Niche with Fruit and Flowers

In the past, the Niche with Fruit and Flowers was divided in the place of the middle shelf into two separate canvases, which served as pendants. This is how the awareness of Georg Flegel’s authorship was lost for long years. Flegel’s canvas is one of those called trompe l'oeil (optical trick), which by its impeccable treatment was to convince the viewers that what they could see was real, rather than painted. Flegel depicted the objects in the upper niche slightly from below, whereas those on the lower shelf are seen slightly from above. The upper shelf is dominated by flowers in a vase, combined in the spirit of the period practice without any heed to whether the flowers might be in bloom at the same time. In the lower shelf, the antipole of the bouquet is formed by a glass goblet with a gold base, called Willkomm. All the objects are depicted in their real size, which helps the verisimilitude of both the shelves. The canvas was painted between 1610 and 1620.