Flowers in a Wooden Vessel

“[…] when winter approaches, covering everything in ice, I take pleasure in the view – and in my imagination even in the scent – of flowers, if not real ones then the artificial kind found in the painting.” In 1606 Jan Brueghel the Elder, theson of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted the earliest of his surviving still lifes of flowers (Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana) for the author of the above words, the archbishop of Milan, Federigo Borromeo (1564–1631). The painter spent many years in Italy and remembered to the end of his life the fruitful patronage of this important collector, who also founded the Ambrosiana. Flowers in a Wooden Vessel was painted for Archduke Albert VII, the sovereign regent of the Spanish Netherlands, and became one of the most famous floral still lifes in European art. The grand format, the perfect painting technique and the highly successful composition make it a characteristic piece for an artcollection of the time. However, the references usually found in floral still lifes to the transitoriness of all earthly things occur only incidentally: a few of theflowers that have fallen are wilted or have been damaged by insects. The artist has disregarded the fact that the plants included in his painting flower at various times of the year. Here they all bloom at once, a situation otherwise found only in the “eternal spring” of paradise. In a letter written to Milan in 1608, Brueghel noted that such flowers would be “far too costly” to “have them at home. […]Thus I was in Brussels to paint several flowers […] from life”. Creating a legend, he suggests that his still lifes were not only based on real plants but in somecases even painted outdoors. This, however, would not have been permitted by the technical demands of oil painting; more likely Brueghel was working from graphic reproductions created during the new revival of botany. Thus his description of his method is in keeping with the “artistically staged naturalness” that contemporary art theory expected of a floral still life. © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010