Vase With Flowers (1700)
Vase With Flowers (1700)
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Vase With Flowers- Rachel Ruysch
Source: Wikipedia Commons
If you stood in a Dutch kitchen in 1704 and tried to assemble one of Rachel Ruysch’s bouquets in real life, you would fail, heroically. Spring bulbs would sulk while summer climbers hadn’t yet bothered to show up; winter hothouse darlings would be blooming politely under glass and nowhere near your vase. Ruysch (1664–1750), who painted flowers with a surgeon’s exactitude and a composer’s ear for rhythm, simply ignored the calendar. She made time hold still.
Her trick was equal parts science and stagecraft. Trained around anatomy and natural history (her father, Frederik Ruysch, was a celebrated anatomist and collector), she painted from studies taken across weeks and seasons, then stitched them together with spiraling stems and well-behaved light. The result is abundance—yes—but also a sly lecture: everything lovely is fleeting, and some of it never coexisted at all. That is vanitas with botany.
This painting titled Vase With Flowers is exhibited at the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, Netherlands. What follows is a stroll through twelve flowers Ruysch loved to paint; a few identifications are, as ever with old bouquets, educated guesses—and that ambiguity is part of the pleasure. I’ve marked uncertain identifications with a question mark. Look closely and you’ll see the honesty tucked into the spectacle: a browned sepal, a bitten petal, an ant with excellent timing. The iris and the tulip are already past their prime—standards slackening, tepals losing their starch—and a wilted poppy in the center of the bouquet has been removed. These small losses are deliberate, little stage whispers about impermanence: beauty shown at the moment it begins to go. The grand bouquet admits entropy, and it admits geography—European stalwarts beside Asian tea‑family aristocrats, American climbers at the edges—turning the vase into a quiet map of trade and curiosity.
The Cast
The Cast
Narcissus (Narcissus spp., Daffodil; family Amaryllidaceae)
When it blooms: February–April.
Why it’s here: Trumpet-centered whites and yellows, leaves like neat green straps—an early-spring herald.
Symbolism: Rebirth and, inevitably, self-regard (poor Narcissus, forever peering).
Historical aside: A garden staple by Ruysch’s day; including it beside summer species is an immediate signal you’re looking at a composited calendar.
Tagetes (Tagetes spp. or Calendula officinalis, Marigold; family Asteraceae)
When it blooms: Summer–autumn.
Why it’s here: Golden heads, pungent foliage (in Tagetes), and pleasing asymmetry.
Symbolism: Grief and devotion (also associated with the Virgin Mary in Europe), sunshine shadowed by wilt.
Historical aside: Calendula is Old World; Tagetes rode in with trade from the Americas. Either way, they’re late-season glow.
Ranunculus (Ranunculus asiaticus and cultivars, Buttercup; family Ranunculaceae)
When it blooms: March–May.
Why it’s here: Densely layered petals—opulence without scent, frill enough to keep any painter entertained.
Symbolism: Radiance and charm (Victorian language later codified the “you are dazzling” vibe).
Historical aside: Fashionable imports from the Levant; breeders went wild on doubles and color.
Iris (Iris spp., Iris or Flags; family Iridaceae)
When it blooms: April–June.
Why it’s here: Architectural petals—falls and standards—which painters use like scaffolding for light.
Symbolism: Royalty and faith (think fleur-de-lis), messages safely delivered.
Historical aside: Common in European gardens; Ruysch’s bearded irises let her show off texture without frightening the neighbors.
Tulipa (Tulipa spp., Variegated tulip, aka broken tulip; family Liliaceae)
When it blooms: March–May.
Why it’s here: Feathered or flamed petals, so striking that people briefly lost their minds.
Symbolism: Wealth, taste, vanity; a moral about bubbles if you’re feeling stern.
Viral mischief: The famous striping was often caused by Tulip breaking virus (a potyvirus), which disrupts pigment and “paints” the petals. Beautiful, fragile, and bad for the bulb—fashion by infection.
Historical aside: Semper Augustus was the poster child; during tulip mania, rare bulbs were priced like houses. Ruysch’s broken tulips are a wink to excess.
Calendula (Calendula officinalis, Pot marigold; family Asteraceae)
When it blooms: June–October.
Why it’s here: Cheerful orange daisies with resinous bracts—easy to spot, easier to paint.
Symbolism: Healing, protection; petals as “poor man’s saffron.”
Historical aside: Medicinal and edible; a respectable workhorse flower that, when drooping, quietly preaches mortality.
Convolvulus(Convolvulus/Ipomoea spp., Morning glory; family Convolvulaceae)
When it blooms: July–September.
