"[1] Trained in decoration from a young age, he "gradually developed an execution of details of the utmost beauty and finish"[2] creating "wonderful flower pieces whereon drops of water and crawling ants could be seen without a magnifying glass.

"[11] His flower-arrangement still lifes, in a style of the period collectively called vanitas and/or Pronkstilleven, are said to possess "an unerring elegance of composition, which enabled him to avoid the imbalance, the overcomposition, that others risked.

[12] He painted from "life," meaning fresh-cut flowers, assembling them over time into visual bouquets; sometimes this meant pieces took a year or more as he waited for certain blossoms to come back in season, such as a yellow rose he wanted for 1742 picture.

"[2] Half of his pictures in public galleries are landscapes, views of imaginary lakes and harbours with impossible ruins and classic edifices, and woods of tall and motionless trees-the whole very glossy and smooth, and entirely lifeless.

The earliest dated work of this kind is that of 1717, in the Louvre, a grove with maidens culling flowers near a tomb, ruins of a portico, and a distant palace on the shores of a lake bounded by mountains.

[17] On 19 July 2019 German minister of foreign affairs Heiko Maas personally handed the picture to his Italian counterpart Enzo Moavero Milanesi in Florence and it was restored to the collection of the Uffizi.