Published by Musée du Louvre Editions / Actes Sud, 2019
Hardcover, 208 pages
13 x 21 cm | 5.25 x 8.25 in
Text in English
ISBN: 9782330120160
From the Louvre:
On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Louvre Pyramid, Jean-Michel Othoniel was invited by the museum to produce a book demonstrating the importance of flowers in the eight departments of the Louvre.
The artist composes an unpublished herbarium accompanied by the notes he wrote about the secret language of flowers and their symbolism in ancient painting. He reveals their hidden meaning by telling their stories and mythologies.
This book is presented as an alphabetical notebook that the artist has fed through the rooms of the Louvre Museum, where we find the thistle in Dürer's self-portrait, the poppy in Paros' funeral stele, the apple placed on the stool in Fragonard's Bolt, or the peony in Greuze's Broken jug girl's deglazed shirt.