The theme is typical of the beginning of the seventeenth century, when compositions of these laid tables, whose elements were depicted with raw and analytical verismo, became widespread through the work of some artists from Flanders, amongst whom were Floris van Dyck, Nicolas Gillis and Osias Beert the Elder.

Jan van Kessel draws retrospective inspiration from this early seventeenth-century tradition, adding the finely descriptive style of Jan “Velvet” Bruegel. The result is a work, which sets aside all hidden meaning and expresses just a pleasant decorative taste, with descriptive virtuosity and great miniaturist ability.

In these panels van Kessel juxtaposes all the common compositional elements of the Flemish still life, almost a florilegium designed to display the whole traditional repertoire. The artist has used copper to paint on, as on other occasions, in order to underline the brilliant and glossy aspect of his painting style.

In these compositions, which are crowded without any order and almost without perspective framework, one can measure the distance between the Flemish and the Italian still life, in which the latter always respects the humanistic and Renaissance necessity of arranging the objects in a space which is rigorously calibrated and real. In the fidei-commissum catalogue these two “pendants” paintings were generically attributed to Bruegel.

Sestieri considered them works of an anonymous Flemish painter of the eighteenth century, whereas E. Greindl includes them in a list of works to be ascribed on stylistic grounds to Jan van Kessel the Elder.