Artful Magazine 03/2025
The Spring 2025 issure of Artful Magazine brings together a collection of stories on plants and gardens.
It begins with an timeline exploring the acanthus leaf as a motif. Since 450 B.C. to the present day variations of this leaf have been used in architecture, furniture, fabric design and many other visual arts. It is one of the most enduring motifs in our visual vocabulary and remains popular to this day.
The magazine also features articles on two fascinating gardens - the Cheslea Physic Garden, founded in 1673 by the apothecaries of London and the garden at Villa di Castello, a property just outside Florence originally owned by the Medici family.
The Chelsea Physic Garden was London’s first botanical garden, predating Kew by almost a century. Gardeners there primarily grew and studied medicinal plants, but also experimented with cultivating tropical specimens. In the 1730s a woman named Elizabeth Blackwell, herself excluded from the professions of apothecary, physician or botanist, used the garden’s specimens to produce hundreds of botanical paintings which were eventually published as a “Herbal”, a comprehensive illustrated guide to medicinal plants and their uses. You can read about her fascinating story in this blog post, and in the printed magazine.
The gardens at Villa di Castello were transformed in the mid-16th century to some of the most impressive in Italy. Here the guests of Duke Cosimo I de’Medici and his successors were impressed by magnificent fountains and sculptures, which all conveyed messages of the greatness and virtue of his rule.
It was also home to the family’s ancient collection of citrus trees, including the “Bizzarria”, a curious hybrid first recorded in the 1640s. You can read more about its history and chance rediscovery in the magazine.
Another article focuses on Botticelli’s “Primavera”, or “Spring”, one of the world’s most famous paintings and one which was displayed at Villa di Castello for several centuries.
A fascinating discovery in the Guildhall Library in the City of London inspired the last article in the magazine. It’s a perfumers’ catalogue from the 1680s, a list of the healthcare and cosmetic products stocked by one French perfumer in Reformation London. It reads like something from a fairytale and includes alarming items like “Powdered Vipers” or “Oyl of Scorpion” alongside the more appealing “Jasmine Powder” and “Essence of Violet”.