Still Life Painting: From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"A still life painting was originally designated in Greek by the term "rhopography" (i.e. depiction of insignificant objects, of odds and ends); then, forcing the pejorative nuance a little, it was mockingly baptized '"rhyparography" (i.e. painting of the sordid) […] Now too the term "megalography" (i.e. large-scale painting) was coined in contradistinction to rhopography. But it was not so much a matter of size as of the nature of the subject, the latter category corresponding to our minor genre as contrasted with the grand manner."--Still Life Painting: From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (1952:27), Charles Sterling French text of the above: "être, ainsi, à l'origine de ce malicieux jeu de mots par lequel on a fini par nommer ce genre particulier de peinture représentant des vivres prêts à la dégustation, ou déjà consommés : rhyparographie, c'est-à-dire, littéralement, peinture de détritus, au lieu de rhopographie, appellation plus correcte qui signifie : peinture de menus objets. Mais, bien que ces œuvres fussent considérées comme mineures, comme des ouvrages « minoris picturae », l'engouement que le public manifestait" |
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La nature morte de l'antiquité à nos jours (1952) is a work by Charles Sterling on the history of still life painting.
It was translated in English as Still Life Painting: From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (1981).