During the Baroque, it was very common for still life painting to be organised in pairs or series, often with a purely decorative purpose. Sets of this kind abound in the catalogue of Juan de Arellano throughout his entire production, whether of vases, baskets or garlands. A consummate specialist in a genre that was on the rise in the Madrid of Philip IV and Charles II, part of his success was due to his ability to design compositional prototypes and a floral repertoire that permitted numerous variants when skilfully combined. Moreover, the creation of these sets was facilitated by the use of canvases with standardised measurements.

The pair of vases in the Colección Banco de España has been recognised as prototypical of this formula, now in a phase of full maturity. In his earliest known vases, he generally used pieces in precious metals to hold the bouquets of flowers. In the course of the 1660s, however, he started to opt for increasingly simple glass vases that did not detract from the colourful display of the flowers, the true protagonists of these compositions. To underscore the connection between the floral arrangements, he tended to repeat the same type of vase, although he would vary the positioning or the species shown. In this case, the variation lies in the form of the glass receptacles, as only one has a foot while both contain a very similar botanical selection. They are structured in the same way, with a blue lily at the apex surrounded by red carnations and tulips. Indeed, the position of some flowers is practically repeated in both, such as the bluebells or belle de jour superimposed on the body of the vases, the tulip with the drooping corolla on the right, or the rose in the centre. Distributed between the two is Arellano’s habitual floral repertoire, which includes, besides the species already mentioned, yellow daffodils, anemones, roses of different colours and peonies.

These, then, are tried and trusted models that develop a well learned strategy for giving a casual effect to arrangements with an identical colour scheme, with the brighter colours (white, pink and yellow) in the centre and the more intense ones (red, blue and purple) towards the edges. The diverse morphology of each species is rendered with great liveliness, from the stalks submerged among the reflections on the glass to their spread outwards in all directions until they almost touch the edges of the canvas. While there is a sufficiently close rendition of each plant for it to be recognised, this is not based only on copies from nature, as a knowledge of other painters is also discernible. Arellano forms part of a renewal of this subject matter in Europe that follows in the footsteps of Jan Brueghel, Daniel Seghers and particularly Mario Nuzzi.

The signed picture is a literal reproduction of an earlier piece by the painter, a picture of Flowers in a Glass Vase signed in 1668, which entered the Museo Nacional del Prado (P007921) in 2006. The canvas in the Colección Banco de España dispenses only with the worn appearance of the stone base in the Prado picture in using the same surface for the two vases. In the meantime, the second painting, unsigned as is usual in these groups, is a very close variant. Given their technical and compositional proximity, they must be very similar in date.

Although these works’ striving for ornamentality is evident, some authors have interpreted the fallen petals of the red and white tulip on the right of the second picture as a reflection on the fleetingness of life. While symbolism is undeniably present in the Baroque aesthetic, the detail can also be explained as a means of accentuating the realism of the depiction.

Ángel Aterido

These two works are typical of the best-known style of Juan de Arellano, the great painter from Madrid, even though the signature was redone during one of the restorations of the two pieces. They were most certainly designed to be a pair: their identical dimensions and the fact that only one of them is signed seem to confirm that.

The delicate transparency of the glass vases and the light tone of the freely placed flowers, as if trembling in the air in a loose, casual arrangement, hints at a much later stage of his oeuvre, from the 1660s or 1670s.

The flowers in the paintings are those typical of Arellano: tulips, daffodils, bluebells, carnations, giant anemones and, of course, roses. Some fallen tulip petals can be seen in one of them and many of the flowers in both are already past full bloom, about to lose their petals, and have already enjoyed their moments of splendour, which imbues these vases of flowers – as was usual in the Spanish 17^th century – with a subtle moral warning of the fragility of life and the transience of beauty, almost making them vanitas stripped of the usual macabre, but equally admonishing.

Commentary updated by Carlos Martín.

Alfonso Pérez Sánchez