REDOUTÉ, Pierre-Joseph
(b. 1759, Saint-Hubert, d. 1840, Paris)

Rosa Bifera Macrocarpa

1811
Coloured engraving
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

The strangeness of the natural world had a particularly strong appeal at the beginning of the nineteenth century and was emphasized in many plant books and animal books. However, it was always necessary to make these works convincing through a display of scientific accuracy. An example of this was the classic study of roses by the French naturalist Pierre-Josephy Redouté, in which the precision is matched by a sense of the miraculous.




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