Still life with vegetables and kitchen utensils

In the 17th century, still-life was a new but dazzlingly successful pictorial genre.
Much of its allure lies in virtuosity; representing natural objects so skilfully that the painted item could be mistaken for the model.
This painting, which arrived in Portugal as part of the personal collections of Queen Carlota Joaquina, reveals the painter’s virtuosity, both in the scenographic arrangement of the objects in successive diagonals and the naturalistic treatment that he gives to the textures and the effects of the light.