The fishmonger's stall and the greengrocer

The fishmonger's stall and the greengrocer depicts, in fact, a fishmonger intent on serving a woman at the same stall as a greengrocer with a smiling face and a hat that seems to have been borrowed from one of Diego Velázquez's Los Borracchos.

This scene from everyday life, by Giacomo Francesco Cipper, represents a miserable and patched humanity at the centre and it’s not intended to move the spectators, but rather to arouse sympathy and hilarity in them.

It is a style akin – according to art historian Roberto Longhi – to that of Eberhard Keil, a Danish painter from whom the artist also inherited the themes, enriched, however, by the typical freshness of Velázquez.

The work was chosen by Hackert, together with three other works by the same artist, to furnish the Game Room used by the king and his gentlemen for games and entertainment.

The selection, in addition to being a tribute to the queen – Austrian like Cipper – testifies how the value of the painter was undisputed and widely recognized at the time.