Picturing Nature and Empire

摘要

Lavishly illustrated and lucidly written, Visible Empire is a book about 12,000 images, a good number of which are stunningly reproduced in it. Historian Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California) has tapped a treasure trove of botanical illustrations that had lain in Spanish archives mostly untouched since the early 19th century. The politics and ambitions that produced this reservoir of images eventually rendered it irrelevant, overtaken by the turbulence of the Napoleonic occupation of Spain and the wars of independence in Spain's colonies.