Why it’s here: Funnel-shaped trumpets that open at dawn and think better of it by afternoon.
Symbolism: Transience, renewal; if a flower could say “Carpe diem” without annoying you, this would be it.
Historical aside: European convolvulus species were around; Asian and American ipomoeas arrived via trade and botanical collections.
Paeonia (Paeonia spp., Peony; family Paeoniaceae)
When it blooms: May–June.
Why it’s here: Lush bombs and heavy heads; buds perfect for casting shadow and hinting at what’s to come.
Symbolism: Prosperity, virtue, sometimes bashfulness (the nodding head has its reasons).
Historical aside: Long established in European gardens; a painter’s gift for volume.
Anemone (Anemone coronaria, Poppy anemone; family Ranunculaceae)
When it blooms: March–May in the Netherlands.
Why it’s here: Satiny, poppy-like “petals” (technically tepals) in vivid red, blue, or white around a dark, domed disk of stamens—high-contrast drama and a short vase life that makes the vanitas argument for you.
Symbolism: The classic “wind flower”—brevity and delicacy—plus the Adonis myth (anemones springing from his blood), which ties the bloom to love, loss, and the speed with which both pass.
Historical aside: A Mediterranean import popular in Dutch gardens and markets by Ruysch’s time; easy to force for spring color, and irresistible to painters for that inky center against luminous tepals.
Rosa (Rosa spp., Rose; family Rosaceae)
When it blooms: June–September in the Netherlands (varies by species/cultivar; many old garden roses peak in early summer).
Why it’s here: Layered petals and generous form—especially the cabbage rose (Rosa centifolia)—give volume and a soft light trap; a few thorns keep the sweetness honest.
Symbolism: Love and beauty, and also transience and sacrifice (thorns as a built-in memento mori); in Christian iconography, the Virgin Mary.
Historical aside: A mainstay of European gardens in Ruysch’s era (gallica, alba, damask, and centifolia types). Not a year-round bloomer, so its appearance beside spring bulbs or autumn flowers underlines the composited, “impossible” timing.
Ranunculus (Ranunculus asiaticus and cultivars, Buttercup; family Ranunculaceae)
When it blooms: March–May.
Why it’s here: Densely layered petals—opulence without scent, frill enough to keep any painter entertained.
Symbolism: Radiance and charm (Victorian language later codified the “you are dazzling” vibe).
Historical aside: Fashionable imports from the Levant; breeders went wild on doubles and color.
Auricula(?) (Primula auricula and hybrids, Auricula; family Primulaceae)
When it blooms: March–May in the Netherlands.
Why it’s here: Tidy umbels of waxy flowers held above neat, rubbery rosettes; a delicate dusting of farina (powder) on leaves and sometimes petal edges that catches light like frost. Color forms range from “selfs” to striking edged and “fancy” types with pale paste centers—visual punctuation a painter can place exactly where needed.
Symbolism: Often read as constancy and devoted affection in later flower lore; in a vanitas key, its stage-managed perfection (and easily smudged farina) hints at how briefly polish lasts.
Historical aside: An alpine European import that became a darling of 17th–18th‑century “florists” (specialist breeders) in the Low Countries and England. Grown in pots, displayed on tiered “auricula theatres,” and traded in named strains—proof that cultivated taste could be as exacting as any scientific cabinet.
Iris–tulip–peony, the polite collision
Why it’s “impossible”: Early-spring tulip, mid-spring iris, late-spring peony—sometimes posed alongside summer climbers and autumn daisies. Months collapsed into a single arrangement.
Historical aside: The Dutch East India Company, botanical gardens, and hothouses made all these plants present in collections, but not together on the same Tuesday. Painters like Ruysch composited studies taken weeks or months apart.
Stand back from the labels and the botany and the thing still charms shamelessly: light skating across petals, the vase cooling the stems, a coil of vine pretending not to pose. The beauty works even if you can’t tell a peony from a ranunculus—because Ruysch has done the sorting for you, and then gently undone nature’s schedule to make the scene sing.
Know the plants, though, and the spell deepens. Spring elbows summer; the Americas nod to Asia across a glass lip; an iris flag droops, a poppy drops a petal, and the whole bouquet quietly admits it is both impossible and already passing. That is the point: abundance and brevity, collected from everywhere, held together for a moment by a human hand.
Which is, if we’re being honest, the larger lecture tucked into the flowers. Collections, calendars, empires, fashions—none of them hold still for long. But for the space of a painting, they do, and we get to look. Ruysch gives us the pleasure of particulars and the mercy of perspective: this will go; that was never together; it is beautiful anyway.
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