A Rembrandt jug, a salt-cellar, grapes and apples in a basket , cheeses, oranges and sweetmeat on pewter plates, a beer glass, a berkemeier, olives and cherries in Chinese porcelain dishes, butter on a green-glazed earthenware dish, a knife, buns and an upturned roemer on a draped table

With its high viewpoint, neat arrangement of objects and plates on the table and the fresh colouring, the present picture is characteristic of the earliest Dutch independent still lifes as painted in Haarlem in the first two decades of the 16th century. As pointed out by S. Segal, A Prosperous past, 1988, p.71, a damast table cloth over a red undercloth was used in Gillis' work from 1610 onwards. On that basis the present picture is to be dated circa 1614/1615 and to be compared with the still life in the Národni Gallery, Prague (I. Bergström, op. cit, fig.90). The knife, the plate with sweetmeat, the buns, the salt-cellar and the basket of fruit appear in the same form in a picture in the Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (O. ter Kuile, op. cit, n^.VI-23).