Vintage Romanticism Spiral notebook

Ambrosius Bosschaert. Lived 1573-1621

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder was born in Antwerp but lived in the Northern Netherlands since 1587. He began his training in Antwerp and joined the Middelburg guild as a master in 1593. He specialised in painting precise flower and fruit still lifes, in the manner of botanical illustrations but grouped in compositions, which carefully balance form and colour. Ambrosius Bosschaert would have made drawings and preliminary sketches of each flower and placed them into the picture as he worked. These specimens would not have been cut and shown in a vase; they would have remained in the ground for breeding or for an elegant garden display. This painting was meant to last, for a wealthy collector and connoisseur to admire long after the flowers had gone. The petals have a brilliant sheen, their jewel-like colours against the dark wall almost too bright to be taken as real. Bosschaert worked on a copper support to allow the smoother application of paint than on canvas, enabling him to show intricate detail. He used layers of glazes to produce a brilliance that has remained virtually without fading for over 400 years.

Still Life of Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase on a Ledge with further Flowers, Shells and a Butterfly
1609-1610
Oil on copper

Tulips, roses, jonquils, carnations, fritillaries and a single blue iris are massed into a Chinese vase; costly flowers in a costly container. Although apparently close to nature, the picture is anything but natural. Roses, cyclamen and narcissi aren't in bloom at the same time of the year. This is an assembly of specimens, rather than an elegant flower arrangement, recording people’s love of flowers in that particular age.

Above them all, Madonna lilies rise like shining white trumpets at the peak of the bouquet, made slightly less regal by the tiny beetle making its way up a spotless petal. Other insects play hide-and-seek in the shadows made by leaves.

The picture was probably made to impress one of the wealthy burghers of Middelburg, the prosperous town where the artist lived. Such a person would have had an interest in, even a passion for, the many exotic plants being grown in the town’s new botanical gardens. So Bosschaert’s work is more than a lovely picture. He shows individual specimens of great value and scientific interest, and the buyer and their guests would have had their magnifying glasses out to indulge themselves in the ’science of looking’.

The blue-and-white porcelain vase in which Bosschaert has placed his flowers – its delicate bird poised as if waiting to pounce on the hidden insects – was itself a rare and expensive object, and a work of art: a picture within a picture. Made in China during the reign of the emperor Wanli (1573–1620) at the end of the Ming dynasty, such blue-and-white porcelain was imported into the Dutch Republic where it fetched enormous prices at auction. It proved so popular that it led to the establishment of the Delft factories, where ceramics were made that are still sought after today.

• Covers with soft-touch coating
• Cover weight: 10.38 oz/yd² (352 g/m²)
• Page weight: 2.62 oz/yd² (89 g/m²)
• Metal wire-o binding
• 140 dotted pages
• Size: 5.25″ × 8.25″ (13 × 21 cm)
• Blank product sourced from the US