Artwork
Still Life with a Vase of Flowers and a Puppy
Still Life with a Vase of Flowers and a Puppy is an oil painting by the Early Baroque Italian artist Juan van der Hamen. It dates from 1625 and is held in the collection of the Museo del Prado.
About this work
Subject & Meaning
The painting presents a realistic arrangement of cut flowers beside a small dog, a combination that merges natural abundance with playful domestic presence.
The painting presents a realistic arrangement of cut flowers beside a small dog, a combination that merges natural abundance with playful domestic presence. The floral display symbolizes transience and sensory richness, while the puppy introduces a motif of youthful vitality and moral innocence, reflecting Counter‑Baroque concerns with the fleeting nature of earthly pleasures. Executed in oil on canvas in 1625, the work balances meticulous detail with a vibrant composition, emphasizing the artist’s skill in rendering texture and light.
Technique & Style
The work is executed in oil paint on canvas, a support consistent with Juan van der Hamen's preferred combination of medium and ground for his still lifes. The composition is organized as a tall, narrow vertical format, measuring 228.5 cm in height by 100.5 cm in width, which lends the arrangement an elongated, columnar structure suited to the upright vase of flowers and the small puppy gathered at its base on a tabletop.
Stylistically, the painting belongs to the still-life genre and reflects the formal clarity and tightly arranged bouquet-and-table conventions associated with van der Hamen's Madrid-period production, with the floral display and animal figure rendered against a plain background to emphasize contour and color.
History & Provenance
Juan van der Hamen created the oil-on-canvas painting Still Life with a Vase of Flowers and a Puppy in 1625. The work depicts a table arrangement featuring flowers and a puppy. It is currently held in the collection of the Museo del Prado. The painting measures 228.5 cm in height and 100.5 cm in width.
The specific circumstances regarding the original commission, the identity of the first owner, and the detailed chain of custody leading to its current location are not provided in the available records.
Still Life with a Vase of Flowers and a Puppy, painted by Juan van der Hamen in 1625, belongs to the collection of the Museo del Prado, where it is held as an oil on canvas measuring 228.5 cm in height and 100.5 cm in width.
No specific inventory or accession number, nor any documented exhibition history, is provided in the available sources for this work.
Overview
Still Life with a Vase of Flowers and a Puppy is an oil painting created by Juan van der Hamen in 1625, characteristic of the early Baroque period. It belongs to the still life genre, which the artist helped popularize in 17th-century Madrid.
Context
Part of the early Baroque period, this piece exemplifies the growing interest in still life paintings during the 1620s in Madrid, where van der Hamen was a key figure alongside his work in other genres like landscapes and religious art.
Artist & collection
Artist
Juan van der Hamen y (Gómez de) León (baptized 8 April 1596 – 28 March 1631) was a Spanish painter, a master of still life paintings, also called bodegones.
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