A silver tazza on a ledge with wild strawberries

Painted in Lombardy around 1630 by an as yet unidentified but highly accomplished artist, this still life of wild strawberries heaped upon a silver tazza belongs to the tradition established by Fede Galizia (c.1578–c.1630) at the beginning of the seventeenth century and continued by Panfilo Nuvolone (1581–1651) in the years that followed. The isolation of a single motif at the center of a darkened ledge, the close observation of natural detail, and the dramatic contrast of brightly lit fruit against a deep neutral ground typify the Milanese school of still-life painting, whose origins lie both in Galizia's pioneering compositions and, more distantly, in Caravaggio's Basket of fruit painted for Cardinal Federico Borromeo in the late 1590s (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan).

The present still life follows that lineage while introducing wild strawberries, an unusual motif within the Lombard tradition, rendered here with painstaking attention to their varied profiles, the small white blossom and pale, star-shaped flowers (possibly borage) scattered among them, and the broad leaves that curl over the lip of the tazza.