A Comparative Study of Yuanti Flower-and-bird Paintings and Western Classical Still-life Paintings: A Formal and Thematic Analysis of Li Song’s “Basket of Flowers” and Caravaggio’s “Basket of Fruit”

Abstract

In the context of globalization, cultural exchange between the East and West is becoming increasingly frequent, and painting serves as a unique perspective for exploring cultural differences. In particular, flower-and-bird paintings and still-life paintings, as two major traditional painting genres, share similarities in selecting the subject and pursuing realism while maintaining their artistic characteristics, which both act as effective research models for cross-cultural comparative studies. This paper selects Li Song’s “Basket of Flowers”, a representative of Yuanti flower-and-bird paintingsy, and Caravaggio’s “Basket of Fruit”, an iconic one of the 17th-century Western classical still-life paintings. Through visual interpretation and cultural tracing, it analyzes the differences between the two in terms of color application, spatial organization, modelling techniques, and artistic spirit, to reveal the heterogeneity of floral subjects in Yuanti flower-and-bird paintings and Western classical still-life paintings, and to examine the different artistic values and humanistic spirits manifested in Chinese and Western paintings.