Page 47 - sarah-simblet_sketch-book-for-the-artist

Plants and Gardens

WE 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,

BASILIUSBESLER

Botanist and apothecary whwo hen botanists founded new work upon the direct study of plants. Fledgling years

—-the compiled the Hortus Eystetotefnssiscientific research bore manifold explosions of knowledge in a fever of discovery.
largest and most influential

botanical book of the early

seventeenth century. It waNs atural scientists accompanied explorers to document unknown finds. Plants

published plain in 1611 and poured off ships returning from the New World and were eagerly collected and
withhand-paintedplates in

1613.Morethan 1,000 species

of plants are depicted life-size drawn. Botanic gardens were established and expanded. Classifications were set

in367copperengravings,

Chapters are arranged boyut. Patrons funded the breeding of decorative, as opposed to only herbal,

season. Conrad von Gemmingen,

PriceBishopof Eichstatt specimens. Rich owners of private gardens commissioned large-format florilegiums

commissioned the volume to

document his private garden to immortalize their personal taste and power of acquisition, and the drawn pages

ofthesame name. He sent

boxes of plants to Nuremburgburned with the urgency and excitement of explaining every plant's form, color,

where a number of uncredited

artistsd r e wthem for Besler. and beauty. Later, the microscope was refined to unfold yet another world. After

Here Aconthus spinosus is

combined with forget-mef-onoutsr- and-a-half centuries of intensive observation, we now have laid before us

to show how well their

colours complement each otahner 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,

1A6ca1nt3hus spinosus

we see very different cultural visions of plants and gardens and use pencils and

187/8x153/4in(480 x 400 mm) plants to learn the pictorial values of space, shape, and focus.
BASILIUS BESLER