Vase of Flowers with Jewel, Coins and Shells

The splendid bunch of flowers, painted by Brueghel for Cardinal Federico, is the oldest documented painting of this type. It consists of about a hundred different species of flowers, some of which are very rare and of great quality. In a letter we read that Brueghel was working on it in 1606 and that he had seen these flowers in the garden of Archduke Alberto and Archduchess Isabella in Brussels, and that he had wanted to ritrare dal natural. In his Musaeum, Borromeo has this to say about the work: “Brueghel painted a diamond on the lower part of the vase...: he wished to show that the value of his work was equal to that of the jewel and this is the price that we paid to the artist.”