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Since its opening in the heart of Nicosia in 2014, the A.G. Leventis Gallery has become a major cultural hub, fostering international collaboration and promoting art across Cyprus and the wider Middle East. It has four sections: the Cyprus, Greek, Gold, and Paris Collections. The Paris Collection features European paintings from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including an important group of artworks from the Golden Age of Netherlandish still life painting.
Among the highlights is Daniel Seghers’s Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase, a painting that reflects the era’s growing interest in flowers as valued specimens, depicted with the precision of scientific studies. Also noteworthy is Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s Still Life with Lobsters, Fruit and a Silver Tazza in a Niche, an example of the luxurious pronk still life tradition, which celebrated wealth, global trade, and the tastes of a rising elite culture. Philips de Marlier’s Still Life with a Basket of Flowers on a Ledge further conveys the symbolic power of floral imagery. Produced in the wake of the financial collapse triggered by the fall of “Tulip Mania” in 1637, this painting shows that flowers were not only tributes to nature and beauty, but also potent allusions to wealth, market forces, and the vanity of riches.
Despina Christofidou, Curator- Collections Registrar (November 2025)