Plums, apples and pears with a basket; Pears, apples, grapes, melon and other fruit; A bird perched on a blue and white plate, with cherries, pears, a melon and a basket; A basket of strawberries and a jug of flowers, with a guinea pig, gourd and other fruit

The Neapolitan still-life painter Giuseppe Ruoppolo is traditionally thought to have been a pupil of his uncle, Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo. Publishing these paintings in 2006, Giuseppe de Vito highlighted that since Giovanni Battista was only a year older than his nephew, it was entirely possible the two were in fact contemporaries and trained under the same master (loc. cit.). This set of four canvases was painted later in Giuseppe's career and they are unusual in their more intimate scale and less decadent array of fruits and vegetables. As De Vito observes, while they are executed in a more muted palette, they nevertheless ‘retain a taste for the inventive’ ('conservano però il gusto per l'inventiva', op. cit., p. 25).