Bouquet of Flowers and Fruit with Blue Ribbon

Maria van Oosterwijck · c. 1680

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

36 × 28.3 cm (14 1/4 × 11 1/8 in.); Framed: 49.3 × 41.3 × 6.7 cm (19 3/8 × 16 1/4 × 2 5/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Few still-life paintings from the Dutch Golden Age match the sensory richness of this composition — cascading blooms, ripe fruit, and a silk ribbon rendered with almost hallucinatory precision. Maria van Oosterwijck was among the most celebrated flower painters of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, working independently at a time when female artists rarely did so. Trained under Jan Davidsz. de Heem, she absorbed his mastery of layered glazes and botanical accuracy, then surpassed many contemporaries in the delicacy of her touch. Her compositions balance scientific observation with quiet symbolism — insects, dewdrops, and fallen petals all carry allusions to time and transience without ever feeling laboured. Van Oosterwijck's reputation reached beyond the Dutch Republic: Louis XIV of France and Emperor Leopold I of Austria both acquired her work, a distinction few painters of any gender achieved in that period. This hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using traditional techniques that honour the original's luminous depth — the cool gloss of the ribbon, the velvet texture of each petal, and the warm shadow pooling beneath the fruit are all rendered by hand, not printed or digitally reproduced, giving you a living connection to one of the finest flower paintings of the 1680s.