Oricula urci (1624)
Oricula urci (1624)
Oricula urci (1624)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.61 : 1
First Look
六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。
—— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》
The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.
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 the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Oricula urci: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 10.0% of the sheet, foliage 4.7%, the cast amber with a second note of red. 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.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 16% of the sheet, centred above centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
Before 1700 most botanical figures came from woodcut: thick, hard lines in relief, colour brushed on afterwards. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing. 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
从军秣马十三年，白发营中听早蝉。
—— 唐·王建《别杨校书》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and 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. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
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 1624 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The bud and the ripe fruit on one branch tell the season; the name in the title often tells the journey.
The Book and the Hand
“Collection of flowers and insects” carries only Daniel Rabel'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
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1624 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Oricula urci (1624) is plate 69, from Collection of flowers and insects, drawn by Daniel Rabel. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Paris, 1624.
