The Florilegium
Print detail — every line holds at full size

The Temple of Flora

The Blue Passion Flower

Passiflora caerulea

An intricate bloom against a brooding sky.

Book
The Blue Passion Flower, from The Temple of Flora
Artist
Robert John Thornton
Date
1799–1807
Held by
Wikimedia Commons
Passiflora caerulea

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

The passion flower, its clockwork of filaments impossibly precise, set against the stormy, atmospheric backdrop that made *The Temple of Flora* unlike anything before it. Thornton nearly ruined himself producing these plates; the result is one of the most beautiful and dramatic flower books ever printed. He died poor. The book outlived him by two centuries.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

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

The Blue Passion Flower framed on the wall
The Blue Passion Flower framed on the wall
The Blue Passion Flower framed on the wall
The Blue Passion Flower framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate held by Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (1799–1807).
  • 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.