A new type of flower painting showing floral garlands surrounding a religious scene was developed in the early seventeenth century by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568 – 1625). Breughel’s pupil, Daniel Seghers, produced garland paintings and floral cartouches for the Jesuit Order in Antwerp from 1625 onwards. The presence of so many flowers conventionally associated with the Virgin (including iris, aquilegia, lily of the valley, pink, and heartsease) strongly suggest that the centre was intended to be filled by a head of the Virgin.