Roses, tulips, lilies and daffodils – flowers are not only a feast for the eyes, but also a remedy, accessory and symbol of love, faith and loyalty. In the Baroque era in particular, artists celebrated the ephemeral beauty of flowers and immortalized them in their paintings, as the new annual exhibition B{L}OOMING – Baroque Flower Splendor at the Wallraf proves. With well-known and unknown still lifes, portraits and allegories from private collections and the museum’s own holdings, some of which have been newly researched and freshly restored, the museum presents the boom and diversity of floral motifs in the Baroque period.
Flower painting began its triumphal march around 1600 in Flanders and soon became extremely popular in many European countries, as can easily be seen from the origins of the masters on display: Flemings such as Daniel Seghers and Jan Brueghel the Elder, also known as ‘Flower Brueghel’, Dutchmen such as Adriaen Coorte and Roelandt Savery as well as the Italian Giovanni Stanchi and the German Peter Binoit are united in the exhibition. All of their works ‘bloom’ just as colorfully today as they did on the day of their painterly birth 400 years ago.
New acquisition
A particularly fortunate acquisition is being celebrated as part of the exhibition. Thanks to the generous contribution of Prof. Dr Jürgen Krüger, the Friends of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud recently purchased a magnificent collector’s cabinet created by Frans Francken the Younger II (1581–1642) and his atelier for the Wallraf collection.
Frans Francken the Younger II (1581–1642) and his atelier, A Collector and his Cabinet, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
In the center of a studiolo filled with paintings, sculptures, books, a celestial globe, and sea snails, a bouquet of flowers stands out as an exclusive showpiece. It is a splendid symbol of the heyday of art and science in the wealthy Scheldt city, with which the humanistically educated elite clientele and the painter himself proudly identified. A forthcoming article in Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 86 (2025) by Anja K. Sevcik will present this hitherto unpublished gallery interior in more detail.