Roses, carnations, a tulip and other flowers in a sculpted alabaster urn, with a carnation in a glass vase, on a wooden table; and Roses, lilies, iris and other flowers in a sculpted alabaster urn and other flowers in a glass vase, on a wooden table

The most prominent still life painter active in Seville in the 17th century, Pedro de Camprobín Passano was trained in Toledo between 1619 and 1624 under Luís Tristán. By 1628, he is recorded in Seville, where he married the daughter of the artist Antonio de Arnos, and in 1630 became a member of the Seville painters' guild. In 1660, along with Murillo, Valdés Leal and other leading artists of the day, Camprobín became a founder member of the Seville Academy.

Evidently familiar with the work of the Sevillian artist Juan, son of Francisco de Zurbarán, his earlier work shows some influence of those two artists. In the 1650s, he developed a more personal style, using fluent brushstrokes, and tending towards understated compositions, in contrast to the often large and usually heavily-laden kitchen still lifes being produced in Madrid at that time.

The decade of the 1660s was the summit of Camprobín's career. The still lifes that he produced during that period 'are unlike any others painted in Spain, and they establish Camprobín as one of the most distinctive masters of still-life painting in Spain' (London, National Gallery, W.B. Jordan and P. Cherry eds., catalogue of the exhibition, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya, 22 February-21 May 1995 p. 111). In these years - the decade in which the present pair was painted - the artist began to change his technique, 'relying to a much greater extent on the use of glazing to achieve delicacy in modelling' (ibid., p. 114): a phrase that is particularly apt when examining, for example, the small glass bowl to the left of the second picture or the small vase with a single carnation, to the lower right of the first.