The first thing to catch the viewer’s eye is a splendid earthenware pitcher with a typical 18th-century tin-oxide white glaze and a Solomonic braided handle. The bright reflections of light on its curved surface contrast with the play of straight and curved lines that define the cheese resting beside it, and with the wavy-edged rococo plate in the immediate foreground, which overflows with cherries. Beside it, a handful of plums lead the eye to the lower right corner of the canvas.

The pitcher, rendered with cobalt blue, is of the sort made in Talavera (and also in Puente del Arzobispo and Toledo), where it is known as jarra de bola or jarra de borracho, as it was generally used to serve wine. Its floral decoration has led it to be assigned to the poppy flower group, but Gutiérrez Alonso believes it to be a sunflower, chrysanthemum or some other variety. It therefore seems wiser to employ the terminology customary in Talavera and Puete del Arzobispo, where this design is called rosilla, ramito or de la letra. The plate could also be from Talavera, and appears to be the type known as castañuela. This information can be equally applied to other paintings by Meléndez with similar motives, including the Museo del Prado’s P924, among others. The plate in this painting also appears in other works by this artist, as does the pitcher, although without the floral decoration it has here. The pitcher appears, for example, in a canvas belonging to the Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya., and there is a copy of the present canvas at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

From a technical standpoint, this still life should be dated from the seventh decade of the century, given the expressive power of its volumes and the very direct view of the objects and of the combined details of fruit and utensils. Moreover, light and color produce superb effects—especially the magnificent impact of brilliant reddish tones at the center of the composition, where they stand out against slightly bluish yellows and whites (Text from Luna, J. J.: El bodegón español en el Prado. De Van der Hamen a Goya, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p. 114).