Still Life with Flowers in a Glass

Around 1602, so many flowers in one small glass of water would have looked extravagant. Blooms were expensive, and a garden then held only a few of them among a great deal of green. Here white narcissus and columbine crowd a thick beaker studded with small raised knobs, a butterfly has settled near the top, a ladybird crawls along a leaf, and a few blue blossoms lie loose on the table. For a time the picture was catalogued as the work of Jan Brueghel the Younger, who faithfully followed his father and painted variants of his compositions. The Rijksmuseum now gives it back to the father, Jan Brueghel the Elder. The whole thing is painted on a sheet of copper only 24.5 centimetres high.