Glass Vase with Flowers on a Stone Ledge

In 1949, four years after the war, Strasbourg put on an exhibition called La Hollande en fleurs, Holland in flowers, in the Château des Rohan, the old palace of the prince-bishops beside the cathedral. This small panel was in it, lent by the collector Frits del Monte of Brummen in the Netherlands. De Heem set a glass vase on a stone ledge and filled it with flowers caught at different moments, some still in bud, some wide open, some already going over. The Museum of Fine Arts suggests that the passing bloom may stand for the shortness of life, and that the stalk of wheat and the caterpillar among the flowers may point to resurrection and renewal. The museum dates the picture to between 1655 and 1660. After del Monte's death it was sold at Christie's in Amsterdam in 1986 and passed through dealers in Zurich and London. In 1997 the Vienna gallery Sanct Lucas sold it to Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, Dutch-born collectors living in Florida, and in 2022 they gave it to the museum in Boston in support of its Center for Netherlandish Art.