of the intellectual preoccupations of the age, including the cultivation of personal virtue and the importance of connoisseurship. The genre became immediately quite popular and was followed by other artists such as Jan Brueghel the Younger, Cornelis de Baellieur, Hans Jordaens, David Teniers the Younger, Gillis van Tilborch and Hieronymus Janssens. Garland paintings Frans Francken often collaborated with still life specialists such as Andries Daniels, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Younger and Philips de Marlier in the production of garland paintings. Garland paintings are a special type of still life developed in Antwerp by artists such as Jan Brueghel the Elder, Hendrick van Balen, Andries Daniels, Peter Paul Rubens and Daniel Seghers. They typically show a flower garland around a devotional image or portrait. This genre was 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 were usually collaborations between a still life and a figure painter. In his collaborations on garland paintings Francken would paint the central figure or representation while the still life painter would create the garland. Together with Andries Daniels, Frans Francken further developed the genre of garland paintings, creating many special forms, among them garlands around medallions with the decades of the rosary. Religious works Later in his life Francken also painted large altarpieces. In these works he remained immune to the influence of Rubens, who had such a strong appeal on Flemish artists of that time. His religious works are more indebted to the work of his father. Among his religiously themed works of particular note are the unusual and stylistically 'reactionary' paintings of biblical scenes, which are framed on all sides by smaller scenes in grisaille. The grisaille frame echoes the Renaissance ecclesiastical portal. Each grisaille scene has its own naturalistic perspective and as a result the compositions provide an odd mixture of three-dimensional naturalism and archaic flatness. Francken used this archaizing technique into the 1620s. This style was possibly invented in the 16th century by the Flemish painter Gillis Mostaert and some works of Mostaert in this style have been erroneously attributed to Frans Francken. An example of one of these works is The story of the prodigal son (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). The panel shows various scenes from the Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Christian bible. The parable recounts the story of