A vase of flowers. A bowl of fruit. Why have images of still, unmoving life fascinated artists for centuries?

"Some have used them as a showcase for their talent," explained Masaru Igarashi, curator of the new exhibition of Italian still life paintings at Yasuda Kasai Museum of Art in Shinjuku. "But often it's simply for done for its own sake, for the joy of painting." Indeed, this intensely private pleasure is a common thread running through the exhibition, which covers five centuries of Italian art.

"Still Life With Musical Instruments" by Evaristo Baschenis (1617-1677), oil on canvas
"Still Life With Fruit Basket" (1988) by Luciano Ventrone, oil on canvas
-- Seiji Togo Memorial Yasuda Kasai Museum of Art photos

It is a journey of surprising twists and turns, leaping from the reality of the 18th century into the abstraction of the 20th century and super-realism of recent years.

One's first reaction is to marvel at the ability, especially of earlier painters, to capture feather, fur and flower in timeless, artistic repose. But the technical challenge, great though it is, is far from the whole story. These absorbing works, collected over four decades by connoisseur Silvano Lodi, speak of the inner life too. Still lives run deep, and longing, fear of death and social comment may lurk beneath a decorative surface.

For example, in "An Old Couple Selling Fish," dating from the mid-16th century, Bartolomeo Passarotti cleverly mirrors the hapless expression of a dead carp in the face of the old man. While his sour wife argues some trivial point, her husband looks at us with gentle resignation. Passarotti was a leading painter of genre scenes, but here nothing is crude or grotesque, and the gentle irony of the subject is smoothed over in harmonious tints of bronze and gold.

Among his followers was the great Annibale Carracci. The latter's large canvas of a butcher's shop was directly inspired by Passarotti's pioneering interest in the same everyday subject. With its spontaneous brushwork, it looks astonishingly modern for a painting of the late 1500s. Carracci and his brother, a pupil of Passarotti, established a successful academy in Bologna where they disdained artificial mannerism and stressed accuracy in drawing from nature and life. Annibale went on to paint the famous frescoes in the Farnese Palace in Rome, and it was around this time, at the end of the 16th century, that still life emerged from the shadows of large-scale works as a genre in its own right.

Michelangelo Merisi of Caravaggio was also in Rome in the 1600s, winning a reputation for his tempestuous way of life. There, he abandoned an early interest in still lifes and scenes of pleasure to concentrate on religious subjects, but his "indecorous" renditions scandalized the church. Here, in an unfinished painting of a lute player attributed to Caravaggio, we can see the bold use of light and shadow, tension and sensuous atmosphere that captivated later artists such as Rembrandt.

Women, forbidden to enter the worldly arena of art, often turned to still life, and here Fede Galizia, born in 1578, shows her mastery of a narrow world. Her works may depict nothing more than a bowl of peaches or a sprig of jasmine, but how they gleam with purity and life. Like the poems of Emily Dickinson, they are small, formal and packed with passion.

The seemingly casual clutter of the artist's studio is another favorite subject. Here we roam from the witty, self-promoting arrangement of Antonio Cioci's pots, brushes and sketches pinned to a board, to the touching simplicity of bread, fruit and a fried egg rendered by Spanish painter Luis Melendez. Born in Naples in 1716, Melendez was unfortunately often on the bread line himself, but is now regarded as a master of the genre. His glowing palette recalls Dutch artists such as Willem Van Aelst, and the long exchange of ideas between both centers of European art.

From the north came the tradition of the vanitas, or contemplation on death. And from an age when plague still threatened Europe, an unknown artist has left us a simple reminder of mortality in a clock and skull.

Illusion is given another twist in the painting of Evaristo Baschenis, known as "the Italian Vermeer." This great artist-priest specialized in musical instruments. Here a jumble of lutes, cast aside and gathering dust, hints of fleeting love.

Of the 20th-century artists, Giorgio Morandi's work continues the tradition of meditation focusing on simple, subdued vases and bowls. His work is popular in Japan but can have a deadly air. By contrast, Franco Gentilini's small painting of a shell is a warm exploration of color, texture, light, form and life.

And suddenly we are in 1988 and back at the fruit. Luciano Ventrone's watermelon practically drags you across the room to fall at its feet. His technique is mind-boggling, but the important question is, does the painting speak from or to the heart?

After all, the true art of still life is to reveal the mystery of ordinary things: a vase of flowers, a bowl of fruit.