Are there any artists that paint rotting fruit or vegetables?

Answer 1

Raphaelle Peale and Karl Zipser are modern examples.

Various fruits appear in at least twelve different paintings dated from 1592 to 1603 and definitely attributed to Caravaggio. They include apple, cherry, citrus (flowers), cucumber, fig, gourd, grape, medlar, melon, pumpkin, peach, pear, plum, pomegranate, quince, squash, and watermelon. Just as the figures in Caravaggio's paintings were painted from life, so too were the fruits. Exact in detail they include precise representations of disease symptoms, insect damage, and various abiotic defects. Fruits are scattered more or less incidentally in five early genre paintings : Boy Peeling Fruit, 1592 (apple, fig, pear, peach, plum); Self Portrait as Bacchus, 1593 (peach, grape); Musicians, 1595 (grape); Boy Bitten by a Lizard 1595 (cherry); and Lute Player, 1596 (cucumber, pear, fig). In five other paintings, an assemblage of fruits is a prominent part of the composition, four in baskets and one on a plate.

Also look for "vanitas" paintings. Rotten fruit and vegetables often appear in these as symbols of the transience of life.