(Antwerp 1573–1621 The Hague)
Mixed flowers in a basket with fruit and shells in the foreground,
bears signature lower left: J Bosschaert,
oil on panel, 39 x 70 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution of the present panel to Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder. Meijer dates the work to around 1617, and compares it to a work on copper (40 x 70 cm) dated 1617 (sale, Christie’s, London, 11 December 1987, lot 40), in the archives of the RKD (no. 2850) and another on panel (35.5 x 55.5 cm) dated 1610 (private collection, Germany), also in the archives of the RKD (no. 122796).

The composition, with its central bouquet, closed off by the tulip lying on the ledge to the left, with a larvae crawling along its stem (a symbol of Christ’s resurrection), along with a peach to the right upon which scuttles a beetle, exhibits both the sense of symmetry and scientific accuracy of Bosschaert’s works for which he was so renowned, not only in Utrecht (1616-1619) where this work was executed, but also in the thriving art markets of Amsterdam, Middelburg and Breda where the artist also spent his working life. The many blooms in this work could never have been in season at the same time, and are likely based on studies made by Bosschaert over different months in the important botanical gardens at Middelburg.

A protestant religious refugee from Antwerp, Bosschaert would have been aware of the religious symbolism of flowers here depicted, such as the pink carnation, said to be a symbol of untamed passion and symbolising the struggle to lead a virtuous life, while the iris implied the majesty of the divine. The theological significance of flowers had long-standing in the Northern Netherlands: ‘We are pleased when we see a painted flower competing with a living. In one we admire the artifice of nature, in the other the genius of the painter, in each the goodness of god’ wrote Erasmus of Rotterdam in his Convivium Religiosum of 1552. Equally the Middelburg botanist Mattias de l’Obel’s 1571 manual full of engraved blooms Stirpium adversaria nova was highly likely to have inspired the present work.

Bosschaert had three sons who all became flower painters; his brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast also lived with him and ran his workshop in Utrecht and later Breda, constituting arguably the foremost dynasty of floral still-life painters of the Golden Age. This may be the source of later confusion regarding the signature added to this picture, many years after date of execution which surprisingly appears gives it to the artist’s son, Johannes. However, the panel’s handling and style show it indubitably to be the work of the more illustrious founder of the dynasty, Ambrosious Bosschaert the Elder.