Printmaking · Plants · Catalog HV6EQDCK

Bouquet

Jean-Baptiste I Monnoyer (French, c. 1636–1699) · c. 1680–95

Seventeenth-century botanical illustrators were stimulated by a surge of interest in their subject. While in the mid-16th century only 500 plants were known, less than a century later that number had grown to 6,000. A passion for cultivating beautiful rather than useful plants took hold, and formal gardens with carefully arranged flower beds based on embroidery designs supplemented varieties of local plants with foreign samples. Exotic flowers became available in Europe as th