Jan Philip van Thielen

Van Thielen was the most popular flower painter in Flanders and his patrons included Diego Felipez de Guzmán, 1st Marquis of Leganés and Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the art-loving governor of the Spanish Netherlands.

[3] He left his native Mechelen for Antwerp where in 1631 or 1632 he started his training as a painter with his brother-in-law Theodoor Rombouts who had married his sister Anna in 1627.

Erasmus Quelllinus was married to the sister of his wife and would become one of the leading history painters in Flanders after the deaths of Rubens and van Dyck.

[7] Quellinus drew van Thielens' portrait that was engraved by Richard Collin for Cornelis de Bie's book of artist biographies Het Gulden Cabinet.

[4] The sisters must have been exceptional flower painters as they were praised by their contemporary, the artist biographer Cornelis de Bie in his Het Gulden Cabinet published in 1662.

Garland paintings are a special type of still life developed in Antwerp by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen at the request of the Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo at the beginning of the 17th century.

[11] It was further inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court (then the rulers over the Southern Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally.

The cartouche painted by Quellinus in grisaille represents sculptures of the Virgin and Christ Child subduing the serpent.

Van Thielen painted ivy (a symbol of death, remembrance and eternal life) into the cartouches and added a variety of flowers: roses, jasmine, daffodils, snow drops, hydrangea, nasturtium, apple blossoms, anemones.

Van Thielen also added moths and butterflies, which are symbols of the resurrection of Christ and his triumph over death.