Michelangelo Pace, called Michelangelo di Campidoglio, was one of the most significant still-life painters active in Baroque Rome. Little of a documentary nature is known of the artist's career, but his success and popularity in his time are confirmed by the numerous inventory mentions of his paintings in the most distinguished collections of the day. This spectacular still life was formerly considered to be a work of Pietro Paolo Bonzi, called "il Gobbo [hunch-back] dei Carracci." However, as Alberto Cottino has recently indicated (in a letter of October 1, 1997), "Bonzi's style is more archaic (Raphaelesque and Caravaggesque), while this painting shows a Baroque culture with its abundance of fruits and their untidy arrangement in space." Rather then present painting is a very fine example of the work of Michelangelo di Campidoglio. The key works in our of the artist's style are a pair of still life's in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. These depictions of grapes and pomegranates were acquired from the Walpole Collection in the eighteenth century and appear in early inventories and engravings with the artist's name. From these works scholars have been able to establish a corpus of paintings attributable to the artist, to which the present painting clearly belongs.