How does still life “matter”? The two essays in this book, based on Carol Armstrong’s lectures as part of the 2020 Franklin D. Murphy Lectureship at the University of Kansas, explore the concept of “material thought” as it relates to still life. Armstrong looks at two major figures of European still-life painting: eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. She discusses their paintings alongside the works of other European painters, philosophers, and critics. These close readings consider the question of how we understand materiality in relation to still-life painting and the material objects this genre represents.