The article considers the problem of realization of the sacred sense in verbal and pictorial still lifes. The affinity of the creative method of the 16th–17th century Dutch painters and that of N. Zabolotsky of the Columns period is shown, this method being based on a special spiritual and aesthetic feeling of the world. With the help of this method, a kind of spiritual and semantic metathesis is carried out: the profane becomes sacred, and the sacred is profaned, but the primary meanings shine through the outer shell of the work.