Flowers in a Basket and a Vase

Among Jan Brueghel the Elder's many talents was his ability to bring to life the visual splendor of the natural world. He was known as "Velvet Brueghel" for his ability to paint rich and delicate textures. His sensitive handling of paint, which ranged from thick impastos to thin glazes, created effervescent forms imbued with extraordinary naturalness. Each tulip, rose, columbine, anemone, and even little insect or butterfly comes alive under his brush, belying the very notion that this painting should be called a still life.

In this magnificent work, Brueghel pictures a profusion of fresh-cut flowers in a wicker basket as though they were just brought from the garden. A few of the finer specimens, including a rare multicolored tulip, have been carefully arranged in a glass vase. Brueghel's sumptuous array of flowers could never have existed in reality, however: tulips and columbines are spring blossoms, roses appear at the beginning of summer, and anemones bloom in the autumn. By depicting flowers from different times of the year, Brueghel expressed the fundamental theological concept that the blessings of God's creation were to be found in the abundance of the natural world. Accuracy was important in recording God's creations (the individual flowers), but equally important was an imaginative melding of the flowers from different season to celebrate the greatness of His munificence.