Exhibition Summary | Living in Nature

The ordered Universe

Scholarship and curatorial practices have recently become interested in nature and our relationship to it. This is why Foundation Beyeler in Basel appointed a botanical curator just this year and the reason that the Metropolitan Museum in New York has dedicated a gallery to the ecologies of painting.

The interest in nature is not an entirely new phenomenon, but rather something that artists have returned to throughout history. A fascinating example of this can be found in medieval manuscript illustrations of the creation of the world itself, where God quite literally shapes the cosmos with a compass, puts the stars in the firmament and the sun and moon in the sky, places the fishes in the sea and releases the birds to the heavens.

We also see him creating humans: Adam from clay and Eve fromnAdam’s rib. The world that medieval people lived in was one where every aspect was created and ordered by God.

f. 8v Creation of the Earth; f. 9r Creation of the Sky. Detail from Bible Historiale, Genesis; Etablissement de la Bible, Legends of Saints, etc., in Latin and French. Illuminated manuscript on vellum, Master of the Berry- Apokalypse. France, Paris, c. 1416.

The Church Father Saint Agustine of Hippo said, in his Sermon 68, that nature can be read and understood like a book itself: “God did not make letters of ink for you to recognize him in: he set before your eyes all these things he has made.” Therefore, we open this exhibition with an impressive and unusual depiction of Saint Augustine enthroned, a motif drawing on Carolingian imperial portraits.

f. 3v Drawing of Saint Augustine at the beginning of the first letter. The ‘Firmin Didot’ Augustine, Epistolae. Manuscript in Latin on vellum. North-Eastern France, perhaps Metz, c. 1050

In Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies (first written in the first three decades of the 7th century, however the exemplar exhibited in our gallery was copied in the 10th century) we understand how scholars and students at the monasteries of medieval Europe made sense of the rest of the world. Isidore, the Bishop of Seville who posthumously would become the patron saint of the internet because of this all-encompassing encyclopaedic work, describes all parts of the universe and human existence. In the chapter on the world, the copyist has made a mistake and excluded the final paragraph of text on the country Albania. This was rectified by a scribe in the 12th century, who added the missing text on a scrap of parchment and created a completely unique map.

f. 182vr Map of Regions of Cappadocia. from Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, Books I-XX. Manuscript in Latin. Northern France, Saint-Amand Abbey(?), c. 950-980 century, and Tournai, Saint-Martin Abbey, c. 1150.

But understanding the world around oneself was more than just the literal imagining of foreign lands as topography on a map, it was also a close consideration of all the creatures that inhabited the far-flung corners of the world.

Isidore’s text also included descriptions of animals that would become hugely influential. We see this in an unusual witness of the Physiologus also on display in this same case. This, the Dicta Chrysostomi version of the text, is sometimes described as the first bestiary as it discusses only animals and divides the birds and the beasts. The physical and natural characteristics of the creatures are taken straight from Isidore, but they are embellished with religious interpretations.

This is because every aspect of existence – from the movements of the sun, moon and planets around the central stationary earth to the harmonious and orderly way in which ants carried grain – conformed to the divine rules. The Panther, for example, has a breath that smells wonderful and that attracts all the other animals, much like Christ who draws in people from afar.

Physiologus. Decorated Manuscript in Latin. Germany, Erfurt, Saint-Peter’s Abbey, c. 1150-1180.

The Changing Natural World

There are different ways of understanding nature and our relationship to it. These cases consider two of these modes: the natural world as a stage for human actors who occasionally interact with the scenery and a much more embedded understanding of nature, where human beings are a part of a holistic ecosystem (to use a modern phrase), or a microcosm within a macrocosm (according to medieval terminology).

Genre painting, with its depictions of anonymous peasants labouring in verdant forests and yellowed fields, originated in the calendar pages of medieval manuscripts, particularly Flemish manuscripts of the late 15th and early 16th century. No better example of this can be found than here: the magnificent opening of the Croÿ-Arenberg Hours. In the month of May, the month of lovers, a happy couple is riding out of the city in to a sprawling landscape in the distance and even the animals are in pairs.

