Basket of Fruit

One of the earliest examples of pure still life in Western art, painted c.1599. A wicker basket perches precariously on a stone ledge, filled with summer fruit. Leaves are worm-eaten, berries overripe, insect damage carefully catalogued — a frank vanitas meditation on transience.

X-ray study revealed it was painted on a previously used canvas. By 1607 it belonged to Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan.

At the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. Reproduced on the Italian 100,000-lire banknote in the 1980s-90s.