On the symbolism of flowers in classical art.
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Image collection of flowers as a characteristic feature of the month of April there is a calendar miniatures of the Franco-Flemish Chasovnikov XV century. and the flowers become an attribute of this months, and - increasingly - the spring in the later series of paintings on the theme of "months" or "Four Seasons". One of the most exquisite images of early spring captures in miniature, "April" Limburg brothers in the calendar "Luxury Book of Hours of the Duke Berriyskogo" where ladies gather flowers in a graceful courtier dresses saturated colors on a bright green meadows themselves are like a rare beautiful flowers.
language of symbols Middle Ages spread to all spheres life, including initiating the development of heraldry, which is unthinkable without Knight's everyday life. The most famous heraldic flower - french lily and the Tudor Rose.
Initially, the choice was determined by the religious symbolism of flowers. According to legend, the Frankish king Clovis chose the lily as emblem of purification after the baptism, when converted to Christianity. Fleur-de-lis (its natural prototype is Mechev species - iris) was emblem of Charlemagne and Louis IX the Saint. Internecine strife of Lancaster and York entered the history of England as the Wars of the Roses, and the end of the XIX century. in London the park to save this historic bushes, from which the flowers were torn off, have become emblems of political parties. Although the title recalls the spread in many European countries battle festival of colors, it was downright brutal and bloody.
At the time when the troubadours knight include in his coat flower daisies, which meant a great lady, it was a sign that the lady agreed to take his ministry. Accepted symbol of valor and courage was the pink and in this sense it may be present in the portrait of a knight by Rogier van der Weyden. But more often in the portrait of XV-XVI centuries., Especially in doubles, the red carnation has a value a symbol of love and betrothal, and in the hands of the model serves as a reminder of the engagement. In Germany, this symbol was a thistle.
symbolism of color in the portrait, This first of secular genres of painting, continued to persist in the next century. It is hardly coincidental Rubens chose honeysuckle bush backdrop for wedding "Self Portrait with Isabella Brandt (1609. Munich, Alte Pinakothek). This plant was considered the embodiment of permanence, as well as long lasting pleasure. In the courtly poetry minnesingers (Laye of honeysuckle ", XII cent.), A medieval poem of Tristan and Isolde with honeysuckle compared gentle lover. Echoes This tradition can be heard in the words which says enchanted Titania, the heroine of Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" (Act IV, Scene 1):
Sleep! I love you hands obovyu ...
So honeysuckle scented oak barrel
Lovingly chokes ...
the same image link appears in the poetic Valentine greeting newlyweds, written about the marriage of the brother of the painter, Philip Rubens:
trunk wide elm vines entwined flexible,
tender stalk top hugs the thin branches.
So, in love, you sopryazhete happy ties,
Both the flowering, respectively, at the height of all the talents
body and soul. ....
Quite unexpectedly, the modern view, looks like "Self-portrait with a sunflower," Anthony van Dyck, in which the artist clearly demonstrates flower of the viewer, holding it in his hand held high. In the days of Van Dyck's sunflower was still relatively new representative of the flora in Europe. He was brought by the Spaniards from Peru in 1569 and gradually spread to other countries. They called him the sun of India and to the XVII century. grown in gardens as a rare ornamental plant, just in time beginning to use the seeds as a flavoring additive in food. Since the flower does not have an established symbolism, noting his property to turn after the sun, by analogy with the long-known marigolds (Calendula), it began to be considered a symbol of the sun (the Creator of the monarch), and fate, as well as loyalty. Van Dijk included flower in the portrait as a symbol of unwavering dedication to his protector - English King Charles I.
the XVI century, secular symbols in art is gradually gaining more rights. Renaissance revived the legacy of antiquity, and colors are now once again accompanied by images of Venus and Flora, participate in the scenes with allegories of months and seasons, feelings and elements, representing spring, smell or sight, the earth or fire (Jan Brueghel the Elder. "smell"). This secular allegorical painting special development will be at the end of the century, around 1600, mainly in the Netherlands masters, they were also the creators of the first machine-still-lifes.
