Flora

In February 1645 Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, who commanded the Dutch Republic's armies in its long war with Spain, paid for a painting of Flora. The money went to Thomas Willeboirts, and a month later a second payment went to Frans Ykens. Both men worked in Antwerp, in the Spanish-ruled south, and this canvas is identified with the one they delivered. Willeboirts painted the goddess and the cupids, and Ykens, a flower specialist, the garlands and the fruit. Their two names and the date 1644 are signed together on a moulding at the lower left. The picture hung at Honselaarsdijk, an Orange palace near The Hague, until the French invasion of 1795, when the palace was confiscated and its paintings were probably sold. It resurfaced with the Paris collector Louis La Caze, who left it to the Louvre in 1869.