Hyacinths –  Colored Pencil on Paper

Botanical studies, including carefully drawn diagrams and other visuals representing plant species, compose a large portion of the overall body of scientific artwork. Some of these illustrations can be so elegant and sensitively realized that, in addition to their instructional value, they could be considered stand-alone works of art in their own right. Consider, for example, Leonardo da Vinci’s sketchbooks containing pages of exquisitely careful studies of the plant life he observed. These expressions of scientific observation also found their way into some of his most famous paintings.