Flower Still Life

In June 1672 French troops marched into Utrecht, and the city stayed occupied until the end of the following year. Abraham Mignon was working there in the studio of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, and the occupation ended that arrangement. De Heem moved to Antwerp, while Mignon stayed in Utrecht and took over the workshop. That same year the city's Walloon church, a French-speaking Protestant congregation, elected him one of its deacons. The museum dates this canvas to about 1670 to 1672, the last years the two painters worked side by side. Poppies, striped tulips, roses and a blue iris spill out of a metal vase in a dark stone niche. In Turin it hangs in the same north corridor as a garland of fruit and flowers by de Heem himself.