Seventeenth century sanitation

It's been a funny sort of day today. Because I got up so late I've just finished the coffee and fags bit and taken my tablets. It feels like mid-morning, although I know it will be dark in less than an hour and a half. When I've finished writing I will make my dinner, and then I'll go to the pub. It feels like I'm having dinner for breakfast. My mood is still not good from being stuck with that idiot yesterday, so I thought I'd like to make a point of thinking about something nice, for the purposes of mental sanitisation.
The picture is Still Life of Flowers and Fruits by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-99). Isn't it wonderful? Such an incongruous and disparate collection of things; fabric, classical urns, a sphynx, the artist's easel, a clock, graecian columns, a globe. The whole arrangement is a bit like a house that has been ransacked. On the face of it the arrangement looks scruffy and chaotic, but look again. Each object, each flower, each piece of fruit has been deliberately placed where it is. The artist is inviting us to look at the relationships between things that don't usually belong together. I particularly like the flowers in their ancient forms. Look at the beautiful roses, pastel coloured and cabbage shaped. I bet they had a delicious fragrance too. Of course the white jasmine is also fragrant. I can also imagine the fragrance of ripe peaches. The ones in the picture look swollen with ripeness, however the old varieties were probably a good deal smaller than their modern descendants.
I do like this picture.