The Power of Flowers Conference (Belgium, Ghent)

In Ghent, Belgium, 14-16 June 2023, took place the conference  The Power of Flowers, 1500-1750. 

During the conference we presented our research, connected with the topic: The Private Garden as a Symbol of Innovation and Power at the Noble Women’s Courts in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century

During the early modern (re)discovery of nature, flowers and their fruits, local and foreign, offered unique promises for profit while their pictorial representations promoted their commercial potential and could also stand as artistic objects. This interdisciplinary conference  investigated how flowers, and the fruits they produce, represented power in a myriad of ways in the early modern world. The speakers addressed the function of flowers (including the flowering process, culminating in fruit) as tools of political, religious, or commercial power, as instruments of global and local knowledge transfer and appropriation, as well as their role in art-making, science, and the construction of gender between c. 1500-1750.

More information and full programme:

https://www.ugent.be/lw/nl/power_of_flowers