Named after his silversmith father, Pedro de Camprobín trained in Toledo under Luis Tristán for five years (1619–1623). By 1628 he was already in Seville, where he was approved as a master in 1630 and remained until his death. In 1660 he was one of the founders of Seville's academy of painting.

His known works are dated to between 1646 and 1666, but we do not know how he painted in his early years. Around 1650 he depicted fruit with a few small flower vases that recall the Zurbaráns, father and son, as Peter Cherry has noted; later the focus would be on bouquets in baskets or gilded bronze vessels. A writing desk with visible drawers like the ones in this pair only appears in one other painting, with a flower vase on a stone shelf and sweets.

The early date proposed for the works in the Banco Santander Collection is based on aspects like the unbroken, one-piece table surface and the objects and fruit arranged in horizontal rows that aim to achieve symmetry or balance between them. These characteristics and the type of objects and fruit differ from the artist's later work in Seville. There are also certain parallels to Toledo circles. We know of a fruit painting by Tristán; Alejandro de Loarte, active in Toledo at least from 1622 until his death in 1626, hung pieces of fruit in pairs or trios and with many leaves, like Juan Sánchez Cotán before him. The light shining from the left casts shadows and illuminates the foreground, leaving the background shrouded in darkness. Camprobín used lighter grounds in nearly all of his other works. The forward position of the books is also a device corresponding to the early 17th century. The depicted objects are typical of the early second third of that century: fruit but no flowers, books, furniture, glass pieces and red clay jugs.

The dimensions are unusually large for works of this genre which, along with the format, suggests that they may have been door or window panels. We see that the table and furniture are set slightly at an angle, while the composition with the fruit bowl and individual pieces of fruit leans in the opposite direction, indicating that perhaps the two works were intended to face each other instead of hanging side by side.

Camprobín showed sufficient skill in the representation of the qualities of these objects within the prevailing guidelines of sobriety and balance. He also achieved an attractive effect of transparency with the ribbon on the key hanging over the box. [José Manuel Cruz Valdovinos]