Book Description

Published to coincide with an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, of sixty-eight 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.