3 Beautiful Things to Inspire Your Spring (Art, Music & Poetry) 🌻

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Join me for a flower themed springtime episode of Seek Out the Arts.

[00:00:14]Hello everyone, Jennifer here and welcome back to the Daily Connoisseur and welcome to this wonderful springtime edition of Seek Out the Arts. I have an amazing flower themed episode for you today. We are going to listen to a sunflower waltz. We're going to explore spring by Jeppi Eric Baldo. And I also have some amazing flower poetry to share with you in today's video. Before we begin, I would like to thank the Chic Society channel memberships for bringing us these videos. I am so grateful to my channel members. They support the channel on a higher level. And if you're interested in joining, I invite you to give it a try. I keep membership very affordable. It is only $1.99 a month. You can have access to over 255 special podcast episodes that I have now done for the Chic Society. And I also continue to do them every week. We've been doing a lot of live streams lately, which is great. We also have a pen pal program that is optional. I have over a thousand people writing to each other all across the world. It's pretty amazing. So, I will leave the chic society down below. There is also one other upper tier. Um they're called the Chic Connoisseurs and you are seeing their names listed here. I really appreciate them. They support the channel on a higher level and I'm just so grateful to the Chic Society and I hope that you will join us there. Okay.

[00:01:45]I love a seasonal video and today's Seek Out the Arts is no exception. Let's start off with the musical recommendation. I have such a treat for you. This is Duvet Duna Sunflower Walts. The Sunflower Walt is composed by Suzanne Ortner. And this performance that I have for you is filmed in New Orleans in her backyard.

[00:02:10]So, we have Suzanne on the clarinet, Duvet Duna on the guitar, Molly Reeves on the guitar, and Zach Valentine on the bass. This was filmed in November of last year, and it is such a delightful performance. I feel like they are straight out of a Renoir painting, and the sunflower walts, of course, is a nod to spring um and summer with the sunflower reference, but this piece feels so nostalgic. It is a jazz piece which we don't normally share here on the channel. So I do hope that you'll check them out. Um what a wonderful group of musicians and a very fresh piece of music for Seek out the arts.

[00:02:50]Now let's talk about the featured painting in this episode and it is by Jeppe Bulo. This is a painting from the four seasons. He has done four in this theme of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Aren't they amazing? And today we are going to focus on spring.

[00:03:18]So spring is part of Eric Baldo's celebrated series, the four seasons. It was first painted around 1563 for Emperor Maxmillian II of the Hazburg court. Later versions were reproduced and gifted to other rulers as diplomatic works of art. Spring by Jeppe Armbaldo is one of the most imaginative and poetic works of the Renaissance. And it's true that the more you look at it, the richer it becomes. So at first glance you see a profile portrait often interpreted as a young woman or a youthful figure but then the illusion reveals itself. The entire face is composed of flowers and leaves. Roses form the cheeks and the lips. Blossoms shape the nose and the eyelids. Green foliage becomes hair and clothing. This technique is called composite portrait.

[00:04:23]Something that air bulo became famous for. It is very whimsical and that's why I'm drawn to it. But it's also very precise and botanical in detail. So I will tell you the different symbols derived from this and we can discuss those further. The first one is renewal and vitality. The second is harmony between humans and nature. The third is imperial power and prosperity. And the fourth is intellectual play. So let's have a look at each of these themes more closely. Now renewal and vitality.

[00:05:02]Well, spring is bursting with fresh blossoms and greenery of course symbolizing rebirth after winter, youth, fertility, and hope and the cyclical beauty of nature. And that of course is projected here. You just see it. It's like a visual feast for the eyes. And the second theme being harmony between humans and nature.

[00:05:25]Kumbaldo collapses the boundary between human identity and the natural world. We are not separate from nature. We are nature. We are composed of it. And I think that this is so important because as humans, we tend to separate ourselves from nature.

[00:05:45]If you think about circadian rhythms, for example, how many of us are trying to get back onto them, uh, but maybe we aren't because of electricity and we can stay up as late as we want with our computers. Uh, but we remove ourselves from nature when we truly are natural beings and we flow with nature. So I think this painting is a great reminder for that. The third theme, imperial power and prosperity. This is where the politics come in. So at the Habsburg court, these paintings had a deeper layer. The abundance of flowers reflects the wealth and flourishing empire. And nature itself appears ordered and harmonious under imperial rule. That was the intention here. And I'm sure that the emperor loved that his reign was being painted in this light. The ultimate idea being that the emperor's reign brings harmony to the natural world. And finally, this is my favorite theme, that of intellectual play.

[00:06:46]Because, you know, I love a good puzzle.

