Clara Peeters: Still Life and the Assertion of Artistic Presence

At the forefront of seventeenth-century still life painting, Clara Peeters developed an unmistakable visual language that asserted her authorial presence within her work. Her paintings participate in early modern metapictorial imagery by foregrounding the conditions of imageconstruction and the role of the painter. Across her oeuvre, Peeters repeatedly deploys a set of distinctive visual strategies that insist on recognition of her authorial hand. These include the systematic repetition of objects and compositional structures, the depiction of an engraved bridal knife bearing the artist’s name, and the insertion of miniature self-portraits on reflective surfaces. Examining these motifs together demonstrates how they function as interrelated conventions of artistic self-fashioning. By framing repetition, inscription, and reflection as metapictorial strategies, this thesis repositions Peeters as an artist actively engaged in constructing authorship and visibility within the early modern still life tradition.