The Colombian art historian Eduardo Serrano has written that ''[w]ith Botero, Colombian still life attains the highest degree of excellence... His contributions to the genre mirror the same colossal, comic, critical, candid and documentary traits as the rest of his work'' ⁽²⁾. Fernando Botero is indeed one of the most well-known and respected still life painters of the late twentieth century. His representations of fruits, flowers, vegetables, sweets, meats or cheeses embody many of the characteristics that are, observed in his other subjects. They display a marked engagement with sensuality. There is a sense of the sacramental or the ritual in many of these paintings. A number of Botero's still lifes have particular resonance within a context of Colombia, often displaying distinctively Colombian meals, birthday tables or references to other particular occasions celebrated there. In addition, Botero shows himself to be deeply aware of the Western traditions of still life painting that have manifested themselves from the Renaissance onward.

Although historians such as Charles Sterling have connected the beginnings of Western still life to the now-lost Hellenistic Greek examples of depictions of fruits and other food stuffs on wooded panels, or the Pompeiian frescoes of swept floors or shelves with food, the still life tradition as we know it began in the Renaissance ⁽³⁾. The seventeenth century was the great age of still life in Europe. Caravaggio's canonical Still life with Fruit of c. 1595, now in the Ambrosiana Gallery, Milan, is one of the earliest Italian examples of independent still Iife in the Baroque.The individuality and, indeed, personality of the particular elements in the painting are given as much attention as if they were portrait subjects. Later Italian still life painters concentrated on rich displays of luxury objects. The Dutch painters did the same, although certain ''memento mori" still lifes are more sombre and dramatic. It was the Spanish tradition of Francisco de Zurbarán or Juan Sánchez Cotán that most dramatically elevated humble things to the level of exaltation.This is also the tradition that is directly invoked by Botero in many of his works.The title of at least one of his most important still life compositions from the 1970s (Homoge to Sánchez Cotán, 1972) refers directly to his reverence for the Spanish masters.

Many of the still lifes by Botero of the 1970s and after appear to be in a celebratory mood.The 1990 Still Life with Ice Creem is a fine example of this: with its intense pink, green and orange colors, it reminds us of childrens' birthday parties in small provincial towns.The sugary nature of the colors is matched only by the implied sweetness of the cakes, eclairs, candied fruits, sorbets and ice creams. At other times the celebration is of the human body, whose essence is conveyed through the still life medium. In his 1984 Still Life with Woman Undressing, the foreground is occupied by an ambitious array of clothing: shoes, stockings and dress. These items belong, of course, to the woman who continues her undressing in the background. The objects offer such a substantial reminiscence of their owner that the presence of her body is rendered almost redundant.

A curious homage to Picasso and other early masters of cubism is fashioned in a 1989 Still Life with 'Le Journal', in which a coffee pot and guitar, along with a peeled and an unpeeled orange, appear alongside a copy of a newspaper with lettering in French (on the front page of which is a tiny self-portrait of Botero). The guitar is, of course, one of the quintessential elements of cubist still life, as is the newspaper. Musical instruments often make their appearances in Botero's still lifes, as they did in the Baroque images of Italian painter Evaristo Baschenis. The 1979 Still Life with Musical Instruments is just one example of a work in which there is a strongly implied reference to sound.

At times Botero concentrates on just one object, monumentalized out of all proportion to reality. Both the 1979 Flowers and the 1977 Orange are such examples. In Orange (in which the fruit is provided with two tiny holes, from one of which a small worm pokes its head) we observe, in fact, a tribute to the Surrealist painter Rene Magritte who, in several paintings of the 1950s, monumentalized similar objects which entirely filled the space of the canvas.

Some of his other still lifes are more specifically bound to daily life in Colombia. The Cupboard of 1993, for instance, depicts a green wood cabinet of the type found in any middle-class Colombian household. A large bowl holds an assortment of sweets (also identified with the confectionery products of the kitchens of Bogota, Medellín or Cali). Attached to one of these cakes is a tiny Colombian flag, which also serves to enhance the distinctiveness of the image.

In other examples, still life compositions are found as a part of larger configurations. The 1989 Picnic, for instance, displays a bucolic scene in which a couple relax in the countryside. Only the hands of the woman, her fingers with painted nails holding a cigarette, are observed at the left. At the extreme right, the man is seen. He has fallen asleep after the repast, the remains of which are spread luxuriously on the blanket and form the bulk of the picture, Once again, as often happens in Botero's seemingly benign compositions, a note of irony or disruption enters the scene, in the form of the smoking volcano in the distance.

⁽²⁾ Fduardo Serrano, Still Life in Colombia, Bogotá, 1992, p. 191.
⁽³⁾ Charles Sterling, Still Life Pointing from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, New York, 1981.