Still Life with Flowers Surrounded by Insects and a Snail

Clara Peeters's Still Life with Flowers Surrounded by Insects and a Snail, painted around 1610, is a work by one of the first and most accomplished Flemish women painters. Peeters was a pioneer of the independent still-life painting in Antwerp, beginning her career remarkably early — her earliest known work is signed and dated 1607 when she was likely only about thirteen. Her meticulously detailed compositions of flowers, food, and precious objects helped establish still life as a major genre in Flemish art.

The oil on copper shows Peeters's extraordinary precision and her ability to render diverse textures with jewel-like clarity on the small, smooth copper support. The insects and snail surrounding the flowers are painted with almost scientific accuracy, while the copper ground enhances the luminous quality of the colors.