Items14The creator’s order
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Maria Sibylla MerianBorn Apr 2, 1647In the Suriname plates, Merian often shows plants alongside the different stages of the insects that feed on them. The red mombin plate puts insects, leaves, flowers, and fruit in the same view. Start there to see how much information she can put on one page while leaving each shape readable.0 - 2
John James AudubonBorn Apr 26, 1785The Wild Turkey opens The Birds of America with a male so large that the bird seems to take over the page. The legs and head give you points to compare with the sweep of the body feathers. It shows how Audubon used the size of a print to make unfamiliar anatomy visible.0 - 3
Pierre-Joseph RedoutéBorn Jul 10, 1759On the Rosa centifolia foliacea plate in Les Roses, the open flower, unopened buds, and leaves give you different ways to recognize the plant. Redouté places them far enough apart to compare without losing the sense of a living branch. The New York Public Library has a digitized copy of the plate.0 - 4
Elizabeth BlackwellStart with the red poppy in Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal. Its engraved plate shows the opened flower, the capsule, and the leaves together, with small labels that help untangle the parts. Blackwell drew from living plants and hand-colored copies for subscribers who paid for color. The…0 - 5
Mark CatesbyCatesby often placed an animal alongside a plant from the same region. Start with The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands and compare the woodpecker plate with other birds in the same volume. The arrangement gives the reader a hint of where to think of the bird living.0 - 6
Sarah StoneStone painted specimens in London’s Leverian Museum. In A Scarlet Ibis, the long bill and the turn of the neck give the bird a recognizable shape alongside the color that makes it immediately striking. These paintings preserve details of specimens as well as a record of what the collections held.0 - 7
Elizabeth GouldThis detail from Elizabeth Gould’s preparatory study of the superb fairywren shows how she broke a spread wing into rows of feathers. The full design for The Birds of Australia also includes a female at the nest. Compare the close view of anatomy with the behavior Gould recorded across the whole…0 - 8
Edward LearBorn May 12, 1812Lear’s parrot plates show why the pose of a whole bird matters to identification. In the blue-and-yellow macaw, the length of the tail and the strong curve of the beak register clearly. His work from living birds gives the perched figure a kind of balance that helps you imagine it shifting its…0 - 9
Ernst HaeckelBorn Feb 16, 1834In the Spumellaria plate of Kunstformen der Natur, radiolarians are arranged so their outlines and skeleton patterns can be compared at a glance. Symmetry gives the print much of its appeal. It also makes the differences between forms easier to notice, which is part of why the arrangement works.0 - 10
Beatrix PotterBorn Jul 28, 1866Potter’s painting of Flammulina velutipes lets you compare details of a fungus with the eye of someone asking how it lives. She corresponded with the mycologist Charles McIntosh and submitted a paper on fungal spores to the Linnean Society. Her drawings include features that were easy for others to…0