juan Sanchez Cotan, 1602

This is the first of at least several posts that I hope to do on paintings I saw in the Prado but was unable to photograph.  In their defense, they have beautiful digital versions of their entire collection on their website, but it remains  somewhat annoying to find the exact ones I loved most.  First world problems, I get it.  The amusing thing is that every guard that I had a conversation with wanted to talk for minutes about it rather than a swift "no" and that be the end of it.
This is considered the first surviving bodegon, or Spanish still life.  As a result, it is one of the most famous paintings in the Prado. It is one of six known Sanchez Cotan paintings.  Despite the lack of volume, he is still known as the father of Spanish still life painting.  As a result, Sanchez Cotan’s style – a strong light source illuminating objects set against a black background –  heavily influenced Spanish painters and subsequently influenced other European painters.  He abandoned painting for a religious life.  I love how everything jumps out of the painting at you, and it is in a gallery with a number of other such paintings.  Even the name of the painting points to the high degree of detail Sanchez Cotan saw in life.