As Du Mortier pointed out, this picture is closely connected with a print by Hendrik Bary (c. 1640-1707),5 which shows the composition in reverse, with more at the bottom and the sides while the articulation of the drapery folds is more detailed. It seems likely that the Rijksmuseum picture derives from the print’s prototype, which has not been identified, rather than the print itself.6 But that source was itself probably based on the central scene in Daniel Seghers’s (1590-1661) Garland of Flowers in the State Hermitage Museum.7 This shows the infant St John the Baptist, his reed-cross with its scroll on the ground and his hand on what was intended as his bowl, adding wheat to the infant Christ’s crown of roses and holly. The derivations omitted the reed-cross, and the allusions to Christ’s mission (discussed below) are diluted. The rubric of Bary’s print attributed the prototype to Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), see below; Larsen believed that the Rijksmuseum picture was from Van Dyck’s studio.8 But the facial types are very different to those in the only comparable works by Van Dyck,9 and the central motif of Seghers’s painting obviously cannot be by him. Gritsay10 attributed the central motif convincingly to Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert.11 For this reason the Amsterdam picture is here described as by a follower of this artist. The subject of the painting would appear to be an elaboration of the apocryphal meeting of the infants Christ and St John the Baptist after the former’s return from Egypt. John adds wheat – a symbol of the resurrection – to Christ’s crown of roses and holly, the latter a symbol of his Passion. New Hollstein, however, describes Bary’s print on the basis of its rubric as personifications of spring and autumn.12 And in view of the alterations that Willeboirts Bosschaert’s concept has undergone in the present work, it is felt best to adopt that title here. Gregory Martin, 2022