Lot 1034 Dα

This painting is unique among Segher's numerous depictions of garlands surrounding a central cartouche. The action of the angels creates a certain dynamism. Four cherubim are in the process of attaching two festoons to an image of the Madonna in a carved, oval frame. Seghers, who after the death of his teacher Jan Brueghel the Elder became his most important successor in the field of Antwerp flower painting, created this work together with the figure painter Cornelis Schut. Schut's free, Rubenesque figuration finds its counterpart in Segher's detailed realism in the flowers and plants depicted and his vibrant use of colour.
This extraordinary collaborative work is known through numerous exhibitions and publications. The painting was identified by M.-L. Hairs in Cornelis Schut's own inventory under no. 135 (see Couvreur, 1967, p. 112, no. 135). The buyer was probably Willem de Blasere, Lord of Hellebus, representative for Flanders to the States General and one of the plenipotentiaries for the peace negotiations in Maastricht and The Hague in 1632/33, whose father Gerard de Blasere was a benefactor of the Jesuit order to which the "painting monk" Seghers belonged.
Seghers, who lived in the Jesuit convent in Antwerp until his death in 1661, became a celebrity in the care of the order. Princes and sovereigns visited him in his studio and showed their appreciation for his work with valuable gifts, as he was not allowed to receive any income. On 20th April 1635, Cardinal-Infant Ferdinand visited him and purchased a more square version of the present composition. It includes the addition of an imperial crown, which hovers over the image of the Virgin like a small canopy (Couvreur, 1967, p. 110, no. 119). This painting was in the Galerie R. Finck in Brussels in 1961 (see Hairs, 1985, fig. 32). It can be assumed that the present work was painted a little later in the same year, 1635.