Still Life with Game Fowl,Vegetables and Fruits

Juan Sánchez Cotán (June 25, 1560 – September 8, 1627) was a Spanish Baroque painter, a pioneer of realism in Spain. His still lifes and bodegones were painted in an austere style, especially when compared to similar works in the Netherlands and Italy.

Sánchez Cotán was born in the town of Orgaz, near Toledo, Spain. He was a friend and perhaps pupil of Blas de Prado, an artist famous for his still lifes whose mannerist style with touches of realism the disciple developed further. Cotán began by painting altarpieces and religious works. For approximately twenty years, patronized by the city's aristocracy, he pursued a successful career as an artist in Toledo painting religious scenes, portraits and still lifes. These paintings found a receptive audience among the educated intellectuals of Toledo society. Sánchez Cotán executed his notable still lifes around the beginning of the seventeenth century, before the end of his secular life.

On August 10, 1603, Sánchez Cotán, then in his forties, closed up his workshop at Toledo to renounce the world and enter the Carthusian monastery Santa Maria de El Paular.