Before Dutch still life painting developed, artists illuminated handwritten manuscripts with flora and fauna to add emotional power to a written work. One of the most celebrated practitioners of this style was Joris Hoefnagel. In the 1590s the Emperor Rudolf II commissioned Hoefnagel to add his illuminations to the Mira calligraphiae monumenta, a mid-16th-century manuscript by Georg Bocskay, a page from which is reproduced here.
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