Flowers and Death

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 01:24:43 GMT

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Theme: death

The transience of flowers links them with mortality, especially when they are picked in honour and memory of the dead.

The early church, knowing this custom derived from pre-Christian religions and having failed to suppress it, embraced it.

Some Italian Renaissance paintings of the sarcophagus of the Virgin showed scattered roses, and the message of death and resurrection was implicit in paintings of the Virgin and Child surrounded by flowers. When these were red the colour was linked with Christ's sacrificial blood.

The traditional meanings, reinforced by the biblical quotations like 'man's days are as grass' and 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity', lived on in 17th Century flower paintings. This 'vanitas' element included memento mori such as timepieces, skulls, flies and other insects, so there can be little doubt that the gaudy tulips and full-petalled roses contained the message that beauty passes.

Lilies have strong funereal associations, but only became linked with untimely death by the Romantic movement in the 19th Century.

Even Van Gogh's sunflowers, at first glance vibrant with life and sunshine, on closer inspection are nearly dead.

Tags: flowers, mortality, death, art

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Flowers and Death