Vase of Flowers

In the opening decades of the 17th century a painted vase of flowers became something an Antwerp collector would buy on its own terms, with no saint or sitter attached, and Brueghel was at the front of that trade. Bouquets of this kind were built up from studies made across a whole year, so the vase holds flowers that never stood together. The Prado dates this copper plate no more closely than the seventeenth century, and its record notes the same composition, with variations, in collections elsewhere. What holds the picture together is the insect life around the flowers: a ladybird, a caterpillar, chrysalises, and butterflies newly out of them, each at a different stage of a short life.