Agneta Block (Emmerich 29-10-1629 – Amsterdam 20-4-1704), and her family at their summer home Vijverhof (later called Flora Batavia), with her cultivated pineapple

This celebrated 1694 group portrait at the Amsterdam Museum documents Agneta Block and her family at their estate Vijverhof, with the remarkable detail of a pineapple she had successfully cultivated — the first pineapple grown in the Netherlands. Agneta Block (1629–1704) was one of the most remarkable figures in Dutch horticultural history: a wealthy merchant widow, amateur botanist, and collector of rare plants whose Vijverhof estate on the Vecht river was a centre of scientific and social life. The pineapple she holds was grown from a cutting, a feat requiring exceptional botanical knowledge and greenhouse technology in the Dutch climate. Weenix's inclusion of this trophy fruit transforms the conventional country-estate portrait into a document of scientific achievement and female intellectual agency unusual in the visual culture of the period. The Amsterdam Museum's holding of this painting connects it appropriately to the city whose merchant culture made Agneta Block's world possible.

Weenix organises this large family portrait around the contrast between the formal group of figures and the lush estate garden behind them. The pineapple receives careful, detailed treatment that distinguishes its complex surface pattern from the surrounding fruits. Figures are portrayed with the sober precision of Dutch portraiture, while the garden setting allows Weenix to display his landscape skills in a format less common in his purely game-piece work.