CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/17/2019

Weird and beautiful 18th-century botanical illustrations from the José Celestino Mutis Expedition

This Enlightenment-era botanical drawing of the Eucharis candida (Planch. & Linden) plant, was made by a member of the renowned José Celestino Mutis Expedition, which documented the flora, geography and astronomy of "New Grenada" (aka Colombia) for the Spanish Crown 1783–1816. In 1789, Mutis declared, "The print that comes out of my hands will require no further retouching by my successors, and any European botanist will find the extremely fine details of fruitification, which is the ABC of science, represented there without any need to come and examine them on their native soil." More than 6,000 drawings of Colombian and Ecuadorean flora were produced, representing more than 2,600 vegetable species. Of these, 52 exemplary illustrations have been reproduced in this exquisite, oversized hardcover volume.