Wild Pea (Pisum sativum) with a moth
豌豆
Wild Pea (Pisum sativum) with a moth
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.62 : 1
First Look
真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。
—— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》
Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.
The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles on the bird. Take the posture before the plumage. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find where the green is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Wild pea: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 豌豆 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 5.9% of the sheet, foliage 20.8%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Insect plates show the host plant and all four stages at once — egg, larva, pupa, adult — with wing venation, scales and antennal segments accounted for: the most technical branch of natural-history art. Filed under green — a moss green. Feather colour is structure, not pigment: light bent by barbules. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 35% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the easy measure most florists kept to.
Line and Colour
Before 1700 most botanical figures came from woodcut: thick, hard lines in relief, colour brushed on afterwards. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. If you mean to copy it: take its skeleton, its margins and the order of its colours; the burin's hatching is the language of copper — suggest it with pencil density, do not imitate it stroke for stroke.
Poetic Resonance
挑菜踏青，趁蜂随蝶，长负清明时景。
—— 《二郎神·小亭徙倚》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the green the bird itself becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the butterfly is dream and lovers, the cicada purity, the firefly a lamp for reading; in Europe the insect began as specimen before it became symbol. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
Set by life stage: butterflies in spring and summer, moths into autumn, beetles from May to July. Four stages on one sheet span a whole year. Merian's Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705) first showed insect stages with their host plants — the result of raising caterpillars in the Surinam forest with her daughters. The year 1510 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Read the locality and the flowering season both with a discount: one is hearsay, the other a ten-day peak.
The Book and the Hand
“Book of Flower Studies” carries only Master of Claude de France's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Next time you watch a bird: posture first, then where the plumage is deepest, and only then the field guide. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1510 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Wild Pea (Pisum sativum) with a moth is plate 6, from Book of Flower Studies, drawn by Master of Claude de France. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: France, 1510–1515.
