Between the sixth and eighth centuries ce, the image emerged as a rhetorical category in religious literature produced in the Mediterranean basin. The development was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it emerged in the context of broader debates about symbolic forms that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups who inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. In this book, Alexei Sivertsev demonstrates how Jewish texts serve as an important, and until recently overlooked, witness to the formation of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Addressing the role of the image as a rhetorical device in Jewish liturgical poetry, Sivertsev also considers the theme of the engraved image of Jacob in its early Byzantine context and the aesthetics of spaces that bridge the gap between the material and the immaterial in early Byzantine imagination.

Between the sixth and eighth centuries ce, the image emerged as a rhetorical category in religious literature produced in the Mediterranean basin. The development was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it emerged in the context of broader debates about symbolic forms that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups who inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. In this book, Alexei Sivertsev demonstrates how Jewish texts serve as an important, and until recently overlooked, witness to the formation of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Addressing the role of the image as a rhetorical device in Jewish liturgical poetry, Sivertsev also considers the theme of the engraved image of Jacob in its early Byzantine context and the aesthetics of spaces that bridge the gap between the material and the immaterial in early Byzantine imagination.

Between the sixth and eighth centuries ce, the image emerged as a rhetorical category in religious literature produced in the Mediterranean basin. The development was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it emerged in the context of broader debates about symbolic forms that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups who inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. In this book, Alexei Sivertsev demonstrates how Jewish texts serve as an important, and until recently overlooked, witness to the formation of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Addressing the role of the image as a rhetorical device in Jewish liturgical poetry, Sivertsev also considers the theme of the engraved image of Jacob in its early Byzantine context and the aesthetics of spaces that bridge the gap between the material and the immaterial in early Byzantine imagination.

Between the sixth and eighth centuries ce, the image emerged as a rhetorical category in religious literature produced in the Mediterranean basin. The development was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it emerged in the context of broader debates about symbolic forms that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups who inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. In this book, Alexei Sivertsev demonstrates how Jewish texts serve as an important, and until recently overlooked, witness to the formation of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Addressing the role of the image as a rhetorical device in Jewish liturgical poetry, Sivertsev also considers the theme of the engraved image of Jacob in its early Byzantine context and the aesthetics of spaces that bridge the gap between the material and the immaterial in early Byzantine imagination.

Between the sixth and eighth centuries ce, the image emerged as a rhetorical category in religious literature produced in the Mediterranean basin. The development was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it emerged in the context of broader debates about symbolic forms that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups who inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. In this book, Alexei Sivertsev demonstrates how Jewish texts serve as an important, and until recently overlooked, witness to the formation of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Addressing the role of the image as a rhetorical device in Jewish liturgical poetry, Sivertsev also considers the theme of the engraved image of Jacob in its early Byzantine context and the aesthetics of spaces that bridge the gap between the material and the immaterial in early Byzantine imagination.

Between the sixth and eighth centuries ce, the image emerged as a rhetorical category in religious literature produced in the Mediterranean basin. The development was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Rather, it emerged in the context of broader debates about symbolic forms that took place across a wide range of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups who inhabited the late Roman and early Byzantine world. In this book, Alexei Sivertsev demonstrates how Jewish texts serve as an important, and until recently overlooked, witness to the formation of image discourse and associated practices of image veneration in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Addressing the role of the image as a rhetorical device in Jewish liturgical poetry, Sivertsev also considers the theme of the engraved image of Jacob in its early Byzantine context and the aesthetics of spaces that bridge the gap between the material and the immaterial in early Byzantine imagination.

In 1700, Jan Boskam cast a portrait medal of Agnes Block (fig. 7). Her aged profile appears on the recto; on the verso, she is the personification of Flora Batava: the goddess of flowers of the ancient Batavians, mythical ancestors of the Dutch. Standing tall in front of her country estate Vijverhof, Flora Batava stands for Block’s fame and reputation as an amateur botanist and horticulturist and, arguably, for the achievements of the Republic. This personalization as Flora Batava was the culmination of an extensive and evolutive process of self-fashioning. This exercise in self-fashioning was not an accident; presenting herself to the world as a significant figure at the intersection of art and science was the result of careful curating on Block’s part. Notwithstanding the absence of ego documents such as diaries or personal letters, it is nevertheless possible to trace Block’s agency in fashioning herself as Flora Batava and substantiate this conclusion, thanks to the visual evidence she left us.

While she engaged in self-fashioning from the moment she acquired Vijverhof, the public persona Block fashioned changed over time. As we saw in chapters 1 through 3, becoming known as a knowledgeable amateur botanist and presenting herself as such was important from the outset. The importance of the other attributes of her life ebbed and flowed over time. In the self-fashioning that took place over approximately three decades, the agency of a knowledgeable woman with a clear eye cast toward her posterity emerges, culminating in an identity that was at once deeply personal and inextricable from that of the Dutch Republic.

Self-Fashioning Through Portraits

Three surviving portraits document the arc of Block’s self-representation over time.

Seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings of fishwives, egg sellers, maids, and mothers reveal early modern women’s essential contribution to household management and to the early modern economy. Rarely depicted, however, are the achievements of early modern women outside of this domestic realm. Yet, as this book demonstrates, women contributed to culture, arts, and the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

Agnes Block’s world was one in which the extent to which women could participate in the economy, exercise power and agency in a public sphere, and engage in self-fashioning depended on a number of factors, not the least of which included their socio-economic and marital status. Block was fortunate in that she came from a wealthy family that valued education, art, and intellectual pursuits. Through hard work and devotion, she built upon these advantages to become a well-learned, knowledgeable, and respected amateur botanist and an influential patron.

Notwithstanding her auspicious beginnings, however, Block still had to navigate socio-cultural impediments and institutional barriers. She did so by participating in informal networks of experts and amateurs in botany, collectors, and artists, which shared a considerable amount of overlap. As an amateur botanist, she befriended Paul Hermann, director of the Leiden hortus botanicus, and developed relationships with other high-profile experts, such as Caspar Commelin, William Sherard, Jacob Breyne, and Lelio Trionfetti. She provided them with seeds and bulbs, and her expertise. They reciprocated by sharing specimens with her and including her in their botanical treatises, thus bestowing upon her prestige and legitimacy as a knowledgeable botanist.

As a patron, she retained some of the best-known artists of the time—Herman Saftleven, Willem de Heer, Pieter Holsteyn, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Alida Withoos.

Gualtherus Blok, Agneta Blok’s Vyver-Hof (1702)

Translated by Dr. C.L. (Roek) Vermeulen

• 1 Agneta, I’d like to remember the entertainments

• 2 with which you delighted my mind and always set it on fire,

• 3 and tirelessly provided beautiful and rich grounds

• 4 for praising you by means of the famous Vyver-Hof.

• 5 Here you most deliciously stroke and whet our senses

• 6 through art and labour, to love nature perfectly.

• 7 The fruit that the East considers it noblest nectar

• 8 and that the West first brought us from its lap,

• 9 whose pleasing scent fills the biggest halls,

• 10 whose beautiful appearance, which the brush is unable to copy,

• 11 delights the curious eye, is that exotic crop

• 12 flowering in winter, the golden-yellow pineapple;

• 13 its taste surpasses peaches from the best gardens,

• 14 its juice the sweetest muscatel wine.

• 15 Whether I praise the cereus here or the euphorbium,

• 16 naming its various leaves, its species, the places,

• 17 whether this one reached you from Asia

• 18 and that one originated from Africa,

• 19 while America grew the third one—

• 20 its green will never be depicted on my field of letters

• 21 as long as you, through the art of your watercolours

• 22 make nature live again, keeping it from dying.

• 23 One should not paint a flower [even] with the most beautiful hand,

• 24 Tyrian purple is too dull compared to the amaranth—

• 25 which laughs at carmine and through the sun’s rays

• 26 changes its glow, dazzles the eye and keeps it wandering.

• 27 May the amazing passion flower, which shows itself for a single day,

• 28 and the pig-sty daisy be recreated and crowned by the painter’s brush,

• 29 together with a thousand others that we will praise most highly,

• 30 of which you remain Flora, queen of flowers.

• 31 Ancient Cilicia may boast of its saffron,

• 32 but let it see a different/another field of these flowers here,

• 33 and industrious Flora diligently harvesting and collecting

• 34 those yellow dyes to cure the body.

• 35 Regale us with a feast of ambrosia

• 36 and stimulate the spirit with clove wine.

• 37 The scents of jasmine and myrtle fade away;

• 38 orange nor lemon can ever enchant us so,

• 39 and even the oleander, no matter how delicious its smell and great its beauty,

• 40 cedes to the scarlet, to pomegranate blossom.

The examination of the Bloemenboek and of Block’s collection of watercolours more broadly in the previous chapter allowed us to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the manner in which Agnes Block’s devotion to Vijverhof and botany manifested itself through art, which in turn was very much part of her self-fashioning. In order to fully grasp Block’s place in the artistic and cultural environments of the Dutch Republic at the end of the seventeenth century, however, one needs a broader picture, which focuses on the artists of the watercolours and their patrons.

To that end, there is a twin methodological focus to this chapter: in the first place, it adopts lines of inquiry familiar to material culture, in which the emphasis is on the conditions of production and of use of the watercolours. Second, it follows the analytical framework employed in chapter 3 and explores the relationships that are manifested through the artworks. This approach confirms Block’s participation as an influential patron in a circle of artists and within a broader network of patronage. It also demonstrates that, for Block, art and artists, and the networks with which they were associated, were a necessary feature of her self-fashioning.

The Bloemenboek as a Meeting Place

A notable feature of the Bloemenboek is the way in which certain sheets have been assembled: some show the work of two artists, working on the same sheet; others show the work of two or more artists, working separately but reunited on a single sheet through Block’s cutting and pasting. These works put in relief an animating principle of the Bloemenboek and, indeed, of Vijverhof: collaboration.