Flowers on a Plate

Daniel Seghers learned to paint flowers in Jan Brueghel's workshop in Antwerp, then entered the Jesuit order in 1614 and became the most sought-after flower painter in Flanders. The museum's entry on this small panel says the debt here runs the other way, that this is late Brueghel working under Seghers's clear influence. What is on the panel is very little. A plate with a scalloped edge sits on a blue cloth, roses and a few other flowers lie loose across it, and nothing is arranged around them. The Prado dates it no more closely than the first quarter of the 17th century. Klaus Ertz, who catalogued the family's paintings, placed this one in his volume on Jan Brueghel the Younger, while the museum keeps it under the father's name.