Vase of Flowers

In his Musaeum of 1625, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, archbishop of Milan and a keen collector of Flemish painting, wrote that when winter covered everything in ice he still took pleasure in flowers, if not real ones then painted. Small pictures like this one served that taste. It measures 16 by 12 centimetres, oil on copper, a round glass carafe crammed with blooms. A beam of light from the side picks out the curve of the glass, and a few flowers and petals have dropped onto the wooden table. Who painted it is still an open question. In 1893 the art historian Adolfo Venturi gave it to the still-life painter Abraham Mignon, Roberto Longhi disagreed, and the Brueghel catalogue of 1979 called it the work of an unknown hand. The gallery keeps the label attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder, late 16th or early 17th century.