Iris Susiana, flore maximo, ex albo nigricante – Giglio di Faraone – L’Iris, ou Flambe (1772-1793)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.49 : 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 in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. 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 Iris susiana: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. The genus name Iris: Iris is the Greek goddess of the rainbow, for the many hues of the flowers. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Irises carry rhizomes or bulbs, sword-shaped leaves in two ranks, and six tepals — three falls drooping, often bearded or speckled, three standards erect.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. 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
手把菖蒲对佳节，兴来呼酒劝同僚。
—— 宋·王十朋《五月四日與同僚南樓觀競渡因成小詩四首明日同行可元章登樓又成五首 其二》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China sweet flag hung at the door wards off evil at midsummer; in Europe the iris is the messenger, since Iris was the rainbow goddess who carried divine words. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Late spring to early summer, peaking in April and May, before the summer rains. Temperate north. In China iris and sweet flag belong to the Dragon Boat festival. The year 1772 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. See this kind of plate in the flowering season if you can: once you have met the living flower, you stop reading only colour.
The Book and the Hand
“Hortus Romanus juxta systema Tournefortianum” carries only Giorgio Bonelli's name. A plate is collective work: drawer, engraver and colourist were different hands, and the unnamed ones decided how good it looks.
What to Take Away
Next time you stand before a flowering plant, give it three minutes: leaf arrangement, direction of the flower, the darkest patch. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1772.
Previous plateIris palustris, lutea, sive Acorus adulterinus – Acoro falso – L’Iris, ou Flambe. (Yellow giglio) (1772-1793)
Next plateIris, versicolor corollis imberbibus germinibus, Subtrigonis – Iride variegato – L’Iris, ou Flambe. (Blue Flag. Poison Flag. Flag Lily. Liver Lily. Snake Lily. Dragon Flower. Dagger Flower. (1772-1793
