Nicolaes van Verendael
[2] Van Verendael mainly painted flower pieces, vanitas still lifes and a few allegorical scenes with monkeys.
[8] His early work shows the influence of the leading Antwerp flower still life painter Daniel Seghers but he used more and stronger and more contrasting colours.
His early flower paintings depicted small, bright, graceful bouquets in tall, narrow vases or cartouches and garlands surrounding a religious figure or scene.
[5] These garland paintings had been an invention by Jan Brueghel the Elder dating to the beginning of the 17th century and were usually collaborations between a still life and a figure painter.
The subject of the exaltation of the figure of Mary was a response to Protestant beliefs and is reinforced by the inscription 'ego flos campi' ('I am the flower of the field') at the foot of the bust.
Van Veerendael developed towards a brisker brushstroke in his later years and he found a personal style that was a forerunner of Flemish flower painting in the 18th century.
Stock symbols expressing these ideas include skulls, extinguished candles, empty glasses, wilting flowers, dead animals, smoking utensils, watches, mirrors, books, dice, playing cards, hourglasses and musical instruments, musical scores, various expensive or exclusive objects such as jewellery and rare shells.
[11][12] These vanitas paintings were informed by a Christian understanding of the world as a temporary place of ephemeral pleasures and torments from which humanity's only hope of escape had been offered by the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ.
[14] Nicolaes van Verendael contributed to the spread of the genre of the 'monkey scene', also called 'singerie' (a word, which in French means a 'comical grimace, behaviour or trick').
Another example is the Merry Company or Singerie (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, which depicts monkeys reveling in an inn.
A considerable number of paintings and additional drawings of singeries by Veerendael has been identified on the art market and in private collections.
