A hundred years before the Spanish conquerors brought cocoa, and with it the secrets of dark chocolate to Belgium, between the 15th and 17th centuries, Flemish art was at its peak, with Flanders, in northern Belgium its epicentre. It was then that artists who painted religious and mythological themes or portraits of kings and queens indulged in genre painting, capturing day-to-day lives of the common man. They even tried their hand at still life.

A still life oil on canvas from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts by Frans Snijders (1579 - 1657)