Abraham Mignon (sometimes Minjon) was a German/Dutch floral and still life painter active in the Dutch “Golden Age” (17th century).
His paintings are often elaborate tableaux of flowers, fruits, seafood and dinnerware. They can be marvels of intricate detail, with the inclusion of beautifully painted insects, snails, frogs and salamanders, arranged in a way to provide the viewer with the fascination of finding them in addition to marveling at the finessed rendering of the primary objects.
Like other still life and floral painters of the time, He also usually introduced deliberate flaws into the depiction of the otherwise beautiful fruits and flowers, a kind of memento mori — a reminder that time and life are fleeting.
Though the choice of subject matter and composition of his paintings is in keeping with his contemporaries, the way Mignon handles the color and texture of individual objects often has a remarkably contemporary feeling.
There is an article on the site of the Statens Museum for Kunst that describes the process of restoring some of this paintings, and what the process revealed about his technique.
The Rijksmuseum has six of his works online in zoomable high-resolution (downloadable if you sign up for a free Rijksstudio account). There are also two high-res images on the site of the National Gallery, DC. There are more on Google Art Project and other sites listed below.
