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Still Life with Fruit - Caravaggio (~1601-10)

Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge is a painting attributed to the Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610).

The picture has been variously dated between 1601 and 1610 (Caravaggio scholar John T. Spike lists the date as circa 1603 in the second revised edition of his study of the artist). It depicts a wicker basket heaped with various fruit and vegetables sitting on a stone table, caught in Caravaggio's usual strong yet mellow shaft of light falling from top left, "as if through a hole in the ceiling." (Caravaggio at around this time was sued by a landlady for having cut a hole in the ceiling of the rooms he rented, presumably to create his characteristic lighting). The bulk of the space is taken up by the large melons, marrows and pumpkins, the watermelon and pumpkin cut open to display the interior, the marrows, long and twisting, seeming to wish to escape the two-dimensional space of the picture plane.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_Life_with_Fruit_(Caravaggio)

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