Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation

These 17th-century plates depict garden flowers such as irises and tulips along with songbirds and insects. Elaborately curled banners display pre-Linnaean Latin names. According to Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi in An Oak Spring Flora (Upperville, Oak Spring Garden Library, 1997), L'Anglois worked not only as an artist and engraver but also as a bookseller and art dealer who eventually opened a shop in Paris where he produced engraved prints.

The title page for Livre de Fleurs was designed by L'Anglois and engraved by German engraver Léonard Gaultier (1561–1641), who also worked in Paris. The plates were all drawn and engraved by L'Anglois himself, emphasizing the decorative aspects of the flora and fauna depicted. Our copy contains 27 of the 28 plates, and the missing plate is represented in our PDF by a photograph supplied from another copy.

PDF

The book is available as a PDF.

Other resources

For information about portraits of and biographical citations for L'Anglois, see the Hunt Institute Archives Register of Botanical Biography and Iconography database.