Les Vélins du Roi (''The King's Vellums'') is a compendium of 6984 plant and animal paintings started in 1631 to document specimens from the royal garden and animal collection. Foremost illustrators such as

Nicolas Robert Nicolas Robert (18 April 1614 – 25 March 1685) was a French miniaturist and engraver. He was born in Langres and died in Paris. In 1664 he was appointed as "peintre ordinaire de Sa Majesté pur la miniature" (Painter of Miniatures) to Lo ...

Pancrace Bessa Pancrace Bessa (1 January 1772 – 11 June 1846) was a French natural history artist, best known for his botanical illustrations. Bessa was a student of the great engraver Gerard van Spaendonck and worked alongside Pierre-Joseph Redouté, some of w ...

Gerard van Spaendonck Gerard van Spaendonck (22 March 1746 – 11 May 1822) was a Dutch painter. Life Gerard was born in Tilburg, an older brother of Cornelis van Spaendonck (1756–1840), who was also an accomplished artist. In the 1760s he studied with decorative p ...

Claude Aubriet Claude Aubriet (c. 1665 or 1651 – 3 December 1742) was a French illustrator and botanical artist. Biography Aubriet was born in Châlons-en-Champagne or in Moncetz. He was a botanical illustrator at the Jardin du Roi in Paris. There ...

and Madeleine Françoise Basseporte contributed to the codex through the reigns of

Louis XIII Louis XIII (; sometimes called the Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was King of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown ...

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

and

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reache ...

, and the

codex The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

was finally entrusted in 1793 to the ''Museum Nationale d’Histoire Naturelle'', where it remains. In 1645 Nicolas Robert was invited to the Chateau de Blois by

Gaston, Duke of Orléans '' Monsieur'' Gaston, Duke of Orléans (Gaston Jean Baptiste; 24 April 1608 – 2 February 1660), was the third son of King Henry IV of France and his second wife, Marie de' Medici. As a son of the king, he was born a '' Fils de France''. He lat ...

, brother of King Louis XIII. Gaston founded a botanic garden at Blois and cultivated a wealth of rare plants. The director of the gardens, Scottish botanist

Robert Morison Robert Morison (162010 November 1683) was a Scottish botanist and taxonomist. A forerunner of John Ray, he elucidated and developed the first systematic classification of plants.Vines Biography Born in Aberdeen, Morison was an outstanding ...

, is believed to have inspired Robert to illustrate the resident plants. Following Gaston's death in 1660, the collection of vellums was left to his nephew, Louis XIV, who lodged them at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Robert carried on in the service of the King and continued his plant illustrations. The collection was further enlarged during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with works by other renowned artists, such as

Pierre-Joseph Redouté Pierre-Joseph Redouté (, 10 July 1759 – 19 June 1840), was a painter and botanist from Belgium, known for his watercolours of roses, lilies and other flowers at the Château de Malmaison, