{"product_id":"the-art-of-biodiversity-artists-naturalists-1700-1900","title":"The Art of Biodiversity: Artists \u0026 Naturalists, 1700–1900","description":"\u003cp\u003eby Eric Himmel, 2026. Hardcover, 400 pages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eStrikingly original and abundantly illustrated, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Art of Biodiversity\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003esurveys the golden age of natural history art, exploring the alliance between scientists and artists that first revealed the astonishing diversity of life on Earth.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWith more than 330 color illustrations of surpassing beauty, this book reveals a story about art that’s not in the art history books, and a story about science that’s missing from histories of science. Here, such giants as Linnaeus, Buffon, Cuvier, Humboldt, and Darwin cross paths with superb artists, including Merian, Redouté, Audubon, and Haeckel, among many others.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAn essential visual companion to popular narratives like Andrea Wulf’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Invention of Nature\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e and Jason Roberts’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eEvery Living Thing\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, this volume provides a definitive archival record of the era that defined modern biology.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBetween 1700 and 1900, an art movement unveiled nature’s great secret: the global diversity of life-forms. Centuries before the word “biodiversity” existed, naturalists began to glimpse the reality that lay behind Charles Darwin’s lyrical evocation of nature’s “endless forms most beautiful.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe naturalists recruited artists to create a family album of Earth, with every picture a precise drawing of a species of plant or animal, and so science and art, for the first and last time, went exploring together.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis art first appeared in vividly illustrated books that, in a world without photography or film, offered readers a vastly expanded vision of nature. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Art of Biodiversity\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e introduces the reader to the extraordinary men and women who created these books. They focused exquisite artistic skills on nature, traded in exotic seashells and butterflies, collected bird and monkey specimens in tropical rainforests, dredged strange invertebrates from the depths of the ocean, peered through magnifying lenses at insects, and dug prehistoric bones out of the earth.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAfter sinking out of sight in the twentieth century, biodiversity art resurfaced in the twenty-first in myriad forms that reach millions of people on the Internet, as the natural history books in the world’s great libraries were digitized and made available to all.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eChronicling the only art movement that successfully aligned the goals of art and science, for the transcendent purpose of documenting and understanding the natural world, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Art of Biodiversity\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a must-have for historians of science, collectors of botanical and zoological art, and anyone captivated by the enduring beauty of the living world.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The ForestWatch Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50487858135180,"sku":null,"price":33.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0557\/5275\/3292\/files\/Art-Of-Biodiversity_FrontSquare.png?v=1780814890","url":"https:\/\/store.forestwatch.org\/products\/the-art-of-biodiversity-artists-naturalists-1700-1900","provider":"The ForestWatch Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}