This work is related with others by the same artist, for instance those at the National Gallery in Washington or at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Van Thielen was known for his virtuosity in the depiction of flowers and of insects which he often included with them. The genre of flower painting reached its pinnacle in the workshops of Flemish artists. Unlike other painters from the Low Countries, van Thielen was not from a family of artisans, but the son of a nobleman who devoted himself to painting. He was a disciple of Seghers (1590-1661), the Jesuit who was a master in the painting of garlands and flower vases and whose work is very close to this one in terms of composition and motifs.

If we were to find a symbolic meaning in this representation through the language of flowers, the artist could be referring to all the aspects and dimensions of love, as if it were a never-ending cycle of rebirth and immortality represented by the butterfly and the dragonfly.