By Abigail Kopetzky, Graduate Class of 2026

In January and September of 2025, the University of Denver received two groups of botanical paintings from different donors. The paintings appear on handmade paper, numbered in the top right corner. Most of the painted flowers are accompanied by their contemporary Latin names. The depicted flowers represent both the Old and New World, with examples from Europe, the Americas, and Asia. A previous owner brought one group of paintings to an art historian who specialized in flower still-lifes. Based on stylistic similarity to other botanical drawings in the period, he dated the paintings to approximately 1618.  

Early handmade paper was made using cotton and linen rags, which were beaten and processed into a fine pulp. This pulp was mixed with water to create a slurry. Papermakers used a screen inside a wooden frame to scoop up a thin, even layer of pulp that created a sheet of paper. The screens consisted of vertical wires spaced closer together, known as laid-lines, and horizontal wires spaced farther apart, called chain-lines. These wires create a slight texture on the paper, particularly visible when it is held up to the light. Both groups of botanical paintings were executed on laid paper.  

When the paintings are held up to the light, a watermark is also visible on most of the papers. Watermarks were created by bending wire into a distinctive shape and sewing it to the papermaking screen. Watermarks consisted of various combinations of place names, initials, monograms, and pictorial motifs. The botanical paintings are on paper with a watermark of two concentric circles. The outer ring consists of the letters “Z,” “I,” “T,” “T,” “A,” “W,” and a four-petaled flower shape. In the center circle, there is a stylized “Z.” The previous owner utilized this watermark to place the papermaker in Zittau, a city in the Saxony region of Germany.  

I am particularly interested in these two groups of botanical paintings because I believe they originated from the same sketchbook. Both sets of paintings appear on laid paper with identical watermarks. They are also all numbered in the top right corner in the same way. The first set of paintings are numbered “Fol: 42”- “Fol: 47”, and the second are numbered “Fol: 84”- “Fol: 93.” Finally, the artworks are in extremely similar condition. In both cases, the paint the artist used reacted with the paper. A ghostly silhouette of the flower is visible on the back of its paper and on the back of the next page. In the images below, the darkest silhouette is from the pink flower on the front of the page. There is also a fainter silhouette of the flower from the next page. It is exciting that these artworks from different donors are currently reunited at the University of Denver’s art collection.

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Endersby, Gwyneth. “Patterns in paper: an introduction to watermarks found within Record Office collections.” North Yorkshire Archives. March 14, 2023. https://nycroblog.com/2023/03/14/patterns-in-paper-an-introduction-to-watermarks-found-within-record-office-collections/.  

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