Object Image

Homage to Jacquin ("Jacquin's Monument")

The first impression is one of chaos, an overabundance of plants and flowers. Yet this is deceptive for, in fact, the painting depicts the diversity of the plant kingdom that the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–78) had divided into twenty-four classes, its first systematic classification. Ordering seems also to preoccupy the “scholarly” cockatoo whereas the clumsy monkey represents the exact opposite. Linnaeus oversees events from his urn. But the painting conceals even more. Above the bust portrait of the Viennese botanist Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin (1727–1817) on the plinth, two inconspicuous plants are intertwined. They are Linnaea borealis and Jacquinia mucronata, named after Linn...
1821-1822
Oil on canvas
218.0 x 164.0cm
3651
Image © Belvedere, Vienna, 2023

Where you'll find this

Upper Belvedere
Permanent collection

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