A market stall laden with fruit and vegetables, with a man gesturing towards the produce, and a woman carrying a basket of goods, next to a young boy looking on

In this ambiguous market scene, it is unclear whether the woman is a customer, or the market seller. This is presumably a deliberate choice, as the painting is unlikely to be a literal transaction of fruit and vegetables; contemporary viewers would doubtless have been well aware of the implied sexual impropriety and the moral choice between short-lived earthly pleasures and longer-term piety.

Little is known about Gommaert van der Gracht; he was the son of a merchant of the same name (d. 1603) and Anna Drits. As far as records show, the artist appears to have spent his life in his birth town, Mechelen, where he was a member of the Guild of Saint Luke. He was an apprentice of Mechelen-based artist Michiel Coxie II in 1602, and later the teacher of Jacob van der Gracht, who may also have been his brother. Dr Fred G. Meijer has also noted the influence of father and son Jean-Baptiste Saive I and II, although there is no evidence that van der Gracht was a pupil in the studio. His known oeuvre appears to have predominantly consisted of large-scale still lifes combined with religious narratives, figurative, animal or landscape paintings in the background.

We are grateful to Dr Fred G. Meijer for originally proposing and reconfirming the attribution of the whole to Gommaert van der Gracht on the basis of photographs; he notes that the figures are of a similar quality as the putti in a signed work in Mechelen.