Manihot sinuata (1827)
木薯族·Manihot sinuata|木薯族
Manihot sinuata (1827)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.69 : 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 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 Manihot sinuata: 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 木薯族 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour is sparing, 0.6% of the sheet against 13.9% of foliage, the cast tending amber — as with pale or white blooms, outline and tone do the talking. Tropical plants defy temperate habits: heavy, saturated flowers with strong scent, leathery or dissected leaves, stems that climb, swell, or reduce to spines.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 23% 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. 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
日啖荔枝三百颗，不辞长作岭南人。
—— 宋·苏轼《食荔枝》
Three hundred lychees a day — I would not mind being a southerner all my life.
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 these plants carry no classical symbolism; their meaning is newness — new worlds, new species, new trade routes. They show natural history's expanding edge. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
flowering follows the first rains, so a month on the plate often means 'after the rain'. Central and South America, Southeast Asia, India, Ceylon. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists either sailed with the ships or drew from living specimens under glass. The year 1827 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
“Plantarum Brasiliae icones et descriptiones hactenus ineditae” carries only Johann Baptist Emanuel Pohl's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1827 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Manihot sinuata (1827) is plate 41, from Plantarum Brasiliae icones et descriptiones hactenus ineditae, drawn by Johann Baptist Emanuel Pohl. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Vienna, Antonii Strauss, 1827.
