In Tomás Hiepes´s Delftware fruit dish and two flower vases (P7909), a large bowl made from the ceramic typical of the Dutch city of Delft, filled with apples, pears and plums, is placed at the centre of a table, flanked by two sumptuous vases filled with aromatic orange blossoms. In its companion piece, Two Fruit Bowls on a Table (P7910), two ceramic fruit dishes, decorated with motifs of eastern influence, are brimming with apples and plums (on the left) and pears and quince (on the right). In the two paintings, the objects stand out against a dark background, a typical device in Spanish still lifes that helps one identify more clearly the fruit and their containers. The space of each image is constructed primarily by the perspectival rendering of the tables and the fine cloths covering them, with the traces of folds in the tablecloths creating a grid that produces the sensation of depth. The painter conceived the paintings as a pair and has focused in particular on the creation of symmetrical compositions, though within that overall symmetry he has introduced notable variations. Much of the appeal and uniqueness of these works lies precisely in this symmetry and the way in which the compositions are subjected to a geometric structure. These are the earliest surviving signed works by Hiepes, who was the most important painter of still lifes in the region of Valencia in the seventeenth century. They present many of the features that distinguish his works from those of his Spanish contemporaries: the delight in symmetries, the use of colourful, decorative ceramics, and a minutely detailed pictorial style that lends each piece of fruit, each dish, each flower, a unique quality. To all this is added a certain monumentality that the artist achieves by means of an elevated point of view and the placement of the objects in the close foreground, so that they nearly fill the entire painted surface. The dark background and the compositional order that prevails in these still lifes and in others from Madrid or Seville have contributed to the persistence of a commonplace regarding the alleged austerity of the genre during the Spanish Baroque. Nevertheless, a contemporary viewer would recognise them as representations of manufactured objects associated with wealthy households, the same households on whose walls paintings such as these could be hung as one more sign of that wealth. Thus, the earthenware or ceramic containers on these tables are not examples of local production commonly found in most homes (such as Talavera, Triana or Manises pottery), but showy imported pieces only affordable for a few. The role of the lace tablecloths is similar. The combination of valuable, exquisite objects, a meticulously detailed pictorial language, and a highly ordered compositional structure reflects the urbane, well-to-do world to which this art belongs. This pair of paintings can be viewed, consequently, as among the artist´s most sophisticated works (Text drawn from Portús, J.: Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado, Queensland Art Gallery-Art Exhibitions Australia, 2012, p. 164).