This is the first scholarly treatise to tell the remarkable story behind the making of the Flora Graeca, a monumental collection of drawings and descriptions of plants in mainland Greece and the Balkan Peninsula. Originally described by Diskorides in the sixth century, the flora and fauna of the Balkan Peninsula were neglected until the gentlemen botanists-naturalists John Sibthorpe and John Hawkins, with the help of illustrator Ferdinand Bauer, travelled the region and produced a class of paintings superior to anything of their kind in existence then. These were to become one of the most...