Art by Floris Clarsz van Dijck

Van Dijck, working in Haarlem in the early 1600s, is credited alongside fellow painter Nicolaes Gillis with essentially inventing the "banketje," the laid breakfast or banquet still life that became one of the signature genres of Dutch Golden Age painting: cheese, bread, fruit, and nuts arranged with careful precision on a fine white linen cloth. His Still Life with Cheese (1610) is the type-example of the genre. He traveled to Rome around 1600, and later became dean of Haarlem's Guild of St. Luke in 1637, a position that let him shape and mentor the next generation of Haarlem still-life painters, including Pieter Claesz.