The Temple of Flora
Roses
Earlom’s mezzotint after Thornton — the darkest, richest surface in the book.
- Book
- after the New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus
- Artist
- Richard Earlom, after Robert John Thornton
- Date
- 1805
- Held by
- National Gallery of Art, Washington · via Wikimedia Commons
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
Richard Earlom was among the finest mezzotint engravers in England, and mezzotint is the process that gives Thornton's book its particular darkness — the plate is roughened all over so it prints solid black, and the image is then burnished back out of that blackness into light. It is the only intaglio method that works from dark to light, which is why these flowers seem to be emerging from somewhere rather than sitting on paper. Every other print starts white. This one starts black and has the light cut out of it.
See it on your wall
The garden, brought indoors
Roses 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 National Gallery of Art, Washington · via Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (1805).
- 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.
