Still-Life

Most of the earliest examples of flower paintings that arrived in Spain - especially in court circles - from the Flemish school at the beginning of the 17th century were executed by Jan Brueghel. The first Spanish painter to incorporate flower paintings into still-life scenes was Juan van der Hamen, but the artist who established them in their own right, independently of still-life scenes of foodstuffs, animals and pots and pans, was Juan de Arellano, the most influential practitioner of flower painting in the Iberian Peninsula during the central years of the century.

These themes, whether depicted singly, in pairs or in series, were designed to decorate the homes of noble and wealthy families who wished to embellish their residences with decorative, pleasant and colourful paintings, as the main purpose of these pictures was ornamental. D�az, who was active in the rich and noble city of Valladolid, which had been the seat of the court at the beginning of the century, must have had a clientele who commissioned paintings of this kind. Although in his main area of activity, religious painting, he was conservative and showed little evolution when it came to incorporating the novel features of the Baroque language into his style, his flower paintings reveal his knowledge of Flemish art and of the new genres in vogue during the period.

The present still-life depicts a a wicker basket containing a bunch of flowers - roses, tulips, irises, hyacinths, daffodils, among others - on a table. The rich and varied colours, which stand out against a somewhat darkened neutral background, and the movement of the forms emphasise the decorative nature of the paintings.