Vase with Flowers

The Medici prince who would become Cosimo III travelled through the Dutch Republic in 1667 and 1668, looking hard at pictures and buying. The catalogue of Maria van Oosterwijck's work raises the possibility that this small panel reached Florence by that route, and is careful to call it a possibility. The panel is unsigned. The date usually printed for it, about 1670, rests on assumption rather than on any document, and the catalogue says so plainly.

What can be checked is what is on the panel. A loose bouquet stands in a bulbous glass vase set on a stone ledge, a yellow rose, a peony, a poppy, an ear of grass and a tulip streaked yellow and red. Redcurrants and a butterfly sit to the left, two peaches to the right. The whole picture is 38 centimetres high, and a fly has settled on the tulip.