Still Life with Chocolate Service

By 1770, the year on this canvas, chocolate was drunk right across Madrid's social classes, usually first thing in the morning. It did not arrive as a powder. It came as hard tablets like the ones stacked beside the pot, to be broken into hot water and beaten to a froth with a notched wooden stick. The copper pot at the centre is where that was done, and Meléndez gives its hammered surface a heavier, duller shine than the glaze on the small porcelain cup and saucer, which is imported and the costliest thing on the table. The rolls and dry biscuits were there for dunking. He signed the lower right in a dense string of initials and abbreviations ending in the year. The Prado is not showing the picture at present and keeps it in its own store.