WERFF, Adriaen van der
(b. 1659, Kralingen, d. 1722, Rotterdam)

Flora with Putti Strewing Flowers

1696
Oil on canvas, 290 x 195 cm
Staatliche Museen, Kassel

This painting was part of a decorative cycle for the garden room of artist's own house in Rotterdam. From the original ten only six survived.

In this painting a tondo offers a view of the heavens, beneath whose vault floats the Goddess Flora accompanied by putti strewing flowers. The scene is framed by decorative swags of foliage with antique masks, painted to imitate stone or stucco. The painting is an example of the kind of interior decoration that developed in the late-seventeenth-century Netherlands under the influence of French culture.