Fruit Dish with a Basket of Cherries and a Basket of Apricots

In 1603, following the departure of Juan Sanchéz Cotán (Orgaz, 1560 – Granada, 1627) for the Charterhouse at Granada, an inventory of his paintings was drawn up in Toledo. The twelfth and final item, listed among paintings of fruit, vegetables, dead birds and flowers, is described as “a canvas of a basket of cherries and a basket of apricots”. The whereabouts of that work remains unknown, as is that of other unfinished ones referred to in the inventory. Only four on that list have known to have survived, in addition to three others not included in it.

As Jordan and Cherry have noted, there is no doubt that the present canvas is a version of the lost original but it does not have the quality of Sánchez Cotán’s autograph works. It shares the same dimensions (two and a half tercias by a vara) and the use of a window-type opening in addition to the fruit, two bunches of asparagus, various pods that seem to be dried broad beans, apples, a brace of pigeons and a large corncob with a downy inside of an unidentified species probably from South America.

The original work by Sánchez Cotán on which this canvas is based must have been the painting that belonged to the Cardinal of Toledo, Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, which was acquired from his posthumous sale by Philip III together with four more still lifes of fruit by the artist. All of them were installed in 1619 as over-doors in the Galería de Mediodía in the royal palace of El Pardo. The present painting may thus have been copied in Madrid rather than in Toledo, which would explain the characteristics of its pair, also in the Colección Santander.