Flowers in a Metal Vase

This bouquet and its companion piece, also in the Mauritshuis, were made as a pair, and they have travelled together ever since. Their first recorded owner was Henriette Catharina, a daughter of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. By 1726 both hung at Oranienstein, the family's palace at Diez in Germany, and they later passed by inheritance to Prince William V, the last stadholder, in The Hague.

In 1795, when French armies entered the Dutch Republic, his pictures were confiscated and taken to the Louvre in Paris. They came back in 1815, after Napoleon's defeat, and in 1822 the pair moved into the Mauritshuis. Mignon dated this canvas 1670 and signed it at the lower left, just under the edge of the stone ledge.