There are many reasons why an artist decides to include a plant in their work. It doesn't matter what material he uses to express his art. It can be a painting painted in tempera, oil or watercolor. Perhaps the chosen medium is sculpture, and instead of adding and adding layers – as is done in a painting – you have to rough down and remove those layers until you can make visible what you have locked up in your mind. Contemporary artists also turn to botany, although usually with less pretensions of using leaves and flowers to tell a story, and not as abundantly as was done in the past. Of course, there will always be exceptions, and there are creators for whom nature and plants are the dominant motif in their works of art.
The desire to paint or sculpt a grass or a large tree depends not only on the times, but also on the person. In ancient Dutch painting—the so-called Flemish primitives—an overwhelming degree of realism was achieved, and many plants represented in those works could be on a par with those painted by botanical illustrators of later centuries. The detail with which Robert Campin (ca. 1375 – 1444) portrayed his plants leads us to think about something more than art or botany: also about the love of doing his job well, in reaching the highest levels to capture fleeting nature. of a flowering or the sprouting of a new violet leaf (Viola odorata). When you look closely at any of the lilies (Lilium candidum) or lilies of the valley (Convallaria majalis) painted by Jan van Eyck (ca. 1390 – 1441) you can almost tell how long each flower has been open by the great delicacy and precision used in his brushstrokes.
Other artists from the region would pick up the baton in later centuries, such as Joachim Patinir (ca. 1480 – 1524) or Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568 – 1625). This last Baroque painter took botanical art to an extreme never seen before by including dozens and dozens of different species and cultivars in his complex compositions with flowers, painting in each one all the correct and concrete anatomical features. Such was his passion for plants that it was not unusual for him to leave his workshop in Antwerp to travel to other places, such as Brussels, to portray flowers different from those he could find in the Antwerp gardens.
When you observe a work of art in which plants have been included, you should reflect on why they are in that place. On many occasions, it will simply be the result of adding a reality, a setting, to the characters that are painted there, as happens with the background landscapes. But there are countless works in which the plant is completing the artist's speech, and amplifies the message that is wanted to be transmitted. No one would think that the rose held by Mary Tudor, Queen of England, in the superb portrait made by Antonio More in 1554 was the result of a passing appetite on her part or the artist's. In the court portrait, where everything is measured and delimited, that botany also tells and tells. In this case, it is none other than the red rose of Lancaster, the flower of her noble house; an attribute that accredits her, like a crown or a scepter, as the heir to the throne, as the proud successor of her lineage.
There are many like this last case, since this incessant use of flowers in the hands of those portrayed, or close to them, is something very frequent in the history of art, and denotes the ancestral link between human beings and plants and symbology. that is associated with them. Of course, much of this symbolic load is associated with religion, and in this type of works botany also acquires capital importance.
The strawberry (Fragaria vesca), for example, is one of the species most used by artists as a complement to the divine message of the work. With an evident polysemy, its red fruit appeals to the blood shed by Christ on the cross, but its trifoliate leaves link it to the Holy Trinity, its white flowers to the virginity of Mary or its small size to the humility of the mother of Christ. , among other meanings. But it also entails other rich symbols linked to the pagan world, so much of the importance of these plants already comes from ancient times, from the classical world. There they were already considered important species in their rituals and in their gardens, as is the case with the ubiquitous chirivita (Bellis perennis), a daisy that appears adorning and providing its symbolism in works since, at least, the time of the Babylonians. The pomegranate tree (Punica granatum) is another of those species that could be used as a model of universality, because it covers works of art from all periods and from practically any civilization, both Asian and European. This tree has been painted and sculpted from Japan to India, and its presence is almost as essential in Italian Renaissance works as it is planted in Mediterranean gardens.
Plants tell us many stories, from political or noble ones, from historical ones to economic ones or the conquests of new territories, including customs and the society of the moment. Everything has a place in a flower or leaves, from mythological to religious symbology, and any religion. The plants are another character in these works, which are expressed with a different language, but not so different from the gesture of a look or hands. You just have to learn it and let yourself fall in love with them, even if they seem like just a few colorful strokes on a canvas hanging in a museum.
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