Johann Georg Hinz is a true northern light. Not much is known about the artist, who was born in Altona. He spent his life in Hamburg, where he developed into Hamburg's first and most famous still life artist of his time. This first earned him citizenship, a right that admitted him to the upper bourgeois class and meant that Johann Georg Hinz had by now come to own a house and money. This was not surprising, since he ran a flourishing workshop business in which he trained Ernst Stuven, among others. Later, he was even allowed to call himself "Freimeister", a title for a master craftsman who was not subject to any guild and could sell his works freely and without paying taxes. So things were apparently going quite well for Johann Georg Hinz. It is said that he acquired his considerable skills from the great masters in the Netherlands, visiting Amsterdam and Antwerp. And indeed, today he is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as Pieter Claesz or Floris van Dyck, coriphae of their time. He was truly not lacking in commissions, among others, the Holsten Brewery and even the Danish royal family were among his clients.

But it was also simply the right time for his genre. Still life had a heyday in the second half of the 17th century. Vanitas (Latin: vanity, and is synonymous with "worthless" or "transient") is the name given to the depiction of the sad transience of life, often symbolized by rotting or forgotten food, dripping or extinguished candles, or limp, wilting flowers. At the same time, it also functions as a reminder to the patrons: overabundance and weariness, represented by the decadent abandonment of a meal only half eaten, is meant to make them aware of their own mortality, of the passing of their lifetimes. His trompe-l'oeil effect was perceived as particularly artistic, a masterly illusionistic form of painting that, with deceptively real three-dimensionality, made it difficult for the viewer to distinguish between painting and reality. Also from his hand came splendor still lifes (a still life interspersed with noble materials and ostentatiously decorated objects, which display exuberant wealth), banquetjes (breakfasts or small meals, seemingly often just left) and flower pieces (whose arrangements follow an often well thought-out symbolism and refer to seasons, religious references or wealth). In doing so, he often painted the same picture several times, rearranging the objects on it each time.

In any case, he was able to impress his contemporaries. Thus, for example, the painter and art writer Joachim von Sandrart wrote about him in his Teutsche Academie published in 1675: "Hinz also finds a place among the famous painters, is also good in quiet things and in Hamburg current time his praise in full bloom".