Flowers in a Vase

The dark ground behind these flowers is not what the room's first visitors saw. When the roundels were made, around 1718, the background was gold-coloured, laid in with brass leaf, a thin metal foil that shines like gold at a fraction of the price. Over time the metal degraded and largely disappeared, and the damaged background was painted over more than once. What was meant to glitter above a door now reads as night. At the lower left, a few blooms have slipped out of the arrangement and lie on the stone ledge.