Clara Peeters (1594-c 1657) was not painting portraits as were most women painters born in the 1400-1500s. She chose still-life painting. Flemish Clara Peeters was painting still lifes as early as the 1st decade of the 17th century. She was baptized in Antwerp in 1594, & married there in 1639. Her earliest dated paintings, from 1607-1608, are small, detailed images representing food & drink. At the time that Clara Peeters was painting religious imagery was forbidden in the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church. Artistic conventions were developed to make coded references to life, death, & religion, so her paintings conveyed a meaning to her patrons of much more than objects in a still life. Each painting would be a visual puzzle to be decoded by the viewer. It is speculated that the skill with which this teenage artist executed her painting suggests that she may have been trained by a master painter. Although there is no documentary evidence of her education, scholars theorize that Peeters may have been a student of Osias Beert, a still-life painter from Antwerp. By 1612, the 18-year-old artist was producing large numbers of painstakingly rendered still lifes displaying symbols in groupings of metal goblets, gold coins, & exotic flowers.
