The tradition of an official botanical illustrator, attached first to the court, and later to the Jardin des Plantes began with the appointment of Pierre Vallet to the post by King Henri IV and his Queen, Marie de Medicis.
The second royal painter was Daniel Rabel (1578-1637), who was first employed as a portraitist by Marie de Medicis to produce a picture of Anne of Austria, then at the court of Spain, who was the fiancee of Louis XIII. A man of wide talents, Rabel also designed sets for the ballet and served as Engineer in Ordinary for the King for the provinces of Brie and Champagne. He is represented in our exhibit by plates from the third edition (1633) of his Theatrum florae, the original of which was published in 1622.
Rabel was succeeded in turn by Nicolas Robert and Jean Joubert, neither of whom is represented in The Arboretum collection. Beginning with Rabel and Robert, the royal painters began painting a series of water colors on vellum of the rare and unusual flowers in the royal gardens (as well, in the early days, of the beasts in the royal menagerie).
Joubert and his successors continued the series of painted vellums, sometimes assisted by younger artists. One of these employed by Joubert was Claude Aubriet (1665-1742) - the next artist whose work is on display. Working out of the Jardin du Roi in Paris, Aubriet early attracted the attention of the eminent botanist, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, who employed Aubriet to make the highly detailed originals under his supervision for the illustrations of Tournefort's Elemens de Botanique published in 1694. The first edition of the work, which is that on display, couples Tournefort's artificial system based on the form of the flower and fruit, with special emphasis on the form on the corolla, with the first published illustrations after Aubriet.
The friendship and working relationship between Aubriet and Tournefort continued with an expedition to the Levant from 1700 to 1702, after which, Aubriet continued working with various botanists associated with the Jardin du Roi, eventually succeeding Joubert as the royal botanical painter upon the latter's death in 1706 or 1707.
Original paintings by Aubriet outside of France are exceedingly rare, but The Holden Arboretum is privileged to own that of Morina orientalis currently on display.
The more mature work of Aubriet is represented in the current exhibit by the engravings of Jan Wandelaar after his originals found in Sebastien Vaillant's Botanicon Parisiense published in 1727. The work is a local flora by a physician who studied botany under Tournefort and became demonstrator of plants at the Jardin du Roi, where he was also in charge of the gardens. Vaillant was a remarkable man, whose accomplishments included the introduction of a herbarium to the Cabinet du Roi, the construction of the first hothouse in France, and the introduction of the doctrine of sexuality in plants through a 1717 lecture series. Unfortunately, the spread of Vaillant's works in France was somewhat stymied by the disfavor shown him by the powerful de Jussieu family. The present work was printed after Vaillant's death at the expense of Herman Boerhaave, the Dutch physician and botanist.
Aubriet continued as the court botanical painter until his retirement in 1735, when he was succeeded by one of his pupils, Madeline Basseport.
Other French botanical artists existed outside the official circle, one of the more impressive of these was Genevieve de Nangis Regnault (1746-1802) whose illustrations for her husband, Nicolas François Regnault's La Botanique Mise a la Portée de Tout le Monde ([1770-]1774[-1780]) conclude the present exhibit. This economic botany and herbal by a physician has been called the most impressive botanical book of the period by Wilfrid Blunt, the art historian.
This is the text of an exhibit in the rare book room in the Warren H. Corning Library and Visitor Center of The Holden Arboretum, 9500 Sperry Road, Kirtland, Ohio, on display during hours the library is open from August 6 to September 2, 1997.
Stanley H. Johnston, Jr., Curator of Rare Books
