This tart slice is inspired after engraved copper plates (17th century) kept in the Chalcography Room of the Louvre museum.
Precious tuberoses, tulips, narcissi, lilies and hyacinths, perennial wallflowers and valerians, modest carnations and bellflowers ... Since Louis XIV, the royal garden has been devoted to flowers, ranging from the most familiar to the most exotic.
The Trianon garden in Versailles had over 96,000 plants and 2 million buried pots enabling a large team of gardeners to vary the compositions rapidly to arouse the surprise and admiration of the guests and courtiers. On a mere whim, the flowerbeds could turn from mauve to white, or from blue to red overnight!
As of 1670, members of the Academy of Science also started to "sow foreign grains and to cultivate them" in the astonishing garden in Paris that was used for their botanical research. Starting in 1676, Denis Dodart, the King's doctor and member of the Academy of Science, proceeded to draw up a faithful description of the "compendium of plants of the king", also known as the "History of Plants". The illustration of this scientific work was entrusted to three engravers, Abraham Bosse ( 1678), Nicolas Robert ( 1685) and Louis de Chastillon ( 1734).
