The refined and revered tradition of botanical illustration, produced under aristocratic patronage, stretches back to the Renaissance. It emerged out of the desire to catalogue nature in all its wild splendour, and it was a process that demanded the most precise and skilful of artists. French flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redoute is often viewed as one of the last and the best of these painters and engravers. This is a glorious and completely faithful reproduction of his most celebrated work The Roses, which was published in three volumes between 1817 and 1824. In The Roses he turns his attention to that most romantic and evocative of subjects, and this handsome volume preserves every detail of Redoute's masterful representation of nature's gifts.