This highly original still life presents various oysters in the fore and middle grounds—a relatively infrequent element in Meléndez’s paintings. The foreground is completed by some cloves of garlic and a decorated ceramic plate, probably from Talavera. Behind them, the powerful volume of an enormous copper pot vies for the leading role in this composition. It is tilted, as one edge rests on an inverted clay bowl. In the background, a pitcher is covered, as is customary in this artist’s work, with a fragment of decorated crockery that rests on its lip, leaving room for a wooden handle to extend from its mouth. The kitchen table practically disappears beneath the accumulation of skillfully differentiated objects brought out by the light that, as usual in these works, arrives from the left and precisely lights them with a precision that masterfully reveals the qualities and surfaces of each. This work belongs to a relatively advanced stage of Meléndez’s career and its simplification with regard to his earlier works reflects the new fashion then coming to the fore in painting, which rejected the omnipresent baroque showiness of earlier decades.

Meléndez repeatedly used utensils that are easily recognizable in his works, but the present painting stands out for its presentation of motives that were special for its time. Its maturity is clear in its very finished style and the artist’s mastery of techniques that include gradated tonalities and perfectly rendered drawing, all at the service of his uncommon gift for observation. And it is his capacity to capture the smallest details that reveals the essence of the objects. This composition was repeated by Meléndez with slight variations in paintings in private collections that are considered replicas of the present work (Text from Luna, J. J. : El bodegón español en el Prado. De Van der Hamen a Goya, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p. 120).