This flower-piece is typical of Seghers’s work and was both probably painted at the same time as A Relief Embellished with a Garland of Roses also in the Royal Collection (RCIN 405615).

Jan Brueghel the Elder seems to have invented the type of a flower garland surrounding a religious scene (often executed by another hand); one is visible with Jan Brueghel’s Allegory of Sight (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). In 1611 Daniel Seghers became Jan Brueghel’s pupil in Antwerp. After he became a Jesuit in 1614 he seems to have worked exclusively on this type of painting, devoting his flower-painting skills to the service of religion. During the years he spent at the Jesuit College in Rome (1625-7), he collaborated with Domenichino and Poussin. Upon his return to the Jesuit House in Antwerp in 1627 (where he remained for the rest of his life) he worked with Rubens and Erasmus II Quellinus (1607-78). The nature of a Jesuit’s vows meant that Seghers’s paintings belonged to the Order rather than to him personally. Many were given away as tokens of esteem, especially to the powerful and influential. In 1649, during his exile in the Low Countries, the future Charles II visited Seghers and was presented with a flower-piece.

It is clear that Seghers bore the lion’s share of such collaborations as he created the fictive ‘strapwork’ architectural surrounds as well as the flowers. It is also clear which contribution came first: the original owner of this painting was presumably expected to find an artist to add the religious figure or scene in the centre.

Inscribed by another hand at a slightly later date, lower left corner D. Seghers. f.

Catalogue entry adapted from Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting, London, 2007