Basket of Flowers

In 1711 Rachel Ruysch was court painter to Johann Wilhelm, the Elector Palatine, at Düsseldorf, and this basket of flowers was made to travel. With a companion still life it went as a princely gift from the Elector to Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and it has stayed in Florence ever since, entering the Uffizi collection by 1753. The flowers spill from a woven basket against a dark ground, roses and tulips catching the light while smaller blooms drop into shadow. Ruysch worked each species precisely enough to name, petal by petal, and set the whole mass to glow out of the darkness behind it. Low in the leaves sits the kind of small insect she rarely left out, placed exactly where the eye comes to rest.