‎Tomasi, Lucia Tongiorgi ‎
‎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

‎Upperville Oak Spring Garden Library 1997 4to (29.5 cm), lxxiii, 429 pp. Publisher's cloth and dust jacket. "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." ‎

Reference : 005390
ISBN : 0300071396

‎Hardcover Fine ‎