There are many reasons why an artist might choose to include a plant in their work. It doesn't matter what material you use to express your art. It can be a painting done in tempera, oil or watercolor. Perhaps your chosen medium is sculpture, and rather than keep adding layers – as is the case with a painting – you need to roughen and remove those layers until you can reveal what you have locked away in your mind. Contemporary artists are also turning to botany, although usually with less ambition to use leaves and flowers to tell a story, and not as frequently as in the past. Of course, there will always be exceptions and there are artists for whom nature and plants are the dominant motif in their artwork.
The desire to paint or sculpt a grass or a large tree depends not only on the era but also on the person. An astonishing degree of realism was achieved in early Netherlandish painting – also called Flemish Primitives – and many plants depicted in these works could rival those of botanical illustrators of later centuries. The attention to detail with which Robert Campin (ca. 1375 – 1444) portrayed his plants makes us think about something more than art or botany: also about the love of doing one's work well, of achieving the highest, of the fleeting nature of one Plant to capture flowering or the emergence of a new violet leaf (Viola odorata). If you look closely at one of the lilies (Lilium candidum) or lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) painted by Jan van Eyck (ca. 1390 – 1441), you can almost tell how long each flower was open that day. great delicacy and precision in his brushstrokes.
More information
In later centuries, other artists from the region took over the baton, such as Joachim Patinir (ca. 1480 – 1524) or Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568 – 1625). This last Baroque painter took botanical art to an unprecedented extreme by incorporating dozens of different species and varieties into his complex floral compositions, painting all the correct and specific anatomical features in each one. His passion for plants was such that it was not uncommon for him to leave his workshop in Antwerp to travel to other places such as Brussels to depict flowers different from those he could find in the Antwerp gardens.
Jan Brueghel the Elder portrayed plants and their flowers with unique precision and detail, as in this “Flower Vase”.Heritage Images/Getty Images
When you look at a piece of art that includes plants, you should think about why they are there. In many cases it is simply the result of adding a reality, an environment to the characters painted there, as is the case with the background landscapes. But there are countless works in which the plant completes the artist's speech and reinforces the message that is intended to be conveyed. No one would believe that the rose held by Mary Tudor, Queen of England, in Antonio More's magnificent 1554 portrait was the result of a passing appetite on her or the artist's part. In the court portrait, where everything is measured and demarcated, botany also tells and tells. In this case it is neither more nor less than the red rose of Lancaster, the flower of his noble house; an attribute that, like a crown or a scepter, accredits her as heir to the throne, as the proud successor of her lineage.
There are many like this last case, since this incessant use of flowers in the hands of the sitters or near them is very common in art history and points to the ancient connection between people and plants and the symbology associated with them. Of course, much of this symbolic charge is linked to religion, and botany also plays a major role in this type of work.
Portrait of Maria Tudor in the Prado Museum. Alamy Stock Photo
The strawberry (Fragaria vesca), for example, is one of the species most often used by artists to complement the divine message of the work. With obvious polysemy, its red fruits recall the blood shed by Christ on the cross, but its trifoliate leaves associate it with the Holy Trinity, its white flowers with the virginity of Mary, or its small size with the humility of the Mother of Christ, among others. But it also brings with it another rich symbology associated with the pagan world, so much of the meaning of these plants comes from ancient times, from the classical world. There they were already considered an important species in their rituals and in their gardens, as is the case with the ubiquitous Chirivita (Bellis perennis), a daisy that has appeared in works as ornamentation and symbolism since at least the time of the Babylonians. The pomegranate tree (Punica granatum) is another species that could serve as a model for universality, as it is reflected in works of art from all eras and virtually all civilizations, both Asian and European. This tree was painted and sculpted from Japan to India, and its presence is almost as important in Italian Renaissance works as it is in Mediterranean gardens.
The pomegranate tree is a species that appears ubiquitously in Asian and European artwork. This example is by an anonymous artist.Heritage Images (Getty Images)
Plants tell us many stories, from political or noble, from historical to economic or the conquest of new territories, including customs and society of the moment. Everything has its place in a flower or a leaf, from mythological to religious symbols and every religion. The plants are another character in these works, expressed with a different language, but not so different from the gesture of a look or hands. You just have to learn and fall in love with them, even if they only appear as a few colorful lines on a canvas in the museum.