A
master painter in Delft by the age of sixteen, Willem van Aelst spent his early
career in Paris and Florence, where he served as court painter to the Grand
Duke of Tuscany. After a stint in Rome, he returned to his homeland, settling
in Amsterdam. In this animated still life, flowers spill from a silver vase of fashionable
Dutch design. The expensive striped tulip seems ready to drop its petals. The
pocket watch, open to reveal its mechanism in luxurious detail, and the
drooping blooms, nibbled by insects, convey the idea that life is fleeting and
beauty, too, inevitably perishes.