William Claesz Heda’s Still Life is a beyond average example of the term, “synesthesia”. The best way to describe this is when one sense makes you feel another. In this example, images and how they are portrayed make you feel an entirely new approach to what is stereotypically rendered about the images. In this painting, food is viewed upon as a luxury item. Heda uses crystal goblets, glasses of different sizes, silver dishes, and traditional images and details that give the feeling of luxury---chosen for their contrasting shapes, colors, and textures. William Claesz Heda used analogous colors in this painting. Perhaps by using colors that were so close on the color wheel, he did not wish to have contrast in the visual colors of the piece, but rather contrast in the shapes and textures of the objects conveyed. For instance, the objects were painted as if the person whom was at the table was suddenly forced to leave. The broken glass indicates an upheaval on a narrative level. The entire artwork represents a curtain that time has just lowered on the scene that gives the objects a strange pathos. The unstable composition of objects that have implied feelings to human senses create the sense of a hasty departure, suggesting transience. While white wine, sweet lemons, slimy oysters, and pepper in a cone give one the applied feeling that is almost stereotyped into these objects, the overall composition of the painting give you an entirely different feel of the senses.
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