Still Life with Flowers, a Snail and Insects
Joris Hoefnagel
1589 · Watercolor, gouache, and shell gold on vellum · Drawings and Prints
Joris Hoefnagel is one of a few artists in the sixteenth century celebrated for their incredibly accurate and beautiful studies after nature. The symmetric composition of this bouquet might give it a gloss of artifice from a modern viewpoint, but conforms to the predominant taste that lasted well into the seventeenth century. The difference in scale of some of Hoefnagel’s flowers indicates that he used individual flower studies to form his bouquet - a fact that is supported by his reuse of separate motifs in other works. This particular bouquet of flowers is a very intimate work, not just because of its size, but also because of its intended purpose. The Latin inscription on the pedestal reveals that Hoefnagel made this drawing for his mother ‘as a monument of love’.
- Artist
- Joris Hoefnagel
- Date
- 1589
- Medium
- Watercolor, gouache, and shell gold on vellum
- Department
- Drawings and Prints
- Credit line
- Purchase, Charles and Jessie Price, Jean A. Bonna, and Annette de la Renta Gifts, and The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2008
