page_title: Frans Ykens
section_title: Garland paintings
hierarchical_section_title: Frans Ykens / Work / Garland paintings
context_page_description: Frans Ykens was a Flemish still life painter active in Antwerp and Brussels in the 17th century. He is mainly known for his flower pieces and fruit still lifes and also painted banquet pieces, pronkstillevens, garland paintings and larger game pieces.
context_section_description: Frans Ykens painted multiple devotional garland paintings.  Garland paintings are a special type of still life developed in Antwerp by Jan Brueghel the Elder in collaboration with the Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo at the beginning of the 17th century. Other artists involved in the early development of the genre included Hendrick van Balen, Andries Danielsz., Peter Paul Rubens and Daniel Seghers. The genre was initially connected to the visual imagery of the Counter-Reformation movement. It was further inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court (then the rulers over the Southern Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally.
  Garland paintings typically show a flower garland around a devotional image, portrait or other religious symbol (such as the host). By the second half of the 17th century secular themes such as portraits and mythological subjects also decorated the central part of the many paintings made in this fashion. An example of such later development in garland paintings is the Birth of the red rose (Staatliches Museum Schwerin), a collaboration between Ykens and Cornelis Schut.
  Other figure painters with whom Ykens is known to have collaborated on garland paintings include Jacob Jordaens, Erasmus Quellinus the Younger, Jan van den Hoecke, Pieter de Grebber, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert and Pieter van Avont. He probably also collaborated with Peter Paul Rubens.  Ykens would paint the flowers and garlands while the other artists painted the remainder of the painting. Unlike other flower painters Frans Ykens would regularly paint the central theme in the garland painting himself.
caption: Birth of the red rose
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