The Great Sunflower

Helianthus annuus

From the Hortus Eystettensis — a whole prince-bishop’s garden, printed on the largest paper in Europe.

Book: Hortus Eystettensis
Artist: Basilius Besler
Date: 1613
Held by: Wikimedia Commons

Helianthus annuus

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore, down to the stipple.

$29.00

The story

Besler spent sixteen years recording the garden of the Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt and published it in 1613 as the Hortus Eystettensis — 367 plates, arranged by season, on paper large enough to print the plants life-size, which was the rule he refused to break. The sunflower had arrived from the Americas within living memory and was still a marvel; here it is, at full scale, in the biggest garden book ever made. The garden burned, was looted, and is gone. The book is the garden now.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

The Great Sunflower printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate held by Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (1613).
Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years (inscribed pieces and atelier bouquets are set by hand and printed to order).
Colour-managed to the source scan: the hand-colour is the colourist’s, not ours. We correct nothing and invent nothing.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the stipple that makes a petal look soft, the wash of the hand-colourist, the veins of the leaf — on stock made to outlive its owner. A poster reproduces the picture. This reproduces the plate.

From the same hand