Vase of Flowers on the Window of a Harem

Hayez was 90 when he painted this, in 1881, after six decades of history pieces and portraits. The subject is a vase of cut flowers on a windowsill, painted with the close attention of a Flemish still life, and behind it a young woman setting it down, her face mostly hidden. She was Giuseppina Hayez, known as Bina, the niece of Angiolina Rossi, whom the painter had taken into his household as a daughter. Writers on the picture point out that the real subject is her hands, one laid on the pale body of the vase, the other against the dark of the room. Harem windows were a fashionable frame for a subject like this in the 1880s. He left the painting to the Brera in his will, and died the next year.