A winter nosegay, Orticoline d'Inverno - Milan, Italy.

A winter nosegay: a handful of bright red anemones, the dense, white waxen buds of viburnum, a single rose shaded vanilla ice cream, glossy, lanceolate, deep green leaves, small, orange rose berries and a simple raffia ribbon around the bare stems.

It was a present. I received it at “Orticoline d'inverno”, the market flower show held at the beginning of December, in Milan, Italy. This is the second winter edition, but my first visit, while I am a loyal visitor of the most famous exhibition that occurs in May in Via Palestro, always-in Milan. I made a wise “sortie” reaching, soon after lunch, the Museo Diocesano, where the show was located. Opened in 2001, this museum collects ancient and precious works of art of sacred inspiration and liturgical use from the parishes of the surrounding area.

The show developed in two large rooms at either sides of the entrance, after an aisle I hastily crossed. Art and flowers welcomed the visitors in a warm environment, with the characteristic perfume of plants, the red of Christmas and the hum of voices. On display were rich collections of orchids, cyclamen and poinsettias, particular vegetal worlds that attract a numerous public eager for answers and newness. All the others, included me, looked at them with curious and amazed glances, merely enjoying the variety of colours and shapes, in a complete ignorance of names, places of origin and cultivation requirements. I lingered longer in the other room, before the shelves covered with moss, embroidered with ferns and hidden under expensive hellebores. A triumph of red and violet berries, especially skimmia and gaultheria, surrounded them so that you hardly realized the gigantic paintings on the wall behind. The delicate flowers of the winter camellias were scattered in the room. Exotic flowers deserved a picture, a thought and the promise to see the banksie and the airy tillandsie in their natural world, during the incoming year. Old style garden furniture inspired large country mansions covered with abundant snowfalls and crowded with children and dogs. It turned out that the stone fountain plate, with a small bird craved on the edge, is a successful centerpiece for the tables in Milan. Tea and pastries were expected for five o’clock in the afternoon.

At the entrance, a patient team composed bunches of flowers upon request.They fished the needed material from blue buckets. Flowers had reached Milan from the conservatories in San Remo, a town by the Mediterranean Sea.

This charming nosegay reminds me of another winter bunch. It was described in an article written by Mrs. Vita Sackville-West for the column she wrote for the “Observer” from 1946 to 1961. Later, many of these articles were collected in a lovely book “In Your Garden”. In her simple but careful style she presented the plants and places she knew, an everyday garden life she deeply loved and lived.

February 26, 1950
A dear near neighbour brought me a tussie-mussie this week. […] a nosegay […] It is composed of at least five different flowers, all perfectly chosen. She goes always for the best, which I am sure is the secret of good gardening: choose always the best of any variety you want to grow. Thus, in the bunch she brought me, the violet were pink violets, the sort called Coeur d’Alsace, and Iris Reticulata she put in was the sort called Hercules, which is redder than the familiar purple and gold. […] The anemone that she put in must be a freakishly early bloom of Anemone St. Bavo, amethyst petals with an electric-blue centre. (Sackville-West, 2004; 35)


I am not sure about the specie of these anemones, but […] a flowerless room is a soul-less room. (Sackville-West, 2004; 150)

I really love to see my winter nosegay in bloom on a table against a window that frames the first whirls of snow.


Flower show:
ORTICOLINE D’INVERNO - MUSEO DIOCESANO C.so di Porta Ticinese, 95 - MILANO
http://www.orticola.org/mostra.htm


Further readings:
In Your Garden – V. Sackville-West, First Frances Lincoln Edition, 2004 from Books Google December 2009
http://books.google.it/books?q=in+your+garden

A mon seul désir - La Dame à la licorne - Cluny Museum, Paris France

There was a last althea in flower in the cobblestone courtyard of the Cluny Museum in Paris, quiet and silent in an early morning of an October working day. A restless glance ran along the crenellated walls, over the small windows, the dormers and the turrets, over the steep slate roof to a clear sky and then back to a small door. I already knew what I would have seen beyond: details of a medieval life made of ivory and gold, glass and wood, brass, stone and fine fabrics. In a dedicated room, the six tapestries of La Dame à la Licorne, or The Lady and the Unicorn, waited to be admired, plunged in dim light and padded atmosphere.

In 1882, the Museum purchased the cycle from the municipality of Boussac, France. Displayed in the great hall of the castle of this town, in the rural region of Limousin, the cloths fascinated Monsieur Prosper Mérimée, historian and state archaeologist. Already in 1841, he had urged interventions worried for the state of neglect in which some of them were stored. Their story began, indeed, many centuries before, when, around 1480, Flanders weavers created this refined and elegant work for a rich French cloth trader, Monsieur Jean Le Viste. Legends fill the following centuries.

The imposing tapestries show a fair and noble lady standing on a rounded blue isle assisted by a devoted maidservant, within a proud lion and a white unicorn, carrying waving flags and banners. Tall, slender trees full of fruits and flowers frame the picture. She performs simple gestures: takes a sweet from a cup, plays an instrument, holds a mirror, weaves a wreath of perfumed flowers and touches the unicorn’s horn.
The pictures stand out against a ruby red background strewn with flowers and small animals in a style called mille-fleurs, or thousand flowers.

Flowers are everywhere. Delicate hues shape forty different species. Columbine, aster, digital, stock, hyacinth, daffodil, daisy, lily, periwinkle, violet, jasmine and carnation, among others, bloom in clumps on the blue isle or fall in branches on the red background. Flowers made of silk and wool reminded spring in the cold rooms of lonely castles during the long, dark winter days.

All the elements in the tapestries are clearly recognizable. Trees are pines, oaks, hollies and oranges, while the small animals include domestic dogs, meek lambs, tender rabbits, smart foxes, monkeys and parrots.
Their different combinations and rich details make each cloth unique and denote a research for harmony and beauty in the patterns of the tapestries, probably the work of a French artist called Maître de Moulins.

These five tapestries are assumed to represent the five senses: taste, hearing, sight, smell and touch. But, this interpretation does not exhaust the complex network and the different levels of meanings. In Medieval times, each flower, fruit, animal or colour was a symbol that wrapped the universe in endless correspondences. The world was the sign of God, a message that every man could read according to his ability. It was an immediate and intuitive code to approach the divine mystery, to understand a story already written from the beginning to the end, from the Creation to the Universal Judgment.

The sixth tapestry stands alone. The lady puts her necklace in a casket held by her maidservant, standing in front of a tent which the lion and the unicorn keep opened. A small dog is sat next to her, on a soft cushion on a bench. The motto “A’ mon seul désir”, “To my only desire”, is written in gold on the top of the tent whose style recalls the East and whose ropes hide two other mysterious letters.

This tapestry should resume the meaning of the whole cycle, but its interpretation is not yet definitive. Some historians see the renounce to the physical pleasures to achieve a spiritual truth, others the celebration of the courtly love.
Symbols answered to a deep need of understanding, they were intended to amuse, instruct and reveal the truth of God, not to conceal it. They were not the mysterious and magical signs that we see today.

In the courtyard, while I buttoned my coat, I looked at the shells that encrust the wall near the entrance. They are memories of the religious origin of the building, of the pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. The lively althea flowered nearby.

Further readings:
Storie di arazzi e di fiori – Inna Dufour Nannelli – Leonardo Arte
Letterature romanze del medioevo – Alberto Varvaro – Il Mulino

Photos:
Travel in a garden

Links:
The official site of the Cluny Museum, Paris
http:www.musee-moyenage.fr/

An elegant, detailed site about La Dame à la licorne (in French)
http://sarah.vanden.free.fr/