Still Life with Plums, Figs, Bread, a Barrel, a Jug and Other Vessels

Madrid in the 1760s had an appetite for cabinets. Charles III bought up a private natural-history collection and made it a royal one by decree in 1771, and his son, the Prince of Asturias who became Carlos IV, was assembling a cabinet of his own in the Royal Palace. Meléndez offered to fill it with painted food, every edible species the Spanish climate produces, and this canvas belongs to that group. It is recorded in the prince's rooms in 1771; the painting itself the museum dates only to somewhere between 1760 and 1770. Nothing on the table is grand. Plums, two figs, a loaf resting on a cut one, a small keg bound with withies, and a white glazed jug with an ochre line, of the kind made at Talavera and Puente del Arzobispo for weddings. X-rays show the figs came last, brushed in over the jug he had already finished, and he left his initials, L.M., on the front edge of the table.