Flowers in a Glass Vase

The Prado's catalogue names the flowers in this glass one by one. Iris, narcissus, tulip, carnation, cornflower, double anemone, morning glory, and two kinds of rose. They do not share a season. Narcissus opens in late winter, tulips in April, the Provence rose in June, morning glory in high summer. Nobody cut this bunch in one morning and carried it into a studio, and botanists who have gone through Arellano's canvases keep finding the same thing.

He signed and dated the picture in the lower right corner, 1668. The museum's commentary remarks that he had eight years of life left when he painted it, then spends more words on the container than on the bouquet, on the glass and on the water standing in it. The vase sits on a small plate on an uneven stone slab, with nothing behind it but plain brown ground.