Album of Botanical Paintings Facsimile Edition

The Album of Botanical Paintings is a richly illuminated manuscript created in 1668 by Franciscus de Geest. It opens with a striking oil painting of the author offering his work to a personification of Flora and a full-page genre scene, the latter signed by Adam Pynaker. The album contains 201 botanical watercolors, primarily full-page on the rectos, each illustrating a flowering plant in remarkable detail. Celebrated for its combination of scientific observation and visual art, the manuscript offers insight into early modern approaches to nature, classification, and artistic expression.

Franciscus de Geest, a renowned Dutch Baroque painter, transitioned from his celebrated portraiture and still-life works to the meticulous illustration of plants.

Technical Excellence and Botanical Documentation

The collection comprises 201 original drawings executed directly from live specimens, brilliantly colored using various combined techniques. These illustrations document the impressive diversity of flowering plants cultivated in seventeenth-century botanical gardens, with particular emphasis on the highly coveted Oriental tulips.

Artistic Merit and Botanical Spirit

The Album of Botanical Paintings represents an extraordinary artistic achievement, comprising masterful plates executed with precise phytographic detail and sophisticated watercolor techniques. Each illustration demonstrates De Geest's elegant approach to seventeenth-century composition.

The collection presents a jubilant celebration of color, featuring roses, hemerocallis, lilies, mallows, and a particularly remarkable array of tulips rendered with such vivacity that they appear freshly cut. The overall effect evokes a grand, multicolored, and joyful Baroque garden.

Through this work, De Geest fully captures the botanical spirit and scientific interests of his era, firmly establishing his position among the preeminent floral painters of the seventeenth century.