#florilegium

[mossiagocheese]

I have started a very large scale project ᕙ⁠(⁠⇀⁠‸⁠↼⁠‶⁠)⁠ᕗ pray for me

these are all just test pages to plot it out - the real thing is going in a nice leather bound notebook with lineless paper.

[floral-art-prints]

What most people don't realize about Nicolas Robert is that he essentially invented the job of royal botanical painter. Louis XIV created the position specifically for him in 1666 - peintre ordinaire du Roi pour la miniature - because no one else in France could do what Robert did on vellum. He'd already been working for Gaston d'Orléans, painting specimens from the duke's garden at Blois, before the crown claimed him. This sheet of "Flower Studies" shows why. Six specimens, each identified in period calligraphic French: a dog's-tooth violet with reflexed petals exposing orange stamens, a scarlet tulip whose color graduates from yellow at the base to deep red at the tips, a pink hepatica with closed buds alongside open blooms, a Merveille du Pérou (four o'clock flower), a white narcissus, and a simple yellow buttercup. What kills me is the tulip leaf - it has brown spots and a slight curl. That's not damage to the painting. Robert painted the damage to the leaf. He recorded imperfection because imperfection was data. He worked on vellum, not paper. Calfskin, stretched and scraped smooth. Watercolor on vellum doesn't bleed or feather - it sits on the surface like enamel, which is why these pigments still punch after three centuries. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge holds this sheet. If you ever see vellum botanical work in person, you'll understand immediately why paper feels like a compromise. Every vein in every petal is where Robert decided it should be. Nothing soaks. Nothing escapes. Nothing fades. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

[pigs-in-art]

Tulips and Boar with Bat, Snake, Rat, and Ants Border, folio 4 (verso), from Florilegium (A Book of Flower Studies)

I had to include a detail shot of the boar, because they look so mischievous.

[audiojunkyard]

[apenitentialprayer]

The poverty of the world is a scandal. In a world where there is such great wealth, so many resources for giving food to everyone, it is impossible to understand how there could be so many hungry children, so many children without education, so many poor people! Poverty today is a cry. We must all think about whether we can become a little poorer. This is something we must all do.

- Pope Francis (Q&A With the Students of the Jesuit Schools of Italy and Albania)

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those of the same income of our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

- C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, page 86).

You might say: "Who do I harm by keeping my own property?" […] Isn't God just, equally dividing what is necessary for life? Why are you wealthy while that other man is poor? Is it, perhaps, in order that he may be honored with great prizes for his endurance? But, as for you, when you hoard all these things in the insatiable bosom of greed, do you suppose you do no wrong in cheating so many people? Who is a man of greed? Someone who does not rest content with what is sufficient. Who is a cheater? Someone who takes away what belongs to others. And are you not a man of greed? Are you not a cheater? [...] Now, someone who takes a man who is clothed and renders him naked would be termed a robber; but when someone fails to clothe the naked, while he is able to do this, is such a man deserving of any other appellation? The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear moldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes.

Saint Basel the Great, Homily to the Wealthy.

[transformational]

uwade by shervin lainez (x)

[oldshrewsburyian]

I'm on page 16 of "Reading Medieval Latin" (thanks for that recommendation to somebody else!) and just realized where your title "Florilegium" came from. Shout out to you, Keith Sidwell, and my man Cassiodorus :)

Serendipity! Also, it's nice to know I'm not the only one recommending Reading Medieval Latin.

[heaveninawildflower]

Iris taken from 'Florilegium' (1608, France).

Watercolour and ink on vellum.

clevelandart

Internet Archive Python library 1.8.1