Still life with candlestick, pipe and beer glass

Employing chiaroscuro, the artist contrasts the bright candlelight with the surrounding gloom, allowing the glass to catch and refract the flame’s glow, thereby creating a sense of depth. The meticulous rendering of textures—the smoothness of the glass, the roughness of the clay pipe, and the metallic sheen of the candlestick—demonstrates a refined handling of oil paint typical of mid‑17th‑century Flemish still‑life practice.

Attributed to Hendrick Andriessen, a Flemish painter active in Antwerp and possibly the Dutch Republic, the piece reflects his nickname “Mancken Heyn” or “Limping Henry,” under which he was known for vanitas subjects. The painting entered the collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich, where it remains part of the museum’s holdings of Dutch Golden Age works.

Andriessen’s oeuvre frequently depicted smoking paraphernalia and moralizing still lifes, aligning with the broader Dutch Golden Age interest in genre scenes that combined technical virtuosity with symbolic content. This painting exemplifies the period’s fascination with everyday objects as carriers of deeper philosophical messages, situating it within a network of similar works by contemporaries in Antwerp and the Dutch Republic.