The Fruit Vendor

A fruit seller and a young serving woman haggle over the price of a melon. The play of hands is indebted to Caravaggio, but its treatment is awkward. More assured is the still-life. The basket of fruit, which seems to jut over the table, and the wilting leaves suggesting the freshness of the fruit are motifs derived from Caravaggio's London Supper at Emmaus, and ones much favoured by still-life painters following him, such as Pietro Paolo Bonzi and the Master of the Acquavella Still-life. The melons, too, occur in pictures by these artists. Painted from three different viewpoints, and arranged on a parabola, they are veiled in a soft translucent light, and seem to detach themselves from the painting. They are strikingly close to the Washington Still-life and it has recently been suggested that the Washington painting, usually attributed to Pensionante del Saraceni, is by a different artist, who also contributed the still-life to this picture.

The hard, crisp quality of the outlines of the figures, and the modelling in light, are close to the works of Dutch and Flemish Caravaggesque painters.