Flowers
People love flowers. It comes as no surprise then that flower still lifes rank among the Mauritshuis' most popular painting. The museum has a fine collection of flowers pieces by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish specialists, such as Jan Brueghel the Elder. Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, Willem van Aelst, Jan Davidsz de Heem and Rachel Ruysch.
These still lifes are the subject of this book, which discusses the rise of the genre shortly after 1600, and its evolution in the course of the Golden Age. The botanists, the very first tulips cultivated in Holland, and Tulipomania, which financially ruined so many people in 1637, are analysed. The most beautiful flower pieces in the collection are extensively discussed and reproduced in detail, and all of the blossoms depicted are identified.
This book will allow the reader to enjoy the flowers in the Mauritshuis for a long time to come.