The Florilegium
Print detail — every line holds at full size

The Temple of Flora

Hyacinths

Hyacinthus orientalis

Hyacinths massed against a stormy sky.

Book
Hyacinths, from The Temple of Flora
Artist
Robert John Thornton
Date
1799–1807
Held by
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · via Wikimedia Commons
Hyacinthus orientalis

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

Hyacinths — blue, white, and a deep bruised rose — massed in the foreground while behind them the sky does something operatic. Thornton's flowers are never merely specimens; they are characters, staged, each plate given a landscape and a weather to act against. The Dutch bulb trade had spent two centuries turning a modest Levantine flower into this, a spike so heavy with florets it has to be staked. Thornton paints it as though it knows.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

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

Hyacinths framed on the wall
Hyacinths framed on the wall
Hyacinths framed on the wall
Hyacinths framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art · via 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.