Still Life with Flowers

Look closely at the paler petals in this bouquet and you can make out traces of lines beneath the surface. They are Van der Ast's own drawing. Before he began to paint, he drew the whole arrangement in detail on the prepared panel, and over the centuries some of the pigments, mostly the lighter colours, has turned transparent, letting that underdrawing show through again. The flowers stand in a ribbed glass vase, tulips, roses, irises, columbines and carnations, with chequered fritillaries hanging their heads near the bottom. On the stone ledge below lie shells, a caterpillar and a lizard. The panel came to the Rijksmuseum in 1903, bequeathed by Arnoldus Andries des Tombe of The Hague, the collector who also left Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring to the Mauritshuis.