Study of a Tulip (Gemarmerde van Jasper)
Pieter Holsteyn II (Dutch, c.1612–1673)
c. 1645
- Medium
- brush and watercolor in crimson, gray, and green over traces of charcoal on antique laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 32 x 21.1 cm (12 5/8 x 8 5/16 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This image of a tulip was made as part of a tulip book used as a grower’s marketing tool during the so-called tulip mania, a speculative bubble in 17th-century Holland, when ten tulip bulbs could cost more than a stately Amsterdam canal house. The striations on the tulip, which were caused by a virus in the bulb, made it especially valuable. Pieter Holsteyn II was one of many artists in the Netherlands at the time who specialized in botanical illustration. This tulip's Dutch name, inscribed on the sheet, translates roughly to "marriage of jasper stone."
