This market scene is the only known painting by Scipio Goltzius, an Antwerp-based artist from a family of engravers. In Fruit and Vegetable Vendors, the artist has closely emulated the work of Vincenzo Campi, a painter from Northern Italy, whose compositions depicting abundant fruit and vegetable stalls were in turn influenced by the older Flemish painters Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer. Goltzius’s Flemish and Italian predecessors used similar formats, presenting produce in the context of the marketplace with vendors and customers included in the composition. His greater emphasis on the produce, however, represents a key moment in the transition to paintings that featured only inanimate objects, a critical development for the still life. How Goltzius came into contact with Campi’s work is unknown. It is possible that Goltzius travelled to Cremona or that Campi’s paintings found their way to the prosperous port city of Antwerp.

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