Flora

The botanical details of a masterpiece by Vittore Carpaccio, the Portrait of a Knight now in Madrid, have many secrets to divulge.

The botanical festoons frescoed by Giovanni da Udine in Rome’s Villa Farnesina, which include species then newly brought over from the New World.

Stunningly refined portraits of botanists done by Gaetano Gandolfi for Bologna’s “Pinacotheca Bassiana”.

The author, a landscape gardener and botanical investigator of great artworks, shows us recondite vegetal details of renowned masterpieces.

The Masonic park of the Villa Durazzo Pallavicini in Pegli (near Genoa), conceived as a theatrical spectacle.

The tropical welter of vegetation painted in the cloister of the Mexican monastery of Malinalco bears witness to the encounter (and clash) of cultures.

Hyperrealistic cacti, painted in oils and garish hues on gigantic canvases by the South Korean artist Lee Kwang-Ho.

Lucian Freud’s plant portraits, only recently brought into the spotlight and associated with the renown of his celebrated portraits of people.