Still Life - Basket of Fruit

• Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Basket of Fruit, c. 1599
• Key facts

  Size: 46 cm × 64.5 cm

  Medium: oil on canvas

  Location: Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan (founded in 1618 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, the Ambrosiana Gallery houses a permanent collection of fine paintings, sculptures, etchings and drawings donated by Borromeo himself).
• Still life

  A painting depicting an arrangement of inanimate objects, typically including fruit and flowers
• Summer fruit in the basket

  • Large peach
  • Bicolored apple
  • Blushed yellow pear
  • Four figs (two white, two purple)
• Grapes

  • Four clusters
  • Red cluster on right shows several mummied fruit
  • Two clusters on left each show an overripe berry
  • Grapes represent fertility and salvation in their symbolic link to the blood of Christ, but also are symbolic of the Roman god Bacchus and drunkenness.
• Nothing in this still life is idealised
• Composition

  This is an asymmetrical work. Its elements seem piled up randomly but they have in fact been carefully arranged. The low horizon line causes the basket to loom up, confirming the monumental effect and dignifying this lowliest of genres.
• Style

  
  

  The Basket of Fruit is intensely concentrated. Each organic element has been studied closely from nature. Every fruit and leaf is recognisable - the figs' striated skins, even the loose strand of the woven basket. Caravaggio’s disguised brushwork creates a trompe l’oeil effect.
• Light and shade

  Caravaggio explored the interplay of light and dark, renowned for his chiaroscuro, 2 perhaps it met with the light and shade of his own character. He cast dramatic light from left to right to lend a theatricality to a simple basket of fruit.
• Colours

  Caravaggio used colour naturalistically and here, even to represent time passing – the colours of the leaves fade, their edges curling and snarled. The gold background provides an almost abstract quality.
• Space

  Caravaggio characteristically extended his subjects beyond the picture plane and into the viewer's space. Here, the basket of fruit teeters on the ledge, and later, in the ‘Supper at Emmaus’, the arms of the apostle on the right stretches into our space, and his signature basket of fruit teeters precariously on the edge of the table.
• Iconography

  The condition Caravaggio’s fruit is allegorical. Like human life, fruit is perishable. It has been interpreted as a representation of the transient nature of our existence. When fruit is fresh and ripe, it stands as a symbol of abundance, fertility and life. However, decaying fruit reminds us of our own ageing and mortality. Contemporary art historian, Andrew Graham Dixon: ‘it’s a basket of fruit that wants to be something else, it wants to be a painting about life, death, resurrection and salvation’.
• Depictions of fruit often relate to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve and the notion of temptation, sin and death. Eve is depicted holding a fruit, which is most often thought to be an apple. The apple therefore has become synonymous with knowledge, corruption, immortality, temptation, the fall of man and sin, as it is associated with the Tree of Knowledge and the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis.
• The bicoloured apple in Caravaggio’s work is so obviously worm eaten. Graham Dixon says they’re meant to bring to mind the apple that Eve ate, and their counter point is the vine leaves which stand for Christ’s blood, which saves mankind. However, Graham-Dixon also says that Caravaggio ‘always leaves space for doubt, as even some of the vine leaves begin to wither’.
• Pear/quince

  In Christian terms, pears stand for Christ's love for mankind/quince was sacred to the ancients as an attribute of Venus and an emblem of marriage and fertility. According to ancient writer Pliny, a cutting from the quince tree would form another tree when planted. It was thus associated with immortality.
• Peaches

  A symbol of salvation and truth or Mary’s fertility. A rotting or half-eaten peach may symbolise a tarnished reputation or immoral character.
• Apple

  Apples are associated with knowledge, sin, temptation, immortality, Venus, the fall of man and the image of the fallen woman.
• Fig

  Strong biblical associations, as the fig tree is the third tree to be mentioned in the Bible. The fig has strong connotations with modesty and sexuality, as Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves. Greek and Roman mythology see figs associated with Dionysus (or Bacchus) the god of drunkenness and wine.
• Critics have attested that the grotesquely serpentine gourds and the visual suggestiveness of the exposed, split fruit allude to intimate, sensual imagery.
• Most artists working during the Baroque period survived on fresco commissions. Caravaggio, on the other hand, refused to paint in fresco and painted oil on canvas for his entire career. Most artists made preliminary drawings on the canvas before painting, however, x-rays have revealed that Caravaggio painted alla prima. Caravaggio traced rough indications in the first layers of paint with the handle of his brush.
• Patronage

  Basket of Fruit was a gift from Cardinal Del Monte - the painter's first influential patron - to Federico Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan, and a collector of art who was ultimately responsible for the Ambrosiana Gallery (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana) in Milan where the painting is still housed. Still-life paintings were a novelty at this time. Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit was a declaration of war on official painting, and the era’s major patron - the Catholic Church.