Flowers in a Grotto

Abraham Mignon painted flowers the way a naturalist might. This grotto piece is a good example, a mass of blooms set among rock and shadow rather than in a tidy vase, the kind of arrangement he liked to fill with insects, snails and small creatures half hidden in the leaves. He was born in Frankfurt in 1640 and trained under the flower painter Jacob Marrel before joining the circle of Jan Davidsz de Heem, the great master of the crowded Dutch still life. Pictures like this answered a real appetite of the age. Seventeenth-century collectors were fascinated by the natural world, and a canvas packed with closely observed plants and bugs was both a luxury object and something close to a specimen cabinet. Mignon died young, at 39.