Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, 'Flowers in a Glass Vase', 1614

If pictures had a smell, then Ambrosius Bosschaert’s paintings would fill the air with exotic scent. In this picture, his many different flowers are displayed against an almost black background to show their colours, shapes and textures to the fullest – pale roses, yellow and white narcissi, a single yellow chrysanthemum. The delicate petals of a purple cyclamen hide behind its broad leaf in the shadows at the base of the arrangement, where a fritillary hangs its head close to a red rosebud. A mauve anemone seems suspended in the dark space between two handsome tulips, one white, one yellow, streaked with flames of red, standing out stiff and proud against the profusion of petals below them.

But there’s one flower, on the left, that seems not to fit any particular description. The petals are splayed open as if exhausted. This too is a tulip, but faded, its time done. Bosschaert is showing us the lifespan of these flowers, but subtly, and placed together, still making them a thing of beauty. The white tulip is partly in bud; the yellow, fully open; the third, with its frilled petals, dying. The roses too show nature’s progression – the tight red bud in the shadows, the white rose, open and perfect, and just below, the full-blown, grey-pink, fragile bloom at the end of its brief life.

Bosschaert lived in Middelburg, where a large botanical garden had just opened. During the seventeenth century, 200 new species of plants were discovered, and many of them were grown there. There was great interest in the new ‘natural sciences’, and pictures of flowers were sought not just as decorative items for the home but as a reminder of the wonders of biology. The paintings were extremely expensive, so as well as revealing the owner as cultured and sensitive to beauty, they showed off his wealth.

The insects in the picture are demonstrations of the artist’s skill in painting lifelike creatures in detail, but, like the flowers, show the lifespan of all living things, including ours. The shiny little caterpillar climbs up the stalk of the tulip. The white butterfly, the adult creature, folds its wings on the dying tulip. The fly at the foot of the vase, with its brief lifespan, takes the cycle to its end. Even the roemer, the wine glass that holds the flowers, is fragile, likely to be short lived. Again Bosschaert proves his skill in capturing the transparent delicacy of the glass with its tear-shaped beads reflecting the light, close to and comparing with the veined, translucent wings of the fly.

Although apparently close to nature, the picture is anything but natural. Roses, cyclamen and narcissi aren't in bloom at the same time of the year. This is an assembly of specimens, rather than an elegant flower arrangement. Bosschaert is likely to have made a watercolour drawing of each flower to record it in bloom, and then used those drawings to paint them into the picture at a later stage.