![Albicocca luciente o, siu Alessandrina gialla precoce. [Yellow apricot] (1817-1839) - Pomona Italiana](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/028-original.webp)
Albicocca luciente o, siu Alessandrina gialla precoce. [Yellow apricot] (1817-1839)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.43 : 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.
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
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
Form and Colour
A botanical plate: one plant lifted from field or glasshouse and set at the centre of the sheet, root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit in turn, made legible, citable, transmissible.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
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. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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
天地有大美而不言，四时有明法而不议。
—— 《庄子·知北游》
Heaven and earth have great beauty and do not speak.
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 symbolism of such a plate lies not in flower lore but in record: the belief that a plant deserves to be drawn accurately — the plainest ethic of the scientific age. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Plates usually record flowering, the fortnight when a plant is most identifiable. Various: local hillside or a plant brought from overseas. The nineteenth-century botanic garden and glasshouse were their first address away from home. The year 1817 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Read the locality and the flowering season both with a discount: one is hearsay, the other a ten-day peak.
The Book and the Hand
“Pomona Italiana” carries only Giorgio Gallesio'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. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
![Albicocca di Germania. [Vulgaris Germanica] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/027-thumb.webp)
![Albicocco Susino. [Armeniaca prunata ; Apricot] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/029-thumb.webp)
![Fico verdone. [Ficus carica ; Fig] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/001-thumb.webp)
![Fico gentile. [Ficus carica sativa ; Common Fig] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/002-thumb.webp)
![Fico melograno, o S. Germano. [Ficus carica sativa ; Fig] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/003-thumb.webp)
![Fico Monaco. [Fico della Lunigiana ; Fig Monaco] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/004-thumb.webp)
![Fico paradiseo. [Ficus carica bifera ; Fig] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/005-thumb.webp)
![Fico Pissaluto. [Ficus carica sativa ; Figs] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/006-thumb.webp)
![Fico Portoghese. [Figs from Portugal] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/007-thumb.webp)
![Fico Regina. [Ficus carica sativa ; Fig] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/008-thumb.webp)