Jan Brueghel the Elder

Born in Brussels.

Landscape and flower paintings.

He had a studio in Antwerp in Belgium.

Jan Brueghel the Elder died of cholera in Antwerp.

NOTES ON THE PICTURE
From http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html Web Gallery of Art:
Brueghel did not use landscapes as a background. Protruding upwards from a flower pot, his myriads of flowers are set against a nearly dark background, so that the contrast gives them a luminous quality. There is such an abundance of different species that they often defeat identification - over 130 kinds have been counted. It is indeed a tapestry, as all the blossoms seem to crowd towards the front, just as in a two-dimensional space. Brueghel's bouquets always build up from relatively small flowers at the bottom to increasingly larger ones at the top, completely against all our current aesthetic 'laws' of compositional gravity. The picture is dominated by a long-stemmed crown imperial, like a real crown. Below are some blue iris, flanked by white lilies on the left and the red umbel of a peony on the right. The centre is occupied by various kinds of tulips. Brueghel also included strawberries, raspberries and blackberries in his bouquet. This is because, until modern times, no fundamental difference was made between decorative flowers and other flowers. Strawberries, for example, which blossom and bear fruit at the same time, were therefore generally included among flowers. Strawberry blossoms were regarded as flowers of paradise, as the food of children who had died prematurely and as symbols of the Virgin Mary.

External link

Web Gallery of Art: Jan Brueghel the Elder (http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/b/bruegel/jan_e/)