A basket of cherries, apples, plums, chestnuts, asparagus and porcini on a ledge

This hitherto unpublished still life can be added to a group of approximately twenty pictures identified by Luigi Salerno, Federico Zeri and Mina Gregori as the work of the Pseudo-Fardella. His style is closely related to that of Giacomo Fardella's signed pictures of fruit in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence (see L. Salerno, La natura morta italiana, 1560-1805, Rome, 1984, pp. 278-281, and F. Zeri, La natura morta in Italia, Milan, 1989, pp. 564-565). The artist's tranquil pictures of fruit and vegetables on forest floors are reminiscent of those by the Lucchese artist Simone del Tintore (1630-1708).

The treatment of the basket of cherries and the porcini in this picture can be compared in particular with two still lifes by the Pseudo-Fardella, one in the Staatsgalerie (Stockholm inv. no. 2313) and the other in a private collection (F. Zeri, op. cit., figs. 669-670).