One painting to rule all the colors (for me, Jacob van Hulsdonck's "Still Life with Meat, Fish, Vegetables, and Fruit")

About the thirtieth time I caught myself standing in front of this painting at the Cleveland Museum of Art, admiring the knife-groove marks in the butter and the bug-chewed radish leaves, I had an low-key epiphany: I realized that I have been trying to pull all of its specific colors into my life—into the rugs and walls and objects in my house, into the clothes in my closet. Having that particular penny drop makes choosing things to buy or bring into the domestic orbit a little easier now, because an incredible painter figured out a color plan for me four hundred years ago.