Plate 17: White Heron(?) and Black Stork Killing a Snake with a Dragon's Blood Tree c. 1575 - 1580

Editor: This is "Plate 17: White Heron(?) and Black Stork Killing a Snake with a Dragon's Blood Tree," a watercolor drawing from around 1575-1580 by Joris Hoefnagel. The composition feels so deliberately symbolic; I'm really struck by that bizarre detail of the tree appearing to 'bleed' from a sword wound. What leaps out at you when you look at this work? Curator: Oh, where to begin? For me, it’s the utter strangeness of it all! The clinical yet fantastical observation…it feels like stepping into a dream dreamt by a very learned, slightly eccentric scholar. Those precisely rendered birds…they're like characters in a fable, aren't they? And the so-called Dragon’s Blood Tree, impaled, as you pointed out. It’s gruesome but utterly captivating, no? Do you think Hoefnagel intended to suggest some deeper allegorical meaning? Editor: It definitely feels deliberate. The blood aspect of the tree perhaps refers to alchemical processes? The dueling birds create further ambiguity; each has opposing connotations. What is Hoefnagel communicating through these dichotomies? Curator: Ah, there you go! Exactly! Alchemy, perhaps morality, even politics, given the era. Or maybe it’s just pure playful intellectual curiosity, a visual riddle for his contemporaries. Isn’t that thrilling? To consider the myriad possibilities swirling beneath the surface of a seemingly simple image? These are questions, not declarations, of course. The charm is in their resistance to easy answers. I feel utterly tickled pink when I think of someone pausing before this piece in 500 years’ time and thinking along the very same lines! It tickles your fancy, doesn’t it? Editor: It absolutely does! I didn't expect to get so lost in pondering one small tree, two birds, and a snake. It speaks to the capacity of art to hold infinite meaning, even when so economical with symbolic representation.