The Clutius botanical watercolors

by Claudia Swan

The Clutius Botanical Watercolors: Plants and Flowers of the Renaissance presents a deluxe portfolio of rare and precious botanical art. Painted in Holland in the late sixteenth century by an unknown hand or hands, these magnificent images were collected by the pharmacist Theodorus Clutius, to be used as reference works for both artists and doctors. Much admired and copied in their own day, they later traveled to Berlin and for a time after World War II were thought to be lost. They have never before been published in this format or extent. For lovers of botanical art these exquisite and unique works are therefore a remarkable discovery: rivaling the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer in beauty and accuracy, they represent that dramatic time when brilliant artistic expression matched groundbreaking scientific inquiry: the era we call the Renaissance.