May calendar page from Croÿ- Arenberg Hours. Manuscript on vellum, with miniatures by the Master of Sir George Talbot and other masters, Flanders (Ghent?), c. 1510/1520.

These types of very elaborate cityscapes and country scenes including the leisurely pursuits of noble lords and ladies as well as the seasonal work carried out by the peasants and workers grew out of a tradition of depicting the labours of the months in the calendar pages of Psalters and Books of Hours. In the earlier versions of these depictions, we often see a single isolated figure digging in a field in the spring, harvesting wine in September or slaughtering a pig at the end of the year.

What they have in common, even though these depictions may seem hugely different, is that they all render in a very concrete way how nature, and thus human life itself, changed over the course of a year. This cyclical understanding of nature is interestingly referenced in this Psalter (which was originally made in Flanders), where the month of January is illustrated with the ancient god Janus, whose two faces are seen in silhouette as he looks to the year just gone as well as the future.

f. 5r January: the Roman god Janus, here with three faces instead of two, sits at the table and eats and drinks. January calender page from an illuminated Psalter in Latin, Southern Netherlands
(perhaps Ghent), c. 1255-1265.

These pages show humans interacting with and shaping a changing landscape, but medieval conceptions of nature did not posit that the human body was distinct and separate from the world around it. People in medieval Europe also understood that they themselves were shaped by the land and universe around them, which very apparent when we consider medieval medicine.

The four humours (blood, phlegm, black and yellow bile) needed to be in balance to achieve a healthy body and mind. This was done through adjusting food and drink, as well as bloodletting and different types of purges. The four elements that made up the world (air, water, fire and earth) were also thought to be connected to the four humours in the human body, so the effect of external changes to the world had a deep and abiding impact on the human body itself.

The large diagram below shows the movements of the sun, moon and planets around the central stationary earth. The position and relationship between planets and the stars were understood to exert influence on the human body below, thus this manuscript is full of recipes and treatments that is fundamentally rooted in an understanding of the natural world as a macrocosm endlessly influencing the microcosm that was the individual human body.

Diagram from Ortolf von Bayerland Arzneibuch and other texts. Manuscript on paper in German. Germany, Cologne, c. 1475.

Almost all medical theories however were rooted in a Hippocratic and Galenic tradition, which originated in the Ancient world and remained unbroken for over millennia, surviving in the Latin West through the textual traditions of the Arab world.

The end of Nature

Medieval people lived at the end of time and understood that the natural world around them would turn against them very soon: the seas would be poisoned and the stars will fall from the sky. This certainty about the imminent Apocalypse was reflected in the art was created at the French royal court and English manor houses alike.

The elegant Man of Sorrows (opposite) presented by two angles in a manuscript illuminated by the Luçon Master, is an illustration of the promised redemption after death.

Christ as Man of Sorrows, supported by two Angels. Book of Hours, use of Paris. Illuminated manuscript on vellum, Luçon Master. France, Paris, 1400-1405, f. 162r.

Likewise, in a manuscript made in Flanders for the English market we find a rare and fascinating diagram utilising the human hand to remind the reader that we will all die and that one day we will be forgotten.

Manus Mediationis, from ‘The Sheriff Chiche Hours’, use of Sarum Manuscript in Latin on vellum, illuminated by Herman Scherre and a collaborator, and the Master of the Beaufort Saints, Flanders, Bruges and England, London, c. 1390-1410, f. 2v.

In the Book of Revelation, when the third trumpet sounds, a great star falls from the heaven and poisons a third of all the waters – this star is known as Wormwood. There are several interpretations of the name of the star, but the most likely is perhaps that it is named for the very bitter tinctures that can be distilled from the plant with the same name.

A dried twig of wormwood is preserved in a 18th century herbarium in our last showcase. This manuscript with dried plants and handwritten notes is almost contemporary with Carl von Linne’s Philosophia Botanica (1751), which created the taxonomic order of plants and herbs which is still utilised today. While the organisational system of Linne is not used here, there is nevertheless a noticeable departure from the medieval divinely ordered universe; here wormwood is just a plant and not a harbinger of the Apocalypse.