Bouquet of Flowers and Fruit with Blue Ribbon

This seemingly straightforward scene by Maria van Oosterwijck, one of the few known female painters in the Dutch Republic, in fact depicts a fantastical image. The 11 species of flora, accompanied by a single grasshopper and hung from a nail by a ribbon, do not all blossom in the same season. Additionally, several of these varieties are not indigenous to Northern Europe. The arrangement thus reflects the global markets in which the Dutch participated: the sweet sultan (the orange flower at upper left) would have been imported from Turkey, while the bitter orange (beneath the ribbon at center) originated in the Mediterranean. Oosterwijck was renowned for such paintings of suspended bouquets.