Flowers in a Vase with Shells and Insects

No garden around 1630 could have produced this bouquet all at once. Roses, tulips, carnations, lilac, snake's head fritillaries, snapdragons and the iris at the top all bloom at different times of year. Van der Ast worked from studies he had drawn season by season and assembled them on the panel. The tulips were the real luxury. In the Dutch Republic of those years a prize bulb could cost so much that nobody would have cut its flower, and within a few years the tulip market would soar and then crash in 1637. He adds living things too, a butterfly on the iris, a cricket on the stone shelf, a wasp in the air and a spider on a yellow bloom. Three tropical shells, brought back by Dutch East India Company ships, lie beside them.