Ixia purpurea varietas
Ixiox purpurex varitas|Ixia purpurea varietas
Ixia purpurea varietas
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.79 : 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 Ixia purpurea: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Here the epithet purpurea means “purple” — the name records the feature the namer noticed first. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 5.3% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of red. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Bulbous plants store the year underground — bulb, corm or tuber — then send up a few thick leaves and a single scape, with six tepals in cup, funnel or star.No colour group is recorded. 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 covers only 6% of the sheet, centred above centre; the emptiness 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
不语亭亭俨薄妆，画裙双凤郁金香。
—— 唐·杜牧《偶呈鄭先輩》
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
The tulip was an imperial emblem in Istanbul and a speculative bubble in Amsterdam; the hyacinth sprang from a boy's blood in Greek myth. What bulbs share is concealment: next year kept underground. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Early spring to early summer, genus by genus: tulips and hyacinths first, gladiolus and amaryllis later. Three homelands: the Mediterranean, Central Asia and South Africa. The tulip came from Ottoman gardens and became a Dutch mania. The year 1781 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
“Icones Plantarum Rariorum” carries only Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin'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 1781 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Ixia purpurea varietas is plate 322, from Icones Plantarum Rariorum, drawn by Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Vindobonae, C.F. Wappler, 1781-1793.