Birth of floral still life in this period have been prepared confluence of circumstances. Firstly, the artists relied on well-developed tradition of images of flowers in the Dutch painting of the XV century. and miniatures Book of Hours. Secondly, great pictures - Study of plants birds, small animals, Durer, marked the beginning of the Renaissance tradition of field studies in Germany and the Netherlands. Thirdly, the very plant life that surrounded artists, has changed dramatically and was no longer the same, that a hundred or two hundred years ago. From the middle of the XVI century in Europe first appeared east bulbous plants and among them - the tulip, which transformed the flower gardens, and then thereto were added, and plants from the New World. Botany Department of Medicine, which is subordinate to for a long time, and became an independent scientific discipline. The appearance of floral still lifes coincided with a period of rapid development of horticulture, both scientific and recreational, and Holland was the leading center of it. Here the outstanding botanists of his time. Some artists just botany and gardeners are drawn into employment flower paintings, ordering them to pictures of plants for research purposes.
first easel still lives there in 1600-ies. in the works of Jacob de Heine, Rulanta Savereya, Jan Brueghel, Ambrosius Bosharta and represented artfully arranged songs of many colors in the elegant vase. Playing the rare plants, artists, and vases for them picking difficult. This could be a vessel of Venetian glass and Chinese porcelain vases, precious in themselves, on one of the paintings by Balthasar van der Asta bouquet placed in a large sea shell.
At first glance, bouquets seem to be written from life, but on closer look it becomes obvious that they are made from plants flowering at different times. Same impression of naturalness and illyuzionisticheskogo lifelikeness arises due to the fact that the images of individual colors based on the individual nature studies. It was the usual method of painters of floral still lifes. Instead of an outline or sketches in pencil or pen, they carry out detailed drawings in watercolor and gouache, painting flowers from nature, in different angles and in different light, and these drawings then served them several times - they repeated them in paintings. As raw materials also used the drawings of other artists, especially those that have been made in the New World, and contained specimens of exotic flora, engravings from the printed collections and botanical atlases.
Individual was a way to use these drawings. So, Ambrosius Bosshart could repeat of the pattern in the picture the same image of the flower, such as roses, and among his extant works can count to five or seven of these repetitions, while Jan Brueghel Velvet is almost never done.
"portraits" of flowers, written on parchment in watercolor and gouache, could be created and the other end, In addition to preparatory work for the still life. They were ordered owners of gardens to perpetuate the strange and exotic and simply beautiful flowers collected or derived by the owner. Along with a collection of paintings, sculptures, coins and various curiosities in Kunstkammer, along with a "museum" Fauna - menagerie ruling nobleman could boast of a collection of flowers from your own garden, embodied in still life or this album.
Preserved to the present day albums contain from several tens to two hundred drawings. Gardeners were engaged in cultivation of flowers and breeding of rare species, ordered painted flower catalogs that customers can see what will grow out of paid their bulbs. This was especially true during the period of speculation in tulips - Notorious tyulpanomanii. Speculation in tulip bulbs in Holland in the second half of the 30-ies of the XVII century. indeed reached the degree of madness, when a tulip bulb Rare new coloring mortgaged house. In art, these circumstances have responded that the tulips are in almost every bouquet written in the first forty years of the XVII century, and most survived album with these colors. One of those books - "Tulip Book" by Jacob Marrela (1642) - contains a list with the prices of tulips in the years 1635-1637. In the midst tyulpanomanii.
Correspondence Jan Brueghel the Cardinal Federico Borromeo contains interesting details about the method works by masters of flower painting. In a letter in 1606 as an artist told Borromeo about working on his next order: "... he remarkably able: not only because it is written from life, but also because of its beauty and rarity of its constituent variety of colors, unknown and never seen before: I therefore went to Brussels to write from life, some flowers, which can not be seen in Antwerp. "
Aspiration diversify the composition of their bouquets encouraged artists to work in different centers. Crispin de Passe the Younger (ca. 1597 - ca. 1670), author of the collection of prints depicting garden flowers "Hortus floridus" (1614), who had a great influence on the development of floral still life in Holland, in the introduction of expressing gratitude to the twenty-seven "Lovers of flowers and herbs" from Utrecht, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leiden, which allowed him to paint flowers in their gardens.
To paint colors from nature, Amsterdam painter the late XVII century. Jan van Heysum was forced to spend every summer in Harlem, which was then, as now, was the center of the Dutch floriculture. The artist also had to wait for changing seasons, to write the desired flower. In one letter he explained to the customer that can not finish still-life, including a yellow rose, until it blooms next spring. Thanks to this still-lifes themselves becomes a kind of flower collection. As written for the Borromeo Brueghel paintings collected over a hundred floral rarities, including eight varieties of tulips, five - Iris, at least nine Forms of daffodils.
