Flora (Allegory of Spring)

Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, wears a whole spring garden in her hair, and the museum names the blooms: tulips, lilies, roses and narcissi. Jan Boeckhorst painted her in Antwerp around 1635. A short way to the north, in the Dutch Republic, tulips were just then turning into the most expensive flowers in Europe. Prices for single bulbs climbed through 1636 and collapsed in February 1637, the episode later remembered as tulip mania. So the tulip in Flora's hair was a costly, fashionable flower when it was painted, set among blooms that had stood for spring for centuries. Boeckhorst gave the goddess a bare torso and a solid, heavy body, a young woman of flesh and blood. She opens a series of the four seasons, and Ceres, who stands for Summer, hangs in the same room.