Plate 75: A Fly and Other Insects with an Iris

c.1575/1590s

Joris Hoefnagel

Associated Names
Joris Hoefnagel
Artist, Flemish, 1542 - 1600
The image features a purple and green iris flower at the center, surrounded by various insects. These include a large fly, a wasp-like insect, and several smaller insects spread evenly around it within a thin, oval frame. The color palette consists of soft purples, greens, and natural brown tones from the insects, with subtle shades of black and ivory. Observing from the top center moving clockwise, there is a black beetle-like insect, a wasp-like insect on the right edge, a small moth below, a large fly near the bottom, and two more insects to the left, separated by the stem of the flower.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    watercolor and gold paint on parchment

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald

  • Dimensions

    page size (approximate): 14.3 x 18.4 cm (5 5/8 x 7 1/4 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1987.20.5.76

  • Series Title

    Animalia Rationalia et Insecta (Ignis): Plate LXXV

Associated Artworks

See all 80 artworks
This appears to be the front cover of an old leather-bound book. The book is covered with red leather with the word "IGNIS" embossed in gold in the center. The cover shows signs of wear and aging, with visible scuffs, scratches, and discoloration. There are four brass clasps on the edges of the book: one on the top and bottom edges, and two on the right side.

Animalia Rationalia et Insecta (Ignis)

Joris Hoefnagel
1575
This image depicts an ornately designed manuscript page. The central text block is titled "ANIMALIA RATIONALIA ET INSECTA," framed within a decorative border. The top features an intricate scroll design with various colors and an inscription in a fiery cartouche with the word "IGNIS." The corners of the frame include decorative flourishes in pink, yellow, blue, and green hues, with ribbon-like extensions and hanging accents. At the bottom, a smaller inscription reads "Qui fecit Angelos spiritus suos: Et ministros suos flammam verentem," within a blue-bordered decorative bracket with stylized elements. This style is reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts from the Renaissance or Baroque period.

Title Page

Joris Hoefnagel
1570
Set within a drawn oval frame, two people are shown from the waist up against a parchment-white background in this horizontal watercolor portrait. To the left, the man’s face is entirely covered with golden brown hair, leaving space for only the eyes, the protruding nose, and mouth. He looks at us, wearing a narrow white collar over a lapis-blue robe with black sleeves. To our right, a woman rests one hand on his near shoulder. Her body is angled toward him, to the left, and she looks off in that direction. She has a round face, pale skin, rosy cheeks, and dark pink lips. She wears a black cap with a wide, flat strip of cloth draped from front to back. Her black dress has a white ruff collar, puffed sleeves, a cinched waist, and a full skirt. The pair stand behind what appears to be a grassy ledge with a twig growing out of a rise to the left. The background behind them and beyond the gold line border is white. Latin text is handwritten above and below the gold oval frame in two colors of ink. Above and in purple, text reads, “Omni miraculo quod fit per Hominem maius miraculum est Homo visibilium omnium maximus est Mundus, invisibilium DEVS sed mundum esse cospicimus, Deum esse Credimus…” Below and in yellow ink, text reads, ““HOMO natus de MVLIERE, brevi viventis Tempore Repletus multis miseriis. Job 14.”

Plate 1: Pedro González (Petrus Gonsalvus) and His Wife, Catherine

Joris Hoefnagel
1570

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Emperor Rudolf II of Austria?[1]; Secretarius Heinrich Hagen, Vienna, 1611.[2] Count Emanuel Maria Joseph von Arco, Munich, 1751.[3] Graf von Seinsheim, canon of Salzburg and Speyer, 1753. Master stonemason Rüpfel, Munich, c. 1830. Joseph Anton Niggl [1792 - 1842], Markt Tölz. Karl August von Brentano [1817 - 1896], Augsburg. (sale, Rudolph Weigel, 28 October 1861, no. 2220-a-d]; (Frederick Startridge Ellis [active 1860 - 1885], London; formerly identified as F. S. Eliot)[3]; Henry Huth [1815 - 1878], London; by descent to his son, Alfred Henry Huth [1850 - 1910], London; (sale, Sotheby's' London, 12 June 1913, no. 3722); (William Wesley & Son, London); Charles Francis George Richard Schwerdt, Old Alresford House, Hampshire (his sale, Sotheby's' London, 15 July 1946, no. 2216); (The Rosenbach Company, Philadelphia); Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jenkintown; given to Edith Goodkind Rosenwald, Jenkintown; gift to NGA, 1987.

[1] Although Van Mander claims the series was commissioned and purchased by Rudolf, this is impossible as dates scattered throughout volumes pre-date Hoefnagel's' contact with Rudolf. The series does not appear in Rudolf's' inventory, though he is likely to have owned it at one time as many copies from the volumes appear in his natural history collections, now in Vienna (see Bass 2020, 12).
[2] Vignau-Wilberg 2017, 98 without documentation.
[3]Wolfgang Wegner, Kurfurst Carl Theodor von der Pfalz als Kunstsammler, Mannheim, 1960: 13.
[4] Ellis was a book dealer who frequently sold to Huth and wrote the catalogue of Huth's' collection. He started his own business just a year before The Four Elements appeared at Weigel. Ellis is correctly identified by M. Bartels, "Ueber abnorme Behaarung beim Menschen," Zeitschrift fu¨r Ethnologie 11 (1879): 155, note 1.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1998

  • A Collector's Cabinet, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998, no. 76.

1999

  • From Botany to Bouquets: Flowers in Northern Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1999, no. 45, as Iris from Animalia Rationalia et Insecta (Ignis).

2002

  • Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil Painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2002-2003, no. 30, as Ignis (Animalia Rationalia et Insecta) Plate 47.

Bibliography

1984

  • Hendrix, Lee. Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: a Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting. Ph.D. Hendrix, Lee. Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: a Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1984 (series).dissertation, Princeton University, 1984 (series).

2017

  • Vignau-Wilberg, Thea. Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel: Art and Science around 1600. Berlin, 2017: no. A6 (for series).

2019

  • Bass, Marisa Ann. Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt. Princeton, 2019 (for series).

Inscriptions

Upper center in red ink: HABET ET MVSCA SPLENEM. (“The fly also has a spleen (i.e, for laughing).” Erasmus,_ Adages_, 3.5.7) (trans. Vignau-Wilberg 1994, 62); center right in brown ink: LXXV.
Facing page:
Upper center in red ink: Undiq[ue] Musca suas fert alas, undiq[ue] vivit: / Musca per Hispaniam, Musca su[per][pra] Italiam.

Wikidata ID

Q64590822

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