Vase of Flowers in a Window

When Bosschaert made this bouquet, around 1618, the tulip was still a rarity in Holland, and most of the 30 kinds of bloom in this glass came from far away. He had learned his speciality in Middelburg, a port town full of botanists and keen gardeners. In 1597 one of them, Johan Somer, sent the famous botanist Carolus Clusius a likeness of a yellow fritillary from his garden. Bosschaert may well have painted it, since that rare plant keeps turning up in his pictures. It is here too, half hidden among the stems. Behind the bouquet the stone niche opens onto a wide landscape with a winding river, a backdrop the Mauritshuis says no other flower painter used. At the lower left of the sill is his monogram, a small B inside an A, modelled on Albrecht Dürer's.