Winter has set in for good and even the toughest of the garden flowers have gone the way of all things.\u00a0 I look longingly on the remains of the last fall-blooming crocuses\u2014two brave singletons that bloomed on a warm day last week.\u00a0 Having done their duty, they have folded their petals and taken to their beds.\u00a0 It is time to look elsewhere for inspiration.<\/p>\n
The indoor plants are busy producing flowers from the buds formed weeks ago when they were still basking in late autumn light.\u00a0 The holiday amaryllis and paperwhites have yet to bloom.\u00a0 Branches and store-bought flowers add cheer and will have to suffice until the holiday decorations go up over the weekend.\u00a0 The house d\u00e9cor has bright spots, but I feel the need of additional inspiration.\u00a0 It is time to get out the florilegia and pretend, just for a few minutes, that I am a long-ago noble feasting on rare and extravagant pictures of the rare and extravagant plants in my garden.<\/p>\n
Florilegia are lavish books of botanical illustrations.\u00a0 Sometimes they contain descriptive texts, but the pictures are the main attraction.\u00a0 Their ancestors were early illustrated herbals or herb reference volumes that first appeared in the fifteenth century, the era of the trailblazing printer, Gutenberg.\u00a0 Illustrations in these books were printed from images carved into wood blocks.\u00a0 As printing techniques advanced over time, from wood block printing to etching and engraving, better and more accurate illustration became possible. \u00a0Herbals and florilegia gradually parted ways.\u00a0 By the seventeenth century, when wealthy Europeans were importing increasing numbers of exotic plants from far-away places, florilegia were in fashion–at least among those who could afford them.<\/p>\n
One such European was Johann Conrad von Gemmingen, a Bavarian nobleman and Bishop of the diocese of Eichst\u00e4tt.\u00a0 Beginning in 1586, Von Gemmingen, who inherited great wealth from his family, amassed a celebrated terraced garden at his episcopal palace.\u00a0 Divided into eight separate areas according to the country of origin of the various plants, the Bishop\u2019s layout was the first botanical garden outside of Italy.\u00a0 Bursting with pride, he commissioned a Nuremberg apothecary, Basilius Bessler, who had helped acquire the plants, to assemble a florilegium documenting them.\u00a0 The resulting volume was Hortus Eystettensis,<\/i> or, in English, The Garden at Eichst\u00e4tt, <\/i>a large folio full of carefully rendered plant portraits, complete with flowers, leaves, bulbs, roots and fruits or seed structures. \u00a0Those wealthy enough to afford the luxury version could buy one with hand-colored illustrations.\u00a0 A black and white edition, aimed at apothecaries and with supplemental text, was available for a bit less.<\/p>\n
Sadly, the Bishop did not live to see this glorious compendium, which was published in 1613, a year after his death.\u00a0 Posterity is more fortunate.\u00a0 A few years ago I received a facsimile edition and regularly revel in the color plates.\u00a0 The renderings of daffodils and tulips inspire thoughts of spring even in these short, dark days before the solstice.\u00a0 The Bishop\u2019s garden reportedly contained tulips in 500 colors.\u00a0 Not all are portrayed in Hortus Eystettensis\u2014<\/i>that might have been too expensive even for the Bishop–but they are so vibrant that you can see them in your dreams.<\/p>\n
Tulips and other spring-flowering plants also abound in The Green Florilegium, <\/i>created in the mid seventeenth century by German artist, Hans Simon Holtzbecker.\u00a0 Notable for its beautiful renderings, the florilegium takes its modern name from the gilt-edged original\u2019s striking green velour binding.<\/p>\n
The identity of the artist\u2019s wealthy patron has been lost, as has the exact publication date.\u00a0 The only certainties are the name of the artist and the approximate time of its creation.\u00a0 Most recently the book has been housed at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, Denmark, where it was restored in 2011 by conservator Christian Balleby Jensen.<\/p>\n
The Green Florilegium <\/i>differs from Hortus Eystettensis<\/i> in that the former\u2019s illustrations depict only stems, leaves and flowers.\u00a0 The less flashy roots and underground structures are absent, as befits a work that was most likely intended purely as a floral showcase.\u00a0 I especially love The Green Florilegium\u2019s <\/i>gorgeous rose illustrations, like the portrait of my favorite, the red and white striped \u2018Rosa Mundi,\u2019 which sleeps in my garden as I write.\u00a0 If I wander outside now, I can still see the lobed leaves of the old-fashioned \u201cgranny\u2019s bonnet\u201d columbines, which sprout from the pages in full bloom and just a bit larger than life.<\/p>\n
Roots and fruits return, along with a few insects and birds, in Alexander Marshal\u2019s Florilegium<\/i>, which is excerpted and enriched with explanatory text in a little volume, Mr. Marshal\u2019s Flower Book<\/i>, published in 2008.<\/p>\n
Marshal\u2019s work is the only surviving example of a seventeenth century English florilegium.\u00a0 Biographical information about the author is limited, but he was probably born about 1620 and died about 1682.\u00a0 His illustrations were celebrated\u2014then and now\u2014for their vibrant colors.\u00a0 The artist allowed imperfection to creep in, painting leaves, flowers and fruit as they were, complete with blemishes.\u00a0 Those imperfections, more than anything else, remind me of my own garden.<\/p>\n
Next month at this time I will be plotting, planning and putting together plant orders.\u00a0 Just now, I am more in the mood to look with awe on the accomplishments of the Bishop of Eichstadt and his contemporaries.\u00a0 It is less ambitious than garden planning, but conserves energy for decorating, gift wrapping and tending the ever-present geraniums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winter has set in for good and even the toughest of the garden flowers have gone the way of all things.\u00a0 I look longingly on the remains of the last fall-blooming crocuses\u2014two brave singletons that bloomed on a warm day last week.\u00a0 Having done their duty, they have folded their petals and taken to their … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1043,1042,583,581,1040,643,238,1045,1039,1041,1044,1038,582],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bessler","tag-botanical-drawing","tag-botanical-illustration","tag-florilegia","tag-florilegium","tag-garden-books","tag-garden-history","tag-gifts-for-gardeners","tag-hortus-eystettensis","tag-mr-marshals-flower-book","tag-seventeenth-century","tag-the-garden-at-eichstadt","tag-the-green-florilegium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1223,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions\/1223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}