With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Greco-Roman art, still- life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then. A still- life form gives the artist more freedom in the arrangement of elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture. Still life, as a particular genre, began with Netherlandish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the English term still life derives from the Dutch word stilleven. Early still- life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. Some modern still- life work breaks the two-dimensional barrier and employs three-dimensional mixed media, and uses found objects, photography, computer graphics, as well as video and sound.
The term includes the painting of dead animals, especially game. Live ones are considered animal art, although in practice they were often painted from dead models. The still- life category also shares commonalities with zoological and especially botanical illustration, where there has been considerable overlap among artists. Generally a still life includes a fully depicted background, and puts aesthetic rather than illustrative concerns as primary.
