3-046-942 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Fleuriste Florentine au Moyen Age," by M. Vander Ouderaa, 1872. 'The traveller, on his first arrival in Florence, may be flattered, and can hardly fail to be pleased, by a custom of the flower-girls which is peculiar to the place. If...he takes his breakfast in a cafe, it will not be long before a girl, always natty, often nice-looking, and carrying a basket of flowers, will come round, and, without waiting for permission, will stick a pretty little nosegay in his coat button-hole. The custom appears to be of ancient date, and to have been practised in the Middle Ages by young ladies of high station, as represented in this beautifully-painted and highly-finished picture by M. Vender Ouderaa, which itself is a bouquet of rich floral colouring. Naturally, the license which this custom permitted to medieval damsels gave them a great advantage over their modern sisters in prosecuting the arts of lovemaking romantically; and, doubtless, the Florentine girls of the olden time were adepts in the language of flowers. The picture now figures in the autumn exhibition at the Liverpool Free Library and Museum. The painter is a young Belgian artist of very high promise, who [won] one of the principal prizes at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.