The Fruit and Vegetable Costermonger

The date 1630 is still easy to read in the lower left corner, which means Louise Moillon was about 20 when she painted this. It is one of the very few pictures by her that carry a date but no signature. It is also one of her rare large canvases in which a still life turns into a scene with people, in the line of the market pictures painted a century earlier by the Netherlandish painters Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer.

A market woman holds out a basket of peaches, and a lady in black, making her choice, weighs one in her right hand. Look to the right, behind the enormous squash. A small spotted cat has settled among the vegetables and sits there without moving. The canvas came from the Salavin collection in Paris and entered the Louvre in 1955.