Still Life Painting: From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century  

"A still life painting was originally designated in Greek by the term "rhopography" (i.e. depiction of insignificant objects, of odds and ends); then, forcing the pejorative nuance a little, it was mockingly baptized '"rhyparography" (i.e. painting of the sordid) […] Now too the term "megalography" (i.e. large-scale painting) was coined in contradistinction to rhopography. But it was not so much a matter of size as of the nature of the subject, the latter category corresponding to our minor genre as contrasted with the grand manner."--Still Life Painting: From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (1952:27), Charles Sterling