Présentation de l'éditeur Floral still lifes are among the most popular paintings at the Mauritshuis. The museum has a fine collection of painted bouquets of flowers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by floral specialists like Ambrosius Bosschaert, Willem van Aelst, Jan Davidsz de Heem and Rachel Ruysch. This whimsically designed book, intended for a wide public, is about these floral still lifes. It explores the sudden emergence of the genre shortly after 1600, the role botanists played, the rarity of the flowers represented and the tulip fever, which claimed so many victims in 1637. The book guides you through the changes that have taken place over two hundred years in floral still life painting, while close-up images enable you to admire a bouquet of flowers bloom by bloom. Quatrième de couverture 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.