[00:06:48]So, Eric Baldo's work delighted the Renaissance love of riddles, illusions, and visual wit. His paintings function almost like visual poetry. You read them slowly, discovering more meaning as your eye lingers, and it does feel like a riddle or a poem, uh, which we're going to get to in just a second. Eric Baldo was part of mannerism, which is a style that moves beyond classical realism. It embraces exaggeration, artifice, and complexity. His work is especially distinctive because it blends still life and portraiture. It invites double vision, so object versus face, and it anticipates later movements like surrealism. Think Salvador Dolly, who we just studied with the persistence of memory. In fact, when I first saw this painting, I didn't realize how old it was. I thought it was part of the surrealist movement. So, if we were to zoom out, I love that this painting, you know, at first glance might seem like a portrait and then you sort of study it and then you're taken aback by all of the intricate details and how these little details come together to create such a stunning portrait. This is a woman in bloom. She is spring. She embodies it. She not is not only adorned by flowers because there are plenty of paintings of beautiful women wearing a flower crown or smelling flowers. She is the flowers. We are nature and it is inherently within us. We can use this painting to invite us to look at what is blooming in our own lives. What is blooming and coming up to create who we are. Yes. So, this is a woman in bloom, and I thought that this painting would be perfect for us to discuss.

[00:08:48]I would love to know what your thoughts are on Eric Baldo's spring. Let us know in the comment section down below. And of course, we need to keep the flower theme going by reading some floral poetry. And I'm going to be reading to you from the poetry of flowers. This is edited by Samuel Carr, and it is from Roli. They kindly sent this to me a few months ago and I absolutely love this book. And look, my uh bookmark is pressed flowers from my garden last year. I like to make bookmarks of these and send them to my friends. So, I have one here for me. I want to share something about this book. I had been feeling burnt out, okay? And and as I slowly try to get out of that, I have been making a lot of time for reading. I have been reading a lot of fiction and non-fiction as usual, but I realized that I hadn't been reading as much poetry as I would like. And for me to feel regulated, I really need poetry. To me, poetry is like flowers. I have to have flowers around me and I I have to have poetry. And so I had gone weeks without reading any poetry and I thought, "This has got to stop." So one night, it was really late. I was going to bed so late. It was like 11:00 at night and I thought I'm not going to go to sleep until I read some poetry. So I pulled up um the poetry of flowers and I rediscovered a poem. It is very short that I absolutely loved. It was the perfect thing for me to read before bed.

[00:10:22]It is called highestense to feed the soul. It is by mostly Eden Sadi from the 13th century. Okay, we are going way back but just listen to this poem. It says, "If of thy mortal goods thou art bereff, and from thy slender store, two loaves alone to thee are left, sell one, and with the dole thy hiestence to feed thy soul."

[00:10:51]Okay, I read that and it put me in the best mood right before I went to bed because I thought this is just genius.

[00:10:58]This was from the 13th century. Saudi is basically saying here that if you are completely broke and you have nothing um but two loaves of bread to your name, sell one and with the money buy hyestence to feed your soul. Sadi is saying here that flowers are not useless. They feed our souls. They give us hope. They give us beauty, things that we need. And of course, it's a little tongue and cheek because if we're down to our two loaves of bread, I don't think we should necessarily buy flowers.

[00:11:32]Although, who knows? Maybe it could lead to something else. But I thought that that poem was absolutely brilliant and I love it. And then that one was so short, so I just want to read one more to you.

[00:11:42]And I can't remember if I've read this before on the channel, but I love this poem. So if I have forgive me but this is by WH Davies from 1871 to 1940 and it is called flowers very apppropo what favorite flowers are mine I cannot say my fancy changes with the summer's day sometimes I think agreeing with the bees that my best flowers are those tall apple trees who give a bee his cider while in bloom and keep me waiting till their apples Come. Sometimes I think the coline has won. Who hangs her head and never looks at the sun. Straight in the face. And now the golden rod beckons me over with a graceful nod. Shaped like a sheath of corn. Her ruddy skin drinks the sun dry and leaves his splendor thin. Sometimes I think the rose must have her place. And then the lily shakes her golden dice, deep in a silver cup to win or lose. So I go on from Coline to rose, from merryold to flock, from flock to thrift, till nothing but my garden stones are left. But when I see the dimples in her face, all filled with tender moss in every place. Ah, then I think when all is said and done, my favorite flower must be the mossy stone.

[00:13:11]I thought this poem was perfect to pair with the painting because flowers, spring, they are all personified here.

[00:13:19]And at the end, we have a twist. We think, you know, the poet is telling us what his favorite flowers are. Is it going to be Coline? Is it going to be the rose? um is it going to be the merry gold but in the end the mossy stone wins and I think that that is wonderful. So if you are still with me in the video please let me know what is your favorite flower. Please put it in the comment section down below. Thank you so much for joining me here for Seek out the arts. I hope that you enjoyed this video. I will leave information on the chic society down below if you would like to join. I also invite you to check out my books, including my newest book, The Daily Connoisseur's Guide to Living Well at Home, which has lots of inspiration on living well. Thank you so much for joining me today. Keep calm and remain classy, and I'll see you in the next video. Goodbye.