Michele Pace del Campidoglio

This exuberant representation of fruits and vegetables is an example of still-life painting. While celebrating nature’s beauty and variety, its components may also suggest life’s passage from ripeness to decay.

Elaborately staged paintings such as this one were often commissioned to decorate private homes, symbolizing their owners’ prosperity. Still-life specialists sometimes collaborated with figure painters, which was likely the case here. A young boy originally leaned in at the left to admire the cascading harvest, but he was later overpainted and replaced by a voluptuous young woman, perhaps at the request of a patron.