Hannibal 2022

Order now Listen to the podcast episode of this issue

Flowers power!

Daffodils, pink roses with heads bowed, an orange lily, flaming tulips, bright blue irises, …  The variety of flowers and the bright colours are magnificent and appear to burst out of the panel. Flowers in a Vase with a Clump of Cyclamen and Precious Stones is a masterpiece by one of the most important painters from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625). Although people would also call him ‘Flower Brueghel’, he only began painting vases of flowers in his late thirties. Flowers in a Vase with a Clump of Cyclamen and Precious Stones is one of the earliest and finest examples, a stunning masterpiece through which this Phoebus Focus zooms in on the sources of inspiration, motivation and method of the master who concentrated on all this floral beauty with such dedication and precision.