Maria van Oosterwijck

In 1670s Amsterdam the flower painter Willem van Aelst kept a studio across the street from Maria van Oosterwijck and courted her for years. The story goes that she set him a condition, that he work steadily at his easel every day for a full year, and only then would she think about marrying him. He could not manage it. She never married anyone.

What she did instead was become the most sought-after flower painter of her generation. Trained under Jan Davidsz de Heem, the great still-life master, she built dense, jewel-bright bouquets that doubled as quiet sermons: a butterfly for the soul, a wilting petal for the shortness of life. She was deeply religious and worked slowly, which kept her output small and her prices high.

Her clients were the courts of Europe. Louis XIV of France, the Emperor Leopold in Vienna, the King of Poland and William of Orange all bought her flowers, and a single canvas could fetch hundreds of guilders. She taught her maid to paint, raised an orphaned nephew, and died at Uitdam on the water north of Amsterdam in 1693.