This 1801 plate comes from The Temple of Flora, physician Robert John Thornton's extravagant, near-ruinous publishing project to pair botanically accurate flowers with full Romantic landscape backdrops — moonlit ruins, distant mountains, storm-lit skies — rather than the bare white ground botanical illustration usually preferred. Engraver Thomas Warner worked from Thornton's specification, setting a cluster of hyacinths, pink and white and blue, against an atmospheric garden dusk. What to notice: the flowers themselves are drawn with real botanical fidelity — Thornton insisted on scientific accuracy even as he asked his engravers to stage them like theater. The result is a hybrid unlike almost anything else in the botanical canon: part specimen record, part stage set, entirely of a moment when science and Romanticism briefly shared a single easel.

Maker: Thomas Warner, after Robert John Thornton
Date: 1801
Medium of the original: Plate
Original held by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rights: Public domain, verified
Catalogue number: PA-00245

As chosen: 11 x 14 in, art print, classic frame
Picture	11 x 14 in
Outside size	12.6 x 15.6 in
Depth	0.9 in (22 mm)
Weight	[[REAL PROOF NEEDED: shipped weight per size and frame]]
Hanging	[[REAL PROOF NEEDED: hanging hardware Prodigi fits to this frame]]
Material	Enhanced matte art paper, 200 gsm; acrylic glazing
Made in	Charlotte, North Carolina, by Prodigi

Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.

How the print check works

Sizes offered
Size	dpi	Grade	How it fits
8 x 10 in	220	Excellent	Edge to edge
11 x 14 in	157	Good	Trimmed 1.8%

Sizes withheld
Size	Why
8 x 12 in	Wrong shape: a 17% crop
12 x 16 in	137 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
12 x 18 in	Wrong shape: a 17% crop
16 x 20 in	110 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
16 x 24 in	Wrong shape: a 17% crop
18 x 24 in	91 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
20 x 30 in	Wrong shape: a 17% crop
24 x 30 in	73 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
24 x 36 in	Wrong shape: a 17% crop
30 x 40 in	55 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
36 x 48 in	45 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
40 x 60 in	Wrong shape: a 17% crop

Scanned: 2026-10-07
Master file: 1,760 x 2,200 px, srgb, sRGB.icc
Tone: Darks 83, lights 240 of 255; 0% clipped light, 0% clipped dark
Colour: 0% vivid
Sharpness: 27.22