This exquisite floral still life and its companion, Glass Vase with Roses and other Flowers (P7935), stand out for the calculated depiction of their crystal, in which the author displays a skillful treatment of that transparent material. Marking the main lines of each vase with a successful balance of reality and evanescence, he presents them in such a way that they practically disappear in favor of the bouquets they hold without altering their configuration. In fact, the leading role belongs to the flowers and leaves, with the two vases playing a supporting role from their location between the bouquets and the solid bases on which they rest. In that sense, they follow this genre’s longstanding formulas, which first appeared in the Spanish school in paintings by Van der Hamen, almost two-hundred years earlier.

The uniformly dark background shared by both compositions generates a sort of relief whose realism has much to do with the contrasting light and shadows in the play of colors presented by the bouquets. These two companion works are characteristic of the artist’s late production and they reflect light touch that nonetheless fails to avoid excessive contrast among the flowers. In fact, possibly encouraged by his knowledge of 18th-century Neapolitan paintings from the same genre, he presents flowers here whose very nature generates an agreeable aesthetic competition.

Spanish flower painting entered one of its periods of maximum development and splendor towards the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries in Valencia, where there was a Flower School linked to the silk industry. As Javier Portús observed (2006, no. 33 and no. 34), more than one hundred forty specialists in this field have been identified. And one of the most notable was precisely Juan Bautista Romero, an artist who worked in that city and at the Buen Retiro’s Royal Porcelain Factory. And it is precisely in flower paintings like these that he reflects his own personality, notwithstanding clear references to Benito Espinós. Nevertheless, these works stand out for their style, which seems not to have been overly burdened by his approach to still lifes with crockery and foodstuffs. The latter works are unquestionably handsome, but they are overly indebted to the formulas set out by Luis Meléndez, whom Romero imitates but does not equal (Text from Luna, J. J.: El bodegón español en el Prado. De Van der Hamen a Goya, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p. 136).