Still Life with Medlars and Gooseberries

When does the exotic become the familiar? Coorte specialized in creating self-contained painted worlds, each populated by a few, carefully observed objects—shells, or a bundle of asparagus, or, as here, a branch heavy with medlar fruit. Unlike the shells in the painting below, which a Dutch viewer would have seen as coming from places almost beyond the realm of imagination, medlars were a familiar autumn friend. But medlars were also from somewhere else. They had arrived in Europe from Persia during the time of the Roman Empire; then, they, too, had been a captivating visitor from far away.