Rachel Ruysch (Dutch, 1664/5–1750), Nosegay on a Marble Plinth, c. 1695, oil on canvas, The Norton Simon Foundation
Look long enough at a Baroque still life and the bowl of fruit stops being still. A beetle creeps along a peach skin; a moth tilts toward the bloom of a tulip; a hummingbird hovers in the dark margin where the painter pulled most of the light. On Sunday afternoon, the Norton Simon Museum invites visitors to slow down and notice exactly that kind of motion in its Baroque collection.
Museum educator Elizabeth Cavanaugh will lead “Baroque Birds, Bugs and Blooms,” an afternoon salon devoted to the “unstill,” fluttering, humming and unfolding elements of 17th-century still-life painting. The hour-plus discussion will explore the meaning and symbolism attached to insects, birds and flowering plants in the Dutch and Spanish Baroque traditions — vanitas reminders, religious allegory, status markers — and the painterly techniques that gave them their startling presence.
The Norton Simon holds one of the strongest Baroque collections on the West Coast, particularly in Spanish Baroque, where works by Francisco de Zurbarán anchor the galleries. Dutch still lifes by artists including Rachel Ruysch and meditative religious works share the same wing. Cavanaugh’s salons typically draw a mix of repeat museum-goers and first-time visitors, threading scholarship through the kind of slow looking that rewards a second pass through the galleries afterward.
Admission to the museum includes the salon. The Norton Simon, housed in the brown-tiled landmark along Colorado Boulevard, anchors the western edge of Pasadena’s museum row.
Baroque Birds, Bugs and Blooms” will be held Sunday, May 31 at 1 p.m. at the Norton Simon Museum, 411 W. Colorado Blvd., in Pasadena. For more information, call (626) 449-6840 or visit nortonsimon.org
