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A discovery waiting to be plucked
Susan Moore, Monday, 25th August 2008
How rare it is to have a rediscovery that is as delectable as it is important. On 19 September, the Zurich-based auction-house Galerie Koller is offering a previously unknown, exquisite and very early oil flowerpiece by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder that recently came to light after some 150 years in a German family collection. Signed and dated 1608, Floral Still Life with Butterflies and Shell can lay claim to being one of the earliest independent still lifes. Painted in lustrous oil on copper, it is in exceptional – that is untouched – condition.
One of the most appealing aspects of Bosschaert’s infinitely precisely rendered flower- pieces is their artifice. Not only are his bouquets the most formal and unnatural of arrangements, but they could never have existed in anything but the imagination. His brilliant, often unusual specimens would never have blossomed at the same time. With their exotic shells and insects, these paintings give glorious expression to the new interest in the natural world in late-16th-century and 17th-century Europe.
Image
1 Floral Still Life with Butterflies and Shell by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621), c. 1608. Oil on copper, 26 x 18.1 cm. Galerie Koller Auctions, Zurich (19 September). Estimate: CHF 2.5-3.5m
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