Orchid News # 5

Getting the opportunity of Christmas-time, we transcribe an article which presents a series of canvas of Madonna, where the orchid is also represented.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for all of you.

This article has been originally published in the magazine of CAOB n^o 29 JUL/AUG/SEPT 1997.

by Waldyr F. Endsfeldz
FOTO

One of the greatest propagandist of the orchidophylie in Brazil, first with this section every Monday in "Folha da Tarde", in São Paulo, then with books and magazines directed to the beginners, with articles very appreciated and widely distributed by the magazines of the orchids societies and newspaper of big circulation.

Address: Rua Ricardo Junco, 447
Jardim Panorama
CEP 13280-000
Vinhedo - SP - Brazil.

The mystic orchid is not only appreciated and venerated by orchids lovers. It is the main motif for many drawers and painters who portray them with rare fidelity in their canvas
First, I should talk about the greater Ms. Margaret Mee, Englishwoman, already dead, who painted, with fidelity, many Brazilian orchids.
I had the pleasure to know her in person when she lived Avenida dos Eucaliptos, Moema, São Paulo city. She visited many times my nurseries, looking for blooming plants, drawing their outlines and color nuances in her canvas..
I saw her drawing a Baptistonia echinata, which I cultivated in a small slab peroba (aspidosperma) I admired the facility she had to transport to the canvas, the richness of the details of the small roots of the plants, as well as the lichens found in the small slab.
Some years ago, I visited the painter from São Paulo city, A. Paim Vieira, also already dead, an expert and author of twenty seven canvas about Virgin Mary and Madonnas, specially using landscaping of Brazilian nature. With is religious formation, clearly Christian, he had a devotion to Virgin Mary and also inspired himself in the varied characters of the Brazilian ethnography since the white European until the black person, passing by Indians and all nuances of the mestizoes. Warned by my friend Fontenelli, I had the opportunity to see and admire three of those canvas, which portray composition and orchids motive, they are exposed at the Museu Histórico do Forte Militar de Bertioga, at the sea-side of the state of São Paulo. Thus described:

	"Virgin of the Orchid", which had as model a teenager Brazilian cabocla (mestizoes) who is taking in one of her hands an orchid, may be Cattleya loddigesii or harrisoniana, in a stylized form, chosen because it is common in the surroundings of our cabocla homes.
	" Virgin of the Gold Rain ", which presents the Virgin Mary in a morning apparition , the orchid is a Oncidium varicosum, opening at the dawn where Virgin Mary is the protector cloud of the Righteous Person , the Aurora of the promised Messiah and is delighted considering her greater mission.
	"A Madonna Alba Plena", with a flower very difficult to recognize, which is the symbol of the total purity of Mary and where the happiness of child Jesus contemplating the flowers is detached.

Besides to very much like cultivating and study orchids, you can find many other entertainment having this divine gift as a theme.
Don't you think so?

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