Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Varia 291

Album of Botanical Paintings Facsimile Edition

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490

approx US$ 574


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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.

We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Album of Botanical Paintings": Hortus amoenissimus... di Franciscus de Geest facsimile edition, published by Aboca Museum, 2011

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Manuscript book description compiled by Daniela Rovida.
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Hortus amoenissimus... di Franciscus de Geest

Sansepolcro: Aboca Museum, 2011

  • Commentary (English, Italian) by Breccia Fratadocchi, Maria M.; Huisman, Gerda C.; Menghini, Alessandro
  • Limited Edition: not limited
  • Full-size color reproduction of the entire original document, Album of Botanical Paintings: the facsimile attempts to replicate the look-and-feel and physical features of the original document; pages are trimmed according to the original format; the binding might not be consistent with the current document binding.

The facsimile edition is accompanied by a commentary volume containing a presentation of the author, a description of the 17th century iconography of the plants and an identification of the species illustrated using modern terminology.

Used and new from

€ 490

approx US$ 574


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