Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art NY, Tulips
Four Tulips: Boter man (Butter Man), Joncker (Nobleman), Grote geplumaceerde (The Great Plumed One), and Voorwint (With the Wind)
Jacob Marrel German, ca. 1635–45 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/337769
Four tulips, each carrying their own name: Boter man (Butter Man), Joncker (Nobleman), Grote geplumaceerde (The Great Plumed One), and Voorwint (With the Wind), indicating the great value of each bulb. At the peak of the so-called “tulipomania” in 1637, certain tulip bulbs sold for more than ten times the annual income of a skilled artisan. For this reason, and because an ornamental plant did not make sense in New Netherland’s sustenance-focused gardening plots, it would not be until the latter part of the 17th-century that tulips were shipped to New Amsterdam and planted in its gardens for pure ornamental enjoyment. Adriaen van der Donck mentions them in his Description of New Netherland, so he must have seen them some time in the 1650s.
Jacob Marrel - www.rijksmuseum.nl. From the Tulpenboek, folio 38v. wikimedia commons
The intriguing bulbous plants, especially the tulip, enchanted scholars and gardeners alike for centuries, ever since their introduction from Turkey to Northern Europe in the early 17th-century. Particularly prized was the striped variety, illustrated here in all its intricate form and design by the skilled watercolor artist Jacob Marrel. The cause of these unpredictable striped patterns, namely an underlying viral infection, wasn’t understood in those days and remained a mystery until the early 20th-century, when the tulip breaking virus was discovered.