Bouquet of Flowers and Fruit with Blue Ribbon

Eleven species of blossom, a spray of grapes, a bitter orange and a grasshopper hang from a nail by a blue ribbon against a dark ground — an impossible bouquet, since its flowers never bloom together and several come from lands far beyond the Dutch Republic. Maria van Oosterwijck, one of the few known female painters of the Dutch Golden Age and renowned for such suspended bouquets, signed the work about 1680; the sweet sultan at upper left was imported from Turkey and the bitter orange from the Mediterranean, evidence of the global markets that fed Dutch still-life painting. The picture can be traced through auctions from Frankfurt in 1764 to Sotheby’s London in 1992 before the Art Institute of Chicago acquired it in 2022. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.