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signed and dated lower center J.D.Heem Fecit 1627 oil on panel Jan Davidsz. de Heem is recognized as the most important and innovative still life painter in the Netherlands in the 17th century. No other painter of the period had such a profound influence on the development of this genre of painting. He was born in Utrecht where he spent the early part of his life before moving to Leiden; during the early 1630s, he moved to Antwerp where lived and worked for most of the remainder of his career. One of de Heem's earliest paintings, this dated work of 1627 is one of several dating from the late 1620's when de Heem was working in Utrecht and Leiden. These early paintings by de Heem clearly reflect the influence of Balthasar van der Ast, who was working in Utrecht during this period, and reflect a knowledge of the works of the Bosschaert family. In the present work, Jan Davidsz. de Heem has imitated van der Ast's bold use of the reflections and refractions of light upon pewter, glass and porcelain and has successfully depicted the fruit with the same natural modelling and soft textures. The composition, although somewhat lacking in space, derives from van der Ast's arrangements from circa 1622 and can be compared with the paintings in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (see, E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, 1995, vol. II, pp. 45-49, nos. 8/2 & 8/7). In Fred Meijer's article on the early paintings of de Heem (see Literature below), he noted the possibility that the present painting might have been cut on the right side, knowing the composition only from a photograph. First hand inspection of the reverse of the present panel, however, which is uncradled, reveals a fairly even bevel on all sides of the panel, and it seems likely that the painting is in its original format (or very near to it), which is fairly consistent with the crowded compositions of this moment in de