Vase with flowers on the terrace

Painting from the collection of the Potocki family, former owners of the Łańcut castle; it depicts an ornamental vase full of flowers (roses, tulips, peonies, branches of decorative bushes) arranged in such a way that they flow down the right side of the vase. The vase stands on the terrace, on a pedestal decorated with a cone-shaped pinnacle. Behind the pedestal, in the background, a deciduous tree, in front of the pedestal two guinea-fowls – one standing, the other sitting with the paws curled. On the left side of the canvas, a fragment of a column (without capitals) overgrown with vines. Next to it, there is a fountain the core of which is the figure of a cupid on a dolphin. The cupid holds in his hands a horn from which water gushes into a bowl below. The top of the painting shows a blue and celadon sky. The painting dates from the end of the 18th century, unfortunately the author is unknown. Flowers as a subject in painting have been popular since Antiquity. In the Middle Ages they also used to appear in paintings, but they usually had a symbolic function, accompanying mainly religious scenes. In the 15th and 16th centuries, they began to be depicted as the main subject of a painting and they continue to play this role in painting today. There was even a special trend in painting to depict various bouquets of flowers in interiors, spread mainly in the Western European painting. The painting kept in Łańcut is in a way part of this trend, additionally enriched with architecture and birds. The painting is framed in a wooden, gilded channel frame decorated with an interwoven leafy ribbon and is exhibited in the eastern corridor on the ground floor of the castle.