Still-life Paintings
Plant paintings are one of the collections that most recall the museum’s Grand Ducal origin. There are 58 still life oil paintings that embellish the rooms of the Botany Section since their preparation in 1775, from an idea by the Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine to place in the rooms of the nascent Museum a certain number of botanical paintings from the Medici Villas. Among these, about thirty are by Bartolomeo Bimbi, court painter of Cosimo III de’ Medici.
The paintings illustrate beets, watermelons, truffles, pumpkins and watermelons of extraordinary dimensions, portrayed at life-size, as well as exceptionally productive plants of wheat, broad beans or courgettes. Worthy of note are the extraordinary paintings of bizarre and monstrous cabbage or citrus fruits so much sought after by the Medici family.
All the paintings are characterized by extreme scientific rigour. In the same years as Bimbi, Pier Antonio Micheli was active with the role of court botanist, in whose manuscripts there are frequent references to the painter’s works, with annotations of a taxonomic type, in a sort of scientific integration.
Head of collection Chiara Nepi
Learn more on the still-life paintings (English text at the bottom of the pages)
Nepi, C., The still-life paintings, in: Raffaelli, M. (ed), 2009, The Museum of Natural History of the University of Florence: The Botanical Collections, Firenze University Press (pp. 283-292).
Last update
07.09.2021