花环中的女子半身肖像

Daniel Seghers was a Jesuit lay brother in Antwerp and he painted flowers, nothing else. His pictures are wreaths and stone cartouches built around an empty middle, and a second painter filled that middle afterwards with a figure or a portrait bust. Two hands on one canvas, by arrangement, was simply how these were made. Seghers took no money for any of them. The Antwerp Jesuit house handed them out as gifts and the recipients sent presents back. Frederick Henry of Orange, who ruled the Dutch Republic that his order was banned from, returned a gold palette with brushes. The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, sent a gold cross. This one dates from 1658, when Seghers was 68 and three years from his death. The wreath is about 60 centimetres across, with a woman's head set into the opening at the centre.