Caravaggio - Basket of fruit - Oil on canvas

Basket of Fruit (c.1599) is a still life painting by the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610). The painting shows a wicker basket perched on the edge of a ledge. The basket contains a selection of summer fruit: a good-sized, light-red peach. Beneath it is a single bicolored apple, shown from a stem perspective with two insect entry holes, one blushed yellow pear, four figs, two white and two purple, and a single unblemished quince with a leafy spur showing fungal spots. There are four clusters of grapes, black, red, golden, and white. Basket of Fruit can be compared with the same artist's Still Life with Fruit (c. 1603), a painting which John Spike identifies as "the source of all subsequent Roman still-life paintings. An X-ray study revealed that it was painted on an already used canvas. The famous painting hangs in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Ambrosian Library), Milan. Photo by ©Kardemumma Design Visit my shop at www.zazzle.com/store/kardemummadesign