Flora atmosphere
History
The profusion of botanical illustrations and photographs today reflects the huge interest we have on living or dead world. The history of the naturalistic representation begins with the Renaissance: artists seize it before scientists and show a realistic view of plants away from old treaties of antiquity and Middle Ages. They observe, draw what they see, far from old copies and symbols: see illustrations by Dürer or the work of Hieronymus Bock, "New book on plants" dating from 1539, first reference of botanical book.
Other factors will participate in the development of illustrations of nature: the creation of botanical gardens in Europe, the first great voyages of exploration across the world that furnish herbarium of dried plants and realistic illustrations, the development of printing which gives the final push to the spread of botanical knowledge as its representation, the first attempts to the classification of plants. All this leads to that the botanical become a science of observation.
In this long process of rising of botanical representation, the eighteenth-century of the Enlightenment is undoubtedly the century that will do the most to the popularity of botany. And one of the most representative figures of that time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which is not always inspired by rigorous scientific spirit, will put the herborizing fashionable to the taste of everyone. So the eighteenth and early nineteenth century are considered as the golden age of botanical illustration: scientists, philanthropists, rare plant lovers order drawings of their collections.
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