Counterfeit”: The Trompe l’Oeil and Botanical Art

of general interest, and assembled a considerable collection of rare tracts and illustrated manuscripts from the period.  96

Some leafy stems of Pelargonium zonale, an African geranium, are arranged in a glass; two aster blossoms and an elegant white Narcissus poeticus with a yellow and orange corona spring on long, delicate stems from a mug; and a slender, pyramid-shaped bottle holds two blue cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus). A dried branch of fennel has been placed in a redware pitcher together with a small French flag, while an artichoke balances against the rim of a small black pitcher, its top-heavy inflorescence supported by the large terra-cotta pot standing nearby. A tall redware pitcher contains an arrangement of foxtail grasses with a feather and two fading red poppies. One papery petal has fallen and rests on the shelf next to Bunny’s gardening hat.

Painted on the inside of one of the cupboards is a framed sketch of a red carnation. In another cupboard, Renard reproduces a page from Phytographia curiosa, exhibens arborum, fruticum, herbarum & florum icones, an important botanical text by the Dutch physician Abraham Munting (1626–1683) that was published in Amsterdam in 1713. It is illustrated with 245 botanical engravings to which Munting added embellishments such as landscape backgrounds and trompe l’oeil elements. In 1957, Bunny acquired a copy of this work in which each of the plates was colored by hand, with somewhat more imagination than scientific accuracy. For the greenhouse trompe l’oeil, she asked Renard to reproduce the plate of the “Arbutus” (figure 23) (possibly a chokeberry, Aronia arbutifolia) and he did so with meticulous precision, even copying the original artist’s error of coloring the flowers blue. At the foot of the plant appear a spade and a scroll, but Renard replaced the words inscribed on the scroll, “Arbutus humilis virginiana” (Arbutus unedo), with “Ex Libris Bunny Mellon 1960.”  97

Abraham Munting, “Arbutus humilis virginiana” (possibly a chokeberry,

Aronia arbutifolia), hand-colored engraving, from Phytographia curiosa (Amsterdam, 1713), figure 23, folio 125, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, VA.