Vierge à l’enfant dans une couronne de fleurs

Within a cartouche ringed by a lavish garland of roses, tulips and narcissi, the Virgin appears in bust length with the infant Jesus in her arms; the Child reaches out his right hand while his left rests on his mother’s wrist. The garland is the work of Daniel Seghers, a Jesuit brother who carried to supreme refinement the decorative formula, inherited from Jan Brueghel the Elder, of flower festoons wound around a devotional image against a dark ground. The central niche was customarily reserved for a painter of history, and here the Virgin and Child are by the Antwerp master Cornelis Schut, who supplied the pious focus for many of Seghers’ garlands. The painting comes from the Dutuit collection and is held in the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.