A still life is a work of art depicting a collection of usually inanimate objects, typically natural -- (flowers, game, sea shells and so on) -- or man-made domestic items -- (drinking glasses, foodstuffs, pipes, books and so on). Popular in Western art since the 17th century, still life paintings give the artist more leeway in the arrangement of design elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture.
The term derives from the 17th-century Dutch still-leven, meaning a motionless natural object or objects.