Juan de Arellano was apprenticed to Juan de Solís and belonged to the same generation as Juan Carreño de Miranda and Francisco Rizi. However, unlike these contemporaries, Arellano chose to master the floral still-life genre. He worked primarily for private clients and his compositions are full of symbolic meaning, with frequent allusions to the concept of vanitas and the fleetingness of life.

In his bouquets and flower vases, he initially followed the Flemish models of the Jesuit Daniel Seghers; another fundamental influence, much later in his career, was Mario Nuzzi, judging by the opulence, freshness and quality achieved in his floral arrangements and vibrantly colourful brushstrokes. He also made religious paintings, though they are excessively reliant on the models of others, particularly Flemish prints. These were also useful for his famous series of the five senses. Yet flower painting was the field in which he shone brightest and the focus of his autograph production; he enjoyed the patronage of prosperous clients who were eager to acquire works of this kind, and built up a repertoire of faithful reproductions of local, familiar botanical specimens.

All of these elements are apparent in this Still Life with Flowers, where a basket filled with roses, anemones, tulips, lilies, bunch-flowered daffodils and other flowers appears below, centred on a plinth. Above, crowned by a decorative architectural motif carved on a plaque or rollwork cartouche, we see a pair of bouquets and butterflies flitting about them, clearly alluding to the transience of life and the beauty of the ethereal and fleeting. The complexity and obvious baroque quality of this work, with carefully calculated volumes and balanced groups, have been studied by Pérez Sánchez. It was he who located the pendant piece to this flower painting, which also belonged to the Marquess of Moret in 1935; the two were exhibited together in the show organised by Cavestany that same year, Floreros y bodegones de la pintura española (Flowers and Still Lifes in Spanish Painting).

The extremely delicate treatment of the flowers and the loose, silky brushstrokes suggest that the work dates from the middle of Arellano's career, between 1650 and 1660, a particularly fruitful period in which he undertook complicated compositions with very fortunate results. Contrary to what some authors have suggested, this floral still life cannot be considered the pendant to the one at the Museo de Belas Artes, La Coruña, because the latter has an allegorical meaning conferred by the presence of the mirror which we do not find in this piece. However, the presence of fluttering butterflies in both this piece and its pair in the private collection is clearly symbolic as a reminder of the fleetingness of life and the beauty of the ephemeral; certain details also betray a great mastery of both brushwork and composition, resulting in a remarkable compositional balance and harmony. [Benito Navarrete]