Still Life with Fruit and a Crystal Vase

Cardinal Giovan Carlo de' Medici kept this in his private chamber at the Casino degli Orti Oricellari in Florence, on a wall that also held Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch. He had ordered it, together with a companion piece showing a vase of flowers and a watch, from Willem van Aelst, a painter from Delft then working for his family. Van Aelst signed the edge of the tablecloth, W.V. Aelst 1652. Two cloths lie on the table, one white and one of blue velvet, and on them an opened melon, a few plums, a knife, a silver tray and a gilt bronze stand shaped like a shell with a small figure on it. That is a short list of objects for a Dutch still life of the 1650s, and the Uffizi read the picture as one built for slow looking. It is 73 by 58 centimetres and hangs in the Sala della Fama.