![Cisfus Nov. Sp. [Cyphostemma quinatum] (1817) (Cisfus Nov. Sp. [Cyphostemma quinatum] (1817)) - Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/041-original.webp)
Cisfus Nov. Sp. [Cyphostemma quinatum] (1817)
葡萄瓮属
Cisfus Nov. Sp. [Cyphostemma quinatum] (1817)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- slightly upright 1.25 : 1
First Look
夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。
—— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》
Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands above centre. 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. The pose leans right: the upper half carries 18 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. The Chinese name 葡萄瓮属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 14.5% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast red with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Fruit plates pair the whole fruit with a section: the outline identifies the variety, the cut reveals skin thickness, core size and seed arrangement — the evidence of registration.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 16% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. 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
江村连夜有飞霜，柿正丹时橘半黄。
—— 宋·陆游《江村》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the fruit becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the pomegranate means many sons, the peach long life, the orange good fortune; in Europe the apple is temptation and knowledge, the grape abundance and sacrifice. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
Late summer into autumn, variety by variety. Temperate fruits came mostly from Eurasia, later from the Americas. Nineteenth-century nurseries printed varietal albums for trade and exhibition: every fruit on the page was a saleable claim. The year 1817 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
“Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town” carries only Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann'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
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1817.
About this plate
Cisfus Nov. Sp. [Cyphostemma quinatum] (1817) is plate 41, from Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town, drawn by Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: 1817-1820.
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