ARTWORKS

Flowers in a Vase with Shells and Insects

Balthasar van der Ast (1593/1594–1657)

The National Gallery, London

Flowers in a Vase with Shells and Insects

Image credit: The National Gallery, London

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This painting is a strange fiction: roses and tulips, lilac and snake’s head lilies, aren't all in bloom at the same time, so the artist would have made drawings and sketches of them at different times of the year, later incorporating them into the picture. Scientific exploration and discovery flourished in the Dutch Republic at this time. As in this painting, art and science often went hand in hand. Artists began to use the newly invented microscope to enable them to paint in accurate detail plants and insects – like the butterfly, the cricket and the wasp zooming down to the fallen rose petals.

What van der Ast paints is so realistic that the objects are almost tangible. In one way they are presented as scientific specimens, but in another as an unfading vision of nature that could never have existed in reality.

The National Gallery, London

London

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Title

Flowers in a Vase with Shells and Insects

Date

about 1630

Medium

Oil on oak

Measurements

H 47 x W 36.8 cm

Accession number

NG6593

Acquisition method

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Gallery, 2003

Work type

Painting

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Normally on display at

The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

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Artist or maker

Balthasar van der Ast

1593/1594–1657

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