Vase of Flowers (1670)

Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Vase of Flowers dates to 1670 and hangs at The Hague’s Mauritshuis Gallery. It shows a rather fabulous crop of blooms, one that would well grace any mantle. Unlike cut flowers, painted ones take a long time to fade and will never droop, leaving dead petals and spent pollen on sideboards and tables. Yet whatever advantages de Heem’s flowers have over the ones in my parlour are entirely outweighed by the fact that they are not real. For all their colour and charm, they are but a representation, a copy, a two-dimensional piece of canvas upon which oil has been spread. In the thirteenth of Revelation, we read of a horrible Beast whose image the whole world worships. Somehow, it is a representation of him, an evil copy of an evil original. Those who receive it and worship it are lost eternally. On the other hand, Christ is described as the ‘image of the invisible God’ in Colossians chapter 1, a beautiful emanation of the Father’s glory and majesty. Although we humans were made, somehow, in God’s good image, we have become marred and warped by the Fall, more closely resembling the Dragon and his beasts than the Creator whom we were designed to resemble. The Gospel, however, re-makes us. 

...In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 2 Corinthians 4:4

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