Catarina Ykens (I)

Catarina Ykens or Catarina Ykens (I) ( Floquet) (1608/1618 – after 1666) was a Flemish still life painter. She is known for flower and fruit garland paintings and vanitas paintings.

Life She was born in Antwerp as the daughter of the history painter Lucas Floquet and Johanna Leeuwaerts. Her three brothers were also painters. She married in 1635 the prominent still life painter Frans Ykens with whom she had two sons. The relatively few works which may be firmly attributed to Catarina on account of their being signed, are close in style to those of her husband Frans Ykens.

Work She is known for fruit and flower still lifes, including flower and fruit garland paintings and vanitas paintings. It was further inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court (then the rulers over the Southern Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally.

Garland paintings typically show a flower garland around a devotional image, portrait or other religious symbol (such as the host). The worldview behind the vanitas paintings was a Christian understanding of the world as a temporary place of fleeting pleasures and sorrows from which mankind could only escape through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. A wheat stalk symbolises, for instance, the resurrection of Christ on which, according to the Christian faith, the salvation of each human being depends. While most of these symbols reference earthly existence (books, scientific instruments, etc.) or the transience of life and death (skulls, soap bubbles) some symbols used in the vanitas paintings carry a dual meaning: the rose refers as much to the brevity of life as it is a symbol of the resurrection of Christ and thus eternal life. Catarina's composition Still life of a vase of flowers, a skull and a crucifix (At art dealer J.& M. Duputel, Paris on 3 June 2000) contains the typical symbols present in vanitas paintings: a skull, wilting flowers, a wheat stalk and a crucifix.