Portrait of Archduke Leopold Willem of Austria in a flower garland

This is a joint work of two hands with two very different specialities. The dense wreath of tulips, roses and other blooms is by Daniel Seghers, a Jesuit brother in Antwerp who became the most sought-after flower painter of his day. The bust it frames, the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, is by a figure painter, Jan van den Hoecke. Pictures built this way, a painted garland around a central image, were an Antwerp specialty, and Seghers usually left the middle to a colleague. The sitter had reason to want one. Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, had visited Seghers in his Antwerp studio in 1641, and he was one of the great collectors of the century. The hundreds of paintings he assembled while governing from Brussels became a cornerstone of what is now the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.