Nature Illuminated. Flora and Fauna from the Court of Emperor Rudolf II

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Nature Illuminated

FLORA AND FAUNA FROM THE COURT OF THE EMPEROR RUDOLF II

T

H E CO U RT OF HOLY ROMAN EMP ERO R

Rudolf II produced nothing more amazing

than the Mira calligraphiae monumenta, a brilliant demonstration of two arts- calligraphy and miniature painting. The project began when Rudolf's predecessor commissioned the master calligrapher, Georg Bocskay, to create a model book of calligraphy. A preeminent scribe, Bocskay assembled a vast selection of contemporary and historic scripts. Many were intended not for practical use but for virtuosic display. Years later, at Rudolf's behest, court artist Joris Hoefnagel filied the spaces on each manuscript page with images of fruit, Rowers, insects, and other natural minutiae. The combination of word and image is rare and, on its tiny scale, constitutes one of the marvels of the Central European Renaissance. The manuscript is now in the manuscripts collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. A selection of forty,one of its pages is presented here as testimony to the artistic imagination and skill of its creators. Another volume reproduces a similar number of pages from Hoefnagel's

Abecedarium, bound in the same codex.

Printed in Singapore

ISBN 0,8923 6,472,6

ISBN 0 - 89236-472-6

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Nature Illuminated

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FLORA A N D FAU NA FROM TH E COURT OF THE EMPEROR RUDOLF II

L ee H end.rix and T hea V ignau,Wilberg

C:

TH E J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

LOS ANG E L ES

Introduction The illustrations in this book have been selected from

Mira calligraphiae 111on11menta, first published by the J. Paul Gerry Museum and Thames and Hudson, Ltd. in t992. The texts have been adapted from th e same volum e.

T

HE

miniatures reproduced here are from one of the most

precious books of the European Renaissance, the Mira

calligraphiae monumenta (the Model Book of Calligraphy) ofRudolfII. It is the work of two people who never actually met, and its origins are curious and complex.

In

1561- 62 the master calligrapher Georg Bocskay, imperial

secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created a Model Book of Calligraphy, consisting of 128 folios and demonstrating a vast selection of contemporary and historical scripts. It was intended as proof of his own pre,eminence among scribes and was a work of exceptional visual splendor, being written on the finest white vellum and lavishly embellished with gold and silver. Bocskay was born in Croatia, then part of Hungary. Clearly an outstandingly gifted master of his art, he was a valued, and highly paid, member of the Imperial Christopher Hudson, Publisher Mark Greenberg, Ma11agi11g Editor

court at Vienna, where he was described as 'scribe,' 'secretary' and 'court historian' and where his Model Book of Calligraphy was written. He also served Ferdinand's successor Maximilian II, and died

© T997 THE J.

PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

Suite 1000 1200 Getty Center Drive Los Angeles, California 90049- 1687

m 1575.

More than fifteen years after Bocskay's death, Ferdinand I's grandson, Emperor Rudolf II, commissioned Europe's last great illuminator, Joris Hoefnagel ( 1542-?1601 ), to illustrate the

On the from cover: Folio 40 (Imaginary butterfly, snakeshead, English walnut and sweet cherry) On the frontispiece: Folio 52 (Spanish chestnut, English iris and European filbert) Primed and bound in Singapore by C.S . Graphics

calligrapher's work. Hoefnagel was a man of immense learning and devised an ingenious figural response to Bocskay's scripts. Marshalling all the resources of pictorial illusionism, he sought to demonstrate the superior power of images over written words. His illuminations present a world of flowers, insects, fruit, small animals, and other forms of natural minutiae as extensive in its own way as Bocskay's collection of scripts.

