Still Life, Then and Now

★★★★☆

Andy Warhol’s skull leers at Francisco de Zurbarán’s trussed-up little lamb from across the length of the gallery. Separated by hundreds of years – Warhol’s painting from the 1970s, Zurbarán’s from the 1630s – it’s an intergenerational conversation about still life’s staying power, and the inevitability of death.

Pierre Bonnard’s La Corbeille de Fruits (The Basket of Fruit), 1924. Photograph: Courtesy Robilant

This brilliant little show brings together still life paintings from way back in the past right up to the present day. There’s a gorgeous 1610-19 Dutch flower painting by Osaias Beert the Elder, and a vast vision of meats and cheeses with a pair of animal lungs hung grossly on a hook behind by Giovanni Battista Recco from the 1650s. There are piles of 19th-century French apples, vases of undulating 18th-century flowers.…