![Fico gentile. [Ficus carica sativa ; Common Fig] (1817-1839) - Pomona Italiana](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/002-original.webp)
Fico gentile. [Ficus carica sativa ; Common Fig] (1817-1839)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.50 : 1
First Look
江馆清秋，晨起看竹，烟光日影露气，皆浮动于疏枝密叶之间。
—— 清·郑板桥《题画竹》
On an autumn morning at the river lodge I looked at the bamboo: mist, sunlight, dew, all drifting among the sparse and dense leaves.
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. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
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. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand. 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
朝饮木兰之坠露兮，夕餐秋菊之落英。
—— 战国·屈原《离骚》
At dawn I drink the dew fallen from magnolia; at dusk I dine on the fallen petals of autumn chrysanthemum.
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. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
the rest of the year it is only a mass of leaves. 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. 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
“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
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 1817 gave a whole day to a single flower.
![Fico verdone. [Ficus carica ; Fig] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/001-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)
![Fico rubado. [Ficus carica sativa ; Common fig] (1817-1839)](/upload/nat/pomona-italiana/009-thumb.webp)