The artist was named by Professor Luigi Salerno (La natura morta italiana, Rome, 1984, pp.18-21) after a group of still lifes with bowls of fruit, two of which had been published by Professor John Spike (in the catalogue of the exhibition, Italian Still Life Paintings from three Centuries, New York, Tulsa and Dayton, 1983, nos.3-4) as 'Anonymous Lombard, c.1600'. Their attempts to identify the artist as Italian have not, however, gained acceptance. The most important of the pictures illustrated by Salerno, that formerly owned by Victor Spark in New York, had previously been published as the work of Sánchez Cotán by Ramon Torres Martín (La naturaleza muerta en la pintura española, Barcelona, 1971, colour pl.8) and it was sold at Sotheby's, New York, 3 June 1988, lot 140, with a tentative attribution to that artist. Although recent research has established that the painter was Spanish, indeed that he was 'a still life painter of major importance in the history of Spanish art' (Professor William B. Jordan, private communication of 25 March 1992), his identity has not yet been established and 'The Master of the Lombard Fruit Bowl' remains the most convenient nomenclature (a still life published by Professor Salerno in Nuovi Studi su la Natura Morta Italiana, Rome, 1989, p.24, pl.17, appears to be the work of a different, Italian hand).

A still life clearly by the same artist as the ex-Victor Spark picture, repeating the two prominent artichokes and with the same undecorated pedestal, was sold in these Rooms, 29 May 1992, lot 324. A series of closely related pictures was sold at Edmund Peel, Madrid, in two groups, 21 May 1991, lots 10-12, and 29 October 1991, lots 12-13. Professor William Jordan attributed those paintings to Tomás Hiepes. Since their appearance, however, he has informed us that he now knows approximately thirty still lifes in this style, all of them unsigned, and that he is no longer certain of their attribution. The present, hitherto unrecorded, pictures reveal strong affinities to the ex-Peel series, in which the basket of pigeons in the present painting and the vine branch of the following lot are repeated with minimal variation. All follow the same compositional formulae, and all but one have similarly decorated pedestals, the exception being 29 October 1991, lot 13, which is otherwise strikingly similar in composition (although in reverse) and in technique with the following lot in the present sale.

The sprig of plums standing in the bowl in the present painting is closely paralleled in the ex-Victor Spark picture