Flowers in a Glass Flask

De Gheyn, a painter from The Hague, may have been the first Dutch master to paint a still-life of only flowers, shortly after 1600. He made this painting over ten years later. It shows a profuse bouquet of many different flowers.

De Gheyn has not copied an existing bouquet, as the flowers depicted here bloom at different times of the year. He was concerned instead with painting a ‘portrait’ of the most beautiful flowers. This is why he placed them all at the front of the bouquet, where they were equally visible.