Albums Atlases colors (Florilegium), a compendium of the samples, not only for paintings but also for craftsmen; they owe their beauty and perfection of the flowers, chiseled on silver, carved wood, embroidery on fabric (a dish with tulips from the Armory, Dress Elizabeth English).
created with such a focus on nature, often generated by vanity, pride, and other worldly ambitions, whether they contain floral symbolic allusion? Many times in the images themselves, and in the surviving documents allow argue that this is so.
world of natural forms, for centuries, is included in the symbolic picture of the world, could not immediately lose its value higher. Over time, modified, a message encrypted in the floral art, enriched by new shades in accordance with the context of the era. Floral still life still inspired the audience to reflect on moral and religious subjects. Composed of beautiful and varied colors, bouquet was a beautiful hymn to the beauty of divine creation, and through it - the wisdom and generosity of the Creator, and let forever capture this beauty. Already familiar Federico Borromeo we noted that the written flowers will bloom much longer - even when in nature they will wither and die. And how the divine creation, they are above the worldly goods.
sung for Cardinal "Still Life with a golden bowl," J. Brueghel Borromeo wrote: "I wrote Under the flowers jewelry jewelry and coins ... now your honor judged superior to the colors gold and jewelry or not. "
At the initiative of Cardinal Borromeo was introduced a new version of the iconographic image of the Madonna, surrounded by a flower garland. The Cardinal was not only an avid collector, but also a passionate Catholic. He also understood the force of impact pattern is formed on the religious sentiment of believers.
Around 1600 strengthened the cult of the holy miracle-working images of Madonna, the churches became customary to clean their precious jewelry and garlands of flowers. Having repeatedly floral still lifes by Jan Brueghel, Cardinal realized that the talent of the artist's image colors can be used for religious purposes, and in 1608 asked him to write a garland of flowers around the image of the Madonna.
Although Bruegel was the progenitor of such images, is best known for working in this field by his student, Daniel Segers. Converted to Catholicism, a deeply religious man, Segers in 1615, he joined the Jesuit Order. He has worked for churches of the Order and the Jesuits often used his work as gifts to the secular princes and rulers. In contrast to Bruegel flower garlands in pictures Segersa not tightly woven wreath uniformly around the holy image. Its flowers are woven into the ribbon supporting frame picture, and are grouped in two places - they are now top of crown and the semicircular frame with three sides. In other cases, the image is an illusion painted stone relief in the cartouche of scrolls which are inserted small bunches of flowers. Expressiveness of painting based on the contrast of the dense and dark stone texture and bright colors of flowers with their delicate transparent petals. The artist was a gift of a harmonious union of the motley variety of colors in a reverent and joyful setting for a wonderful event, is accomplished in the picture.
as perfect of all creatures, which grow from the earth, a flower likened to a man, "transcending all living beings noble body composition, and the soul. " But both of them, like the generation of the earth, albeit beautiful, subject to decay, and in comparison with divine essence flowers transformed into an image reminiscent of the transitory nature of earthly life.
This Christian idea of "Still Life with a crucifix and a skull" by Jan Davids de Hema (Munich, Alte Pinakothek), supported by still and enclosed in a cartouche inscribed: "But no one turned to look at the best of all colors," sounding like a reproach mired in the fuss man. So a reminder of the transience of life - an artistic memento mori - a floral still life is an image of hours or skull. In a still-life with a different set of subjects flower itself appears in this role.
Davids, Jan de Heem (1606-1683) is widely used religious symbols in still life. Included in the bunch of ears of corn symbolizes not only the bread of Communion, but also the resurrection as a man, like a grain must first be buried in the ground, only to be reborn to new life. In the painting "Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase" there is no symbolic objects, but very significantly compared to the dominant composition of scarlet poppies and white carnations. Attentive audience poppy had sent the following message: "Know that life is an illusion, is not based on the misleading its outer side effects. Do not let yourself captivated my beauty transient one, since I hide inside seeds of death and oblivion. " White carnation symbolized a clean and clear Christian life.
Very often, a Dutch flower painting is surrounded by butterflies, dragonflies, caterpillars and other insects and small animals that are naturally surrounded by flowers in nature. However, the pattern they form not only natural but also the symbolic context. Birds, butterflies and other winged creatures are old medieval symbol of the human soul. Caterpillar chrysalis and butterfly together mean life cycle and stages of earth's life, death and resurrection.
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