Daniel Seghers

Daniel Seghers signed many of his pictures with the letters of the Society of Jesus after his name. He was a Jesuit brother who happened to be one of the most sought-after flower painters in Europe, and the two facts belong together.

He learned the craft in Antwerp from Jan Brueghel the Elder, the master of the Flemish flower piece, then entered the Jesuit order and gave his skill to it. His specialty was the garland painting, a dense wreath of roses, tulips and irises framing a central stone niche, in which another hand, often a figure painter from the order's circle, set a Virgin or a small carved relief. Seghers painted the flowers, and a collaborator painted the middle.

Collectors on both sides of the religious divide competed for them. In 1649 the Protestant court of the House of Orange in The Hague sent him a gift for one such picture: a golden palette, a maulstick and five brush-holders, thanks from a Calvinist prince to a Catholic monk. He turned down invitations to leave Antwerp and worked at the Jesuit house there until his death in 1661, keeping his own handwritten list of the paintings and the grand names they had gone to.