‘A Spring of Immortal Colours’. Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (c. 1533–1588) and Picturing Plants in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

The Huguenot refugee artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues is traditionally known for his observations of North America and as the author of numerous albums of floral drawings. This article reassesses the attribution of several of these albums to Le Moyne based on documentary and stylistic evidence. This study identifies the sixteenth-century Huguenot nobleman and diplomat Jacques de Morogues as the owner of one of the albums, and it discusses the production and early use of these albums as luxury gifts in French diplomatic and courtly circles. We document connections between the albums associated with Le Moyne and other sixteenthcentury and later works of floral imagery. We argue that the albums associated with Le Moyne show that developments in floral imagery in this period were driven by a distinct network of artists and collectors, and we offer a hypothesis of how members of this network may have interpreted them as an occasion to take pleasure in nature's charming variety, to praise it as God's work, and to use flowers as symbols of feminine beauty and fertility.