Gottorf Codex: Flower Garland
by HOLTZBECKER, Johannes Simon, Gouache on parchment, 505 x 385 mm
The Gottorf Codex consists of four large books filled with flower paintings. Each volume has around one hundred pages with approximately. three paintings on each page. So there are around 1200 flower paintings in all.
The paintings are of a very high quality and seem to a very large extent to have been based on real flowers. Their details are so realistic that botanists in most cases have been able to identify every plant precisely.
The Gottorf Codex originates from the library at Gottorf Castle in Schleswig, hence the name. Codex is merely the old, Latin word for a book. The flower paintings documented the duke of Gottorf’s famous flower garden right outside the castle. In the 17th century it was the most famous of its kind in Northern Germany.