Signed, this oil by Giuseppe Recco (1634–1695) depicts a still life with bread, tuna, olives, cardoons and a basket of figs.

With the painter's elegant initials seemingly carved into the crude stone ledge or table, this hitherto unrecorded 'kitchen scene' still life is a fine addition to Recco's known work. A distinctive double bread roll is placed next to some mushrooms in front of a basket of figs, grapes and bean pods which dominates the right-hand side of the composition.

Recco was renowned for the observed light and clarity of his pictures, which set his work apart from his contemporaries. His closest rival was Giuseppe Battista Ruoppolo (1629–1693), with whom Recco was known to have studied under Paolo Porpora (1617–1673) – another artist represented in this collection. Ruoppolo's still lifes were decorative and theatrical, whereas Recco was influenced by Flemish pictures popular in Naples at the time, and in particular the Spanish realist tradition of the more austere bodegón. These 'kitchen interior' still lifes are among his finest works and suggest an early dating, when Recco was aware of a group of bodegónes by the Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652). Similar 'twin' loaves of bread appear in a Recco in the Molinari Pradelli collection, Bologna, and in an important picture from the 1650s now in the National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples.

Collectors of Neapolitan Baroque still life, the Porpora-Ruoppolo-Recco circle, and Spanish-influenced bodegón painting will find this a rare and richly connected addition to the genre.