A table bears various earthenware vessels, a portable stove, a bronze mortar and two peppers. At its corner, a boy looks out of the painting. A sausage and a rabbit hang from above. The boy and objects are depicted with a naturalist technique that explores the descriptive possibilities of contrasting light and shadows with a particular taste for dark browns and earth tones in general.

This concept of painting was common when Velázquez was beginning, and the present canvas shares several other aspects with his work, as well: some of the vessels resemble those in Velázquez’s still lifes, and the boy is also of a similar type, notwithstanding the obvious difference in quality. These similarities are explained by the fact that López Caro began his career in Seville around the same time as Velázquez, and that makes this a very interesting example of the impact that the latter’s earliest works had on local artists. Various paintings reflect that influence, but unlike the others, this one is signed, which opens the way to greater knowledge of that setting.

From the standpoint of the Museo del Prado, this work offers many things. It is by an artist formerly absent from the museum’s collections; it contributes to an understanding of Velázquez’s impact on his surroundings in Seville, and along with recently acquired works by Loarte and Jerónimo Jacinto Espinosa, it helps to draw attention to a subgenre of Spain’s Siglo de Oro painting -that of still lifes with figures- which have barely been represented in the museum’s collections until now.