HIEPES, Tomás

Among the wide range of still-life and flower painting formats that Tom�s Hiepes developed were garden scenes, showing figures and animals in the corner of a garden courtyard. The setting of this painting with cultivated flowers in pots in the corner of a paved garden, and with its distinctive tiled bench, appears in other paintings by Hiepes and suggests that it represents a corner of a real garden in Valencia, perhaps his own. Hiepes appears to have been alone among Spanish flower painters in representing flowers growing in such pots. It is likely that this format was his own invention, possibly arrived at in response to his own particular circumstances in Valencia, a city famous in the 17th century for its gardens, flowers and fruits.

Tom�s Hiepes lived and worked in Valencia, where he enjoyed considerable local fame as a still-life and flower painter. His Still-Life with Fruit and Flowers, reflecting his ability in still-life painting, represents a Delft bowl of fruit and two pottery vases with gilt mounts containing jasmine flowers resting on a table covered by a tablecloth decorated with fine lacework known at the time as “Milan lace.” This painting allows a full appreciation of Hiepes’s style in his early maturity, characterised by his attention to fine detail, his use of glazes in modelling the fruit and subtle effects of colour and lighting. The painting is signed and dated 1642 in large letters on the reverse of the canvases and is - together with its pendant in the same collection - the earliest dated works known by the artist.

The painting attests to the particular skills of Hiepes in still-life and flower painting, leavened with an ingenuous charm entirely of his own that makes his works among the most appealing of those painted in 17th-century Spain.

Tom�s 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 classical triumph. 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.

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Hiepes has created an illusion of three dimensionality in the floral arrangement by showing the flowers in the middle of the composition projecting forwards and from a frontal view, and those towards the extremities of the composition in profile and some from a back view. However, a marked planarity in the composition is probably a consequence of his method of compiling the flower piece from separate studies, as if he had laid out the bouquet on a flat surface.

The images on the Italian vase depict scenes of a classical triumph. 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.