The glass bottle and a squash slice, the lobster and the crab, all provide the constituents of a closely observed still life. The simplicity of the image belies the intense thought behind it but still leaves a quietly theatric impression. Jose Blanco’s main concern was not, of course, natural correctness — the cloth covered surface has two levels — but the overall formal completeness of the painting. Jose Blanco succeeded his mentor Carlos “Botong” Francisco as the eminent painter of Angono scenes, yet he goes a step or two further ahead of his mentor’s shadow by exploring the genre of still life, which was never quite in the oeuvre of the great Botong.