Natural History Illustration
Drawn for classification, so shadow is suppressed and every diagnostic feature must stay visible, which means the beauty arrives as a byproduct of accuracy.
Dictionary entry
- Botanical Illustration 16th century– / Style
The tradition of plant portraiture holding scientific precision and decorative beauty together. Redouté's roses in stipple engraving and hand color established elegance-through-accuracy as a style.
- Natural History Plate 18th–19th century / Style
The name for the naturalist's plates that showed unknown life as both taxonomy and wonder, with botanical illustration sitting under it as the branch that narrowed to plants. The symmetrical compositions of Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur became the junction where science plates flowed into Art Nouveau's language of form.