Still-Life with Garland of Flowers and Golden Tazza

Jan Brueghel the Elder worked in Antwerp in the early 1600s, and he more or less invented the kind of picture you are looking at, the lavish flower piece. A bouquet like this reads as a single moment, yet it could never have stood on a real table. The roses, the tulips, the anemones and the rest bloom in different months, so Brueghel built the arrangement from separate studies made across a whole year and then gathered them into one gilded cup. That was part of the appeal in his day. Rare flowers were being collected and traded across Europe with real seriousness in these years, and a painted bouquet let a wealthy owner keep blooms that in life lasted a few days and cost a small fortune. Brueghel served as court painter to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, and this patient, exact work is the sort of thing that made his flowers famous. Look at the golden tazza that holds them, its metal catching the light against the dark ground.