The Temple of Flora

The Quadrangular Passion-Flower by Peter Henderson, 1802 © 2008 Missouri Botanical Garden, St. LouisIn 1799, Robert John Thornton, a medically trained doctor and devoted botanist, began the production of The Temple of Flora– a volume of large-format engravings of beautiful, coloured floral portraits. The work was intended as an homage to the great Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, a man revered by Thornton for his revolutionary new system of classification, established a few decades prior. Thornton spared no...