The Met Cloisters Garden Journal

Our lush botanical stationery pays homage to the brilliant flower studies (ca. 1510–1515) created by the Master of Claude de France. His rare book in The Met collection belongs to what’s often called “the last flowering” of northern European manuscript illumination in the medieval tradition; its exceptional pages unquestionably provided the models for renderings in several celebrated commissions linked to the Queen of France and Antoine de la Barre, who later because the Archbishop of the French city of Tours, where this manuscript was made. Taken with the sublime beauty of “garden variety” plants, the artist elevated the likes of the dandelion and the fava bean to the same celebrated status of the rose through exquisitely detailed watercolors articulated with gold and silver paint,…See More