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Tomás Hiepes lived and worked in Valencia, where he enjoyed considerable local fame as a still-life and flower painter. His Still-Life with Fruit and Flowers, reflecting his ability in still-life painting, represents a Delft bowl of fruit and two pottery vases with gilt mounts containing jasmine flowers resting on a table covered by a tablecloth decorated with fine lacework known at the time as "Milan lace." This painting allows a full appreciation of Hiepes's style in his early maturity, characterised by his attention to fine detail, his use of glazes in modelling the fruit and subtle effects of colour and lighting. The painting is signed and dated 1642 in large letters on the reverse of the canvases and is - together with its pendant in the same collection - the earliest dated works known by the artist.
The painting attests to the particular skills of Hiepes in still-life and flower painting, leavened with an ingenuous charm entirely of his own that makes his works among the most appealing of those painted in 17th-century Spain.
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