Plants and Gardens
BASILIUS BESLER
Botanist and apothecary who
compiled the Hortus Eystettensis
—-the largest and most influential
botanical book of the early
seventeenth century. It was
published plain in 1611 and
with hand-painted plates in
- More than 1,000 species
of plants are depicted life-size
in 367 copper engravings,
Chapters are arranged by
season. Conrad von Gemmingen,
Price Bishop of Eichstatt
commissioned the volume to
document his private garden
of the same name. He sent
boxes of plants to Nuremburg
where a number of uncredited
artists drew them for Besler.
Here Aconthus spinosus is
combined with forget-me-nots
to show how well their
colours complement each other
Acanthus spinosus
1613
187 / 8 x 15^3 / 4 in (480 x 400 mm)
BASILIUS BESLERW
E SHARE THIS PLANET with the more ancient, robust, infinitely vivid, and diverse
kingdom of plants, on which our lives depend. We collect, nurture, and
hybridize them for our sustenance and pleasure. We draw them to celebrate their
beauty and range, to catalog our knowledge, and to ornament our lives. Plants are
the principal inspiration of the decorative arts—from Roman Corinthian columns
crowned with carved leaves of the acanthus, to the proliferation of floral designs
with which we have dressed ourselves and furnished our homes for centuries.
Botanical illustration is a precisely defined and scientific art. From its history
there is one overriding lesson to be learned: the importance of looking and seeing
with our own eyes. Early European illustrators were trapped within dogma that
was determined by ancient scholarship. Medieval knowledge was not gained by
the first-hand observation of life but by reading. The revolution came in the 1530s,
when botanists founded new work upon the direct study of plants. Fledgling years
of scientific research bore manifold explosions of knowledge in a fever of discovery.
Natural scientists accompanied explorers to document unknown finds. Plants
poured off ships returning from the New World and were eagerly collected and
drawn. Botanic gardens were established and expanded. Classifications were set
out. Patrons funded the breeding of decorative, as opposed to only herbal,
specimens. Rich owners of private gardens commissioned large-format florilegiums
to immortalize their personal taste and power of acquisition, and the drawn pages
burned with the urgency and excitement of explaining every plant's form, color,
and beauty. Later, the microscope was refined to unfold yet another world. After
four- and-a-half centuries of intensive observation, we now have laid before us
an infinite wealth of material to explore.
There are close parallels between the acts of gardening and drawing. Both
embrace the anticipation of evolving shape, form, and texture; the punctuation
of space with structure and mass; manipulations of light and shade; and the
constant but exhilarating struggle to make a living image feel right. In this chapter,
we see very different cultural visions of plants and gardens and use pencils and
plants to learn the pictorial values of space, shape, and focus.