03 — ARTWORK
Vase of Flowers
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 115 x 86 cm
- TYPE
- Still-Life
PALETTE
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- FILE
- 900 × 1161 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
Tomás Hiepes lived and worked in Valencia, where he enjoyed considerable local fame as a still-life and flower painter. This painting, the magnificent floral arrangements Vase of Flowers, reflects his ability in flower painting. The format and style of Hiepes's flower paintings appears to have changed little throughout his career, he painted flowers with the same painstaking technique, love of symmetrical order and idiosyncratic charm that distinguished many of his still-lifes.
Hiepes's flower pieces are reminiscent of earlier Flemish works in terms of the number and variety of ornamental flowers depicted. This painting with sunflower includes no less than twenty-six species, far more than any other Spanish flower piece in the period. Hiepes also differed from other flower painters in Spain in the accuracy of his depiction of flowers, including the relative size of different blooms.
The floral arrangements depicted in Hiepes's work, however, are unlikely to have been copied from real bouquets before the artist. It would have proved impossible to bring together in one place and at one time all of the flowers depicted in the paintings, since these bloom at different times of the year and most flowers would have wilted before the painting was finished. Moreover, it would appear to be an impossibility for so many large flowers to fit into the narrow neck of the vase. Hiepes must have painted each bloom individually into his flower piece, probably from single flowers or from other graphic sources. The degree of separateness between these in his paintings appears to betray this practice.
The images on the Italian vase depict scenes of a classicalRelating to the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (classical Antiquity). The classical world played a profoundly important role in the Renaissance, with Italian scholars, writers, and artists seeing their own period as the rebirth (the "renaissance") of classical values after the Middle Ages. The classical world was considered the golden age for the arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. Concepts of the classical, however, changed greatly from one period to the next. Roman literature provided the starting point in the 14th century, scholars patiently finding, editing and translating a wide range of texts. In the 15th century Greek literature, philosophy and art - together with the close study of the remains of Roman buildings and sculptures-expanded the concept of the classical and ensured it remained a vital source of ideas and inspiration. triumphWith growing interest from the early 14th century in the history of ancient Rome came a fascination with the city's conquests, the wars by which they were won - and the ceremony which marked their success: the victor's triumph. The knowledge that the privilege of being commemorated by one of these enormous and costly processions of warriors, loot and prisoners was given sparingly, only to the sole commander of a major victory over a foreign army of whom at least 5000 were slain, added to the glamour of the triumph. Its centrepiece was the chariot of the victor himself. Dante gave one to Beatrice in Purgatorio XXIX: 'Rome upon Africanus ne'er conferred / Nor on Augustus's self, a car so brave'. But it was tentatively with the relief carvings on the Triumphal Arch (1452-66) at Castelnuovo in Naples commemorating Alfonso the Magnanimous, and finally with Mantegna's superb Triumph of Caesar cartoons (Hampton Court), that the visual reconstruction of a Roman triumph became complete. Meanwhile, in an age which did not like the idea of large numbers of victory-flushed soldiers parading through its streets, the military triumph became sublimated, as it were, into a number of less controversial forms. This was largely under the influence of Petrarch's 'Trionfi' - poems describing the processions commemorating the triumphs of love, chastity, death; fame, time and eternity. Disseminated soon after his death, they soon appeared in illuminated manuscripts, and the triumph scene became a popular one for woodcuts, decorated marriage chests and other paintings, most beautifully of all on the backs of Piero della Francesca's portraits of Federigo da Montefeltro and his wife, Battista Sforza. Other 'triumphs' were invented: of the seasons, of virtues and of the arts. Nor was the theme allowed to be simply a profane one. Just before his death Savonarola published his 'Triumph of the Cross', in which the reader was invited to imagine 'a four-wheeled chariot on which is seated Christ as Conqueror.' Before it go the apostles, patriarchs and prophets, beside it the army of martyrs, behind it, after 'a countless number of virgins, of both sexes', come the prisoners: 'the serried ranks of the enemies of the Church of Christ.' This aspect of the theme was magnificently realized in Titian's great woodcut 'The Triumph of the Faith'.. Similar images decorate the vases in other flower pieces by Hiepes. Three gilt figures of crouching nude slaves are trampled underfoot by the Roman emperor and appear to support on their backs the whole arrangement of flowers. The decorative splendour of the vase certainly makes it a suitable recipient for such a magnificent display of flowers. <P> <TABLE ALIGN=LEFT CELLPADDING=5 BORDER=1 WIDTH=320 BGCOLOR="#99CCCC"> <TR VALIGN=MIDDLE><TD><IMG SRC="/support/gif/listen.gif" BORDER=0 VALIGN=MIDDLE> Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):<BR><A HREF="#" onClick="w=window.open ('/music1/19_cent/tchaikovsky_nutcracker_waltz.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=350,height=350');w.opener=this;w.focus();return true"><B>Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, ballet suite, op. 71, Waltz of the Flowers</B></A> </TD></TR></TABLE>
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rf3270c44c6e758,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Vase of Flowers by HIEPES, Tomás},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-13},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/hiepes-toms-r5a392c9d6e34b8/vase-of-flowers-rf3270c44c6e758},
urldate = {2026-09-13},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-13. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
OTHER WORKS BY TOMÁS HIEPES
The archive catalogues no further works by this artist.
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