Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase, 1621

Ambrosius Bosschaert infused his flower bouquets with a sense of wonder. He had an unerring compositional awareness, and delighted in combining an array of flowers of various colors and shapes to create a pleasing and uplifting visual experience. Here, a spectacular yellow bearded iris and a red-and-white striped tulip surmount a bouquet that also contains, among others, roses, a blue-and-white columbine, fritillaria, grape hyacinth, lily of the valley, forget-me-not, globeflowers, and a sprig of rosemary.   At the base of the ribbed onion-shaped glass vase lie a pansy and a cyclamen blossom.   A damselfly alighting on the iris and a Red Admiral butterfly on the cyclamen further enliven the composition. These flowers could not have all been in bloom at the same time; therefore, and because several of them recur in other paintings by Bosschaert, he must have worked from memory or from drawings he kept in his studio.  

At the lower right edge of the stone ledge are the artist’s monogram and the date 1621, the year of his death. The picture is made all the more poignant by the French inscription, written in gold lettering on a blue ground, that fills an illusionistic plaque attached to the ledge’s front: “C'est l'Angelicq[ue] main du gra[n]d Peinctre de Flore / AMBROISE, renommé jusqu' au Rivage Moré” (This is the angelic hand of the great painter of Flora, Ambrosius, renowned even to the banks of the Moré).[4]  [4]
Moré was spelled in a variety of ways, including More, Mourée, Mori, Moure, and Mauri. Fort Nassau, a Dutch fortress on the Gold Coast of Africa, was located on the bank of the river Moré. The indirect reference to the Nassau family, seems even more significant when considering that the person who probably commissioned the painting, Frederick van Schurman, held an official function at the court of the Nassaus in The Hague. I would like to thank Rozemarijn Landsman for correcting the transcription of this text, which had been misinterpreted in earlier literature on this painting. She received helpful assistance from Prof. Dr. Jos A. A. M. Biemans, curator of manuscripts, University of Amsterdam (correspondence October 6, 2009). The inscription offers a moving testament to the artist's enormous reputation, which, as the phrase implies, extended to the farthest reaches of the Dutch commercial empire.[5]  [5]
Henriette Rahusen discovered that the phrase “rivage Moré” (the banks of the river Moré, in modern-day Ghana) refers to a contemporary song by Dutch composer Jan Pietersz Sweelinck (1562–1621), who put to music the words of a French poem by Philippe Desportes (1546–1606). In the poem, part of his “Les Amours de Diane” (1573), Desportes states that none of the exotic goods merchants acquired on the banks of the river Moré equaled the flawless beauty of his beloved Diana.

This exceptional painting is the one that Bosschaert took with him in 1621, when he traveled from Breda to The Hague to deliver a blompot (flower still-life painting) to Frederick van Schurman (or Schuermans), the bottelier of Prince Maurits.[6]  [6]
Maria Bosschaert, Ambrosius’ daughter, wrote the following about her father: “Mijn vader Ambrosius Bosschaert is gesturven in Schravenhage in ‘t jaer als den 12 jarigen Trebes uut was, doch was woonachtig binnen Breda maer near den Hage getrocken om een blompot te leveren die hij hadde gemaeckt  voor de bottelier van Sijn Hoochheyt daervoor hij dusent gulden hadde bedongen ende is aldaer sieck geworden ten huyse van joncker Schuermans, vader van Anna Maria Schuermans ende aldaer gesturven ende in Schravenhage begraven, tot droefheyt van veel liefhebbers.” Abraham Bredius, “De bloemschilders Bosschaert,” Oud Holland 31 (1913): 138. For further commentary, see Laurens J. Bol, The Bosschaert Dynasty: Painters of Flowers and Fruit, trans. A. M. De Bruin-Cousins (Leigh-on-Sea, 1960), 32–33 n. 75. For a depiction of Van Schurman’s daughter, the famous scholar and artist Anna Maria van Schurman, see Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen’s portrait Anna Maria van Schurman.  For this work Bosschaert received the extraordinary sum of 1,000 guilders. Unfortunately, according to the artist’s daughter Maria, Bosschaert fell ill while in The Hague and died in the home of his patron, “to the sorrow of many art lovers.” Frederick van Schurman had been ennobled by the Holy Roman Emperor, and Maria Bosschaert referred to Van Schurman as a joncker (from the German Junker), an honorary title that corresponds to the old inscription “Jonckheere” on the verso of the painting.

