The New Murrey and Blue blog

The two pictures above are centuries apart, yet the theme is the same, figures in a paradisial garden. Paradisial, because medieval art associated paradise with flowers, and in these images there are a lot of flowers.

Another famous example of medieval art that links flowers with paradise is the Wilton Diptych. I know I’ve written before about its recent visit to Oxford, but the article that has prompted me to write now is interesting for its explanation about flowers and paradise in medieval art.

The article is https://www.ft.com/content/05dc9ebd-35a7-4031-9df4-1ac5024cf844 by Robin Lane Fox, in which he writes: “….In Christian art and texts, paradise is usually presented as strewn with flowers. One of my top 10 flowery paradises [visited] Oxford this year….Until September 1 it [was] on show in a focused presentation at the Ashmolean Museum, on loan from the National Gallery during restorations of the Sainsbury Wing….” 

This diptych is surely one of the most exquisite pieces of medieval art. On one side it shows the 10-year-old King Richard II with his three protective saints, and on the other side are the Virgin and baby Jesus with eleven angels in paradise. That they are in paradise is indicated by the flowers at their feet and in their hair garlands.

If you read the above article you will be treated to a detailed and knowledgeable description of the scene depicted in the diptych.

The theme of flowers in medieval art is continued in a second article by the same writer, see here https://www.ft.com/content/8744b902-9daa-4f2e-96d1-b19309cd89f4.

Robin Lane Fox is well worth reading.

PS. Another example of flowers in medieval art is an 15th-century tapestry at Montacute House in Somerset. See here https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/art-collections/great-tapestries-to-see-up-close. As you will see in the illustration below, there are a LOT of flowers!

I wrote about this tapestry here https://murreyandblue.org/2021/10/08/a-15th-century-tapestry-with-a-mysterious-history/.