An allegory of the sense of smell

An alternate version of the present composition was sold at Christie's New York and catalogued as 'Circle of Blas de Ledesma' (10 October 1990, lot 1). However, scholars now believe that Blas de Ledesma did not actually exist, and that both versions of the painting are the work of an anonymous artist active in the circle of Juan de Arellano, the leading painter of floral still lifes in seventeenth- century Spain.