From a botanical album, this painting depicts two cultivars of tulips, La Bella Sultana and Tamerlan, which were highly prized during the Dutch Tulip Mania, a period in the early 17th century when the price of tulip bulbs in the Netherlands rose to extraordinary levels before collapsing dramatically. Both are 'broken' tulips, infected by a tulip-breaking virus, a mosaic virus that caused their petals to develop distinctive streaks and flames. They became extinct as the virus weakened the plants over time, making the bulbs difficult to sustain across generations, and they disappear from records after the late 1630s.