This is the latest volume in a major series that describes selections of the rare books, manuscripts, and other works of art held at Oak Spring Garden Library, a collection formed by Rachel Lambert Mellon. The 111 items chosen for this volume on floral illustration since the later Middle Ages include Books of Hours, still-life and vanitas paintings, botanical prints, and books of instruction of every kind, from planting a garden to making flowers using colored papers or wax. Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi groups the works into chapters on such topics as florilegia, women artists, tulipomania, Dutch and Flemish painting, and exotic flowers from distant lands, providing an introduction to each chapter that gives the contextual background necessary for a real understanding and appreciation of floral illustration past and present. The sheer beauty as well as extraordinary skills encountered, for example, in manuscript florilegia by Jacob Marrel and Maria Sibylla Merian, in hand-colored books by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues and G.B. Ferrari, and in flower studies painted by John Constable, Margaret Mee, and others, are testament to the high status accorded floral illustration over the centuries. This handsome, richly illustrated volume will attract all those with an interest in rare books and the history of art as well as horticulturalists, botanists, and garden historians.

An Oak Spring Flora: Flower Illustration from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Time- A Selection of the Rare Books, Manuscripts and Works of Art in the Collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon

Arts & Photography

Tomasi, Lucia Tongiorgi

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Yale University Press

Living immersed in landscapes of great natural beauty, Tuscans have always harbored a deep love of flowers and gardens. During the Renaissance, in intellectual circles this propensity developed naturally into an interest in horticulture and the botanical sciences, subjects that would co-exist in perfect harmony with the Medici family's love of the arts.
Published to coincide with an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, of about sixty-five works of art, primarily from Florentine collections, The Flowering of Florence explores the close ties between art and the natural sciences in Tuscany as seen in the botanical renderings created in Florence for the Medici grand dukes from the late 1500s through the early 1700s.
The catalog comprises an essay and checklist with reproductions of the exquisite works in the show. Examples include Jacopo Ligozzi's plant drawings in tempera on paper from the Uffizi Gallery, Giovanna Garzoni's fruit and flower paintings on vellum, and Bartolomeo Bimbi's later and much larger still-life paintings.

The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the Medici

Hirschauer, Gretchen A.

History & Criticism

Lund Humphries Pub Ltd

Living immersed in landscapes of great natural beauty, Tuscans have always harboured a deep love of flowers and gardens. During the Renaissance, in intellectual circles this propensity developed naturally into an interest in horticulture and the botanical sciences, subjects that would co-exist in perfect harmony with the Medici family's love of the arts.

Tomasi, Lucia

Hirschauer, Gretchen

First edition. The third in a series of catalogues describing selections of the rare books and other materials in this library. This volume deals with books and manuscripts on flowers and describes 11,050 items. The ink inscriptions, bookplates and bindings of the Oak Spring copies are all described in detail. A handsome production. Very well-illustrated throughout. With the bookplate and pencil signature of Gavin Bridson. lxxiii, 427, 3 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 4to..

An Oak Spring Flora

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

Oak Spring Garden Library

This magnificent compendium is the fourth in a series of catalogues describing selections of rare books and other material in the Oak Spring Garden Library, a collection assembled by Mrs. Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon. Herbaria describes sixty-three books and manuscripts about herbs and includes exquisite illustrations selected from the works themselves. Spanning the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, and featuring works by Brunfels, Culpeper, Monardes, and Linnaeus, among others, this authoritative catalogue will prove fascinating to botanists, bibliophiles, garden historians, and herbalists alike.

An Oak Spring Herbaria: Herbs and Herbals from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries: A Selection of the Rare Books, Manuscripts and Works of Art ... Mellon (Oak Spring Garden Foundation Series)

Literature & Fiction

Willis, Tony

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