The illusionistic plaque was always conceived as part of the composition, although it is not known who actually composed and wrote the celebratory French text.[7]  [7]
The language of the Dutch court was French, and Bosschaert lived in Breda at that time. The combination of these two facts suggests that he may already have had strong connections to the Nassau court. Breda had been the residence of the Princes of Orange in the Netherlands since 1544, and had been the home of Philips Willem of Nassau (1554–1618), who held the title of Prince of Orange before his younger half-brother, Maurits of Nassau. Not only did Bosschaert paint the shadow of the pansy falling over the plaque’s upper edge, but Infrared ReflectographyInfrared Reflectography
 A photographic or digital image analysis method which captures the absorption/emission characteristics of reflected infrared radiation. The absorption of infrared wavelengths varies for different pigments, so the resultant image can help distinguish the pigments that have been used in the painting or underdrawing. at 1.5 to 1.8 microns[8]  [8]
Infrared reflectography was performed using a Santa Barbara Focalplane InSb camera fitted with an H astronomy filter. reveals that he carefully ruled in the plaque with dark lines before he began painting [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Infrared reflectogram, Ambrosius Bosschaert, Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase, 1621, oil on copper, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons' Permanent Fund and New Century Fund, 1996.35.1. Bosschaert, in fact, made detailed UnderdrawingUnderdrawing
 A drawing executed on a ground before paint is applied.s of all of his pictorial elements: leaves, blossoms, and insects. He even indicated the painting’s central vertical axis with a ruled line.[9]  [9]
The central axis was also discovered through infrared reflectography of the Rijksmusuem painting, Still Life with Flowers in a Wan-li Vase (SK-A-1522). See Arie Wallert and Jolanda de Bruijn, Still Lifes: Techniques and Style (Amsterdam, 1999), 48–51. It thus seems probable that Bosschaert’s patron specifically commissioned this bouquet of flowers to commemorate the artist and his fame. It is, tellingly, the only painting the artist ever made with such an illusionistic plaque. The importance of this work within Bosschaert’s oeuvre is further supported by the fact that Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger (1609–1645), the artist’s son, made three adaptations of the composition, one of which he painted on silver in 1627 [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger, Flowers in a Vase, 1627, oil on silver , private collection. Photo courtesy Noortman Master Paintings, Maastricht.

Bosschaert’s carefully balanced composition reflects the naturalistic style of his flower paintings at this late period of his career. Although he surmounted this bouquet with two large flowers, much as he had done throughout his career, he arranged the rest of the flowers more informally than he had done in the previous decade, in part by overlapping individual blossoms. Moreover, his sophisticated glazing techniques allowed him to create soft, velvety textures for flower petals and leaves, an effect quite different from the crisp forms of his earlier style. He also introduced here subtle tonal gradations in the background to enhance the sensation of light flooding the image.

Floral still lifes became popular in the early seventeenth century, in part because they depicted the exquisite, imported blooms collected by wealthy citizens who wished to admire their colors and rhythmic forms throughout the year. Bosschaert’s bouquets capture the fragile beauty of flowers and the sense of hope and joy they represent. They seem so real we almost believe it is their aroma—and not the artist’s brush—that has drawn the damselflies and butterflies to their petals. Bosschaert’s approach to flower painting, in which blossoms that bloom at different times of the year are assembled into a single sumptuous display, reflects a fundamental theological belief then held by both Catholics and Protestants: that God's munificence was to be found in the extraordinary richness and beauty of the natural world.[10]  [10]
For more on this issue, see Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., From Botany to Bouquets: Flowers in Northern Art (Washington, DC, 1999), no. 11, fig. 32. Thus, even as pictorial accuracy was important in recording God's individual creations—flowers, insects, and shells—an imaginative melding such as that found here was meant to celebrate the greatness of his blessings. It is, however, only through the delicacy of Bosschaert’s touch—his “angelic hand”—that this bouquet achieves a lifelike quality analogous to God’s own creativity.[11]  [11]
I would like to thank Perry Chapman and Rachel Pollack for independently advising this point to me. “Ambrosius” derives from the Greek ambrotos, meaning “immortal.”

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

April 24, 2014

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