5

The courts of Rudolf and his father, Maximilian TT, were among

watershed in the traditional relation between the two elements, by

the principal centers of sixteenth,century botany. A number of

constructing an explicit competition between them. Hoefnagel's

prominent Netherlandish botanists, like Carolus Clusius and

decorative programme in effect transformed Bocskay's original

Rembert Dodoens, were at one time employed by him. Both

manuscript into a visual paragone, a kind of debate arguing the

Maximilian and Rudolf built gardens in which to cultivate botanical

superiority of one art form over another. Such debates were closely

rarities, including those in the grounds of the imperial court in

associated with the rise of the visual arts - painting in particular -

Prague. It is perhaps in this context that one should view the exquisite

from craft to liberal art status during the Renaissance. Michelangelo,

illuminations of plants and animals found in Rudolfs Mira

for example, wrote a famous letter asserting sculpture's supremacy

calligraphiae monumenta. It is clear that in his illuminations for the book Hoefnagel's

over painting. Among Renaissance paragoni, however, Hoefnagel's is

project is part of the much more general attempt at court to amass and

painting to writing.

array knowledge, and particularly knowledge about the natural

unique, insofar as it is the first extensive work to explore the relation of Bocskay could not have anticipated the decorative program

world. Emperor Rudolf II founded the vast and renowned collections

Hoefnagel devised. The illuminator's program hinged on the pre,

which were housed at the imperial castle in Prague. Chief among

existence of the script and his own capacity to formulate a witty and

these collections were the picture gallery - which contained such

often satirical figural response to it. His illuminations consist of a

masterpieces as Correggio' s series of paintings representing the loves of

diverse assemblage of natural specimens united by their small size.

the gods and Albrecht Diirer's Madonna of the Rosary - and the so,

Most prominent among these multifarious objects are flowers,

called Kunstkan1111er, an encyclopedic assortment of natural specimens,

especially the many colorful bulb,grown ornamentals such as the

fossils, bones, minerals, scientific instruments, sculpture, goldsmith's

tulip (fols. 23, 5r), anemone (fols. r3, 30), various lilies (fols. 43, 92),

work, illustrated manuscripts, jewels and other objects. The

fritillary (fol. 47), and daffodil (fol. r2). A number of these, as well

Kunstkanmzer was intended to represent the contents of the entire world

as other botanical specimens including the tomato (fol. 102), were

divided according to the categories of artifice and nature. In all

considered rarities, having only recently been imported to Northern

likelihood, Bocskay and Hoefnagel's manuscript was housed there.

and Central Europe from the Levant, the New World, Andalusia,

In the production of an illuminated manuscript, it was quite

and elsewhere. Also represented in the manuscript is a vast range of

normal for the writing and the illuminations to be carried out by

native species such as the periwinkle (fol. 1), stock (fol. 5), rose (fols.

different people and for the writing to precede the illustrations. This

ro, r5), columbine (fols. r2, 28), violet (fol. 20), and pansy (fol. r8).

division oflabor contributed to the evolution of the manuscript page

Hoefnagel demonstrated great sophistication as a botanist both in the

into a dynamic, compelling field from which image and text alike

sheer number of genera represented and in the presentation of ranges

actively reached out to the viewer in an effort to communicate.

of species of given plants. His focus on flowers reflects the waning of

However, the Mira calligraphiae 111onu111enta marks something of a

the tradition of medieval herbals, in which plants were valued

6

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principally for medicinal or other utilitarian purposes, in favor of an aesthetic and natural historical appreciation of plants, which placed emphasis on the beautiful and the rare. This formalistic and visually oriented interest in natural variety for its own sake was a manifestation of the larger effort to collect and classify all of nature's production that dominated sixteenth,century natural history. The Model Book of Calligraphy stands at an art historical crossroad. It constitutes one of the last important monuments in the grand tradition of medieval European manuscript illumination. In addition to its meticulous studies of flora and fauna, it points directly to the emergence of floral still life painting, an essentially new artistic genre of the seventeenth century, whose early centers of production and collecting were the Netherlands and the court ofRudolfII at Prague. Bocskay's achievement bears an analogous relationship to the history of Western writing. Produced at a time when printed books had almost totally replaced manuscripts, it celebrates the function of the handwritten book as the principal preserver and disseminator of knowledge while also showing the concern with self,expression that would dominate the uses of script from the sixteenth century on.

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