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The 17th-century Still Life with Fruit shows a magnificent arrangement of ripe fruit and sumptuous vessels on a stone tabletop: a golden columbine cup, a stemmed glass of red wine and a Delft bowl of grapes and peaches dominate the scene. Other elements such as a half-peeled lemon, a melon and an upturned bowl complete the contrasting still life.

The painting has been in the museum's collection since 1913 and was originally thought to be by the Dutch painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem. With the support of the Renate and Eberhard Robke Foundation, it was extensively restored in a studio in Cologne in 2022. It shows numerous overpaintings and retouches from different stages of the restoration. Under one of the overpaintings, a red pomegranate, a typical symbol of Christian iconography, was discovered by X-ray and infrared analysis.

Further research revealed that the signature was not original and that the work was therefore probably not by Jan Davidsz. de Heem. Instead, it could have been painted by Joris van Son, a pupil or collaborator of de Heem. Motivic and compositional parallels between the two painters support this assumption.

Despite these findings, no restoration work was carried out because of the risk that the work might lose its familiar appearance. However, the scientific results are a valuable contribution to the study of the collection. They show that systematic study can open up new perspectives, even on works that are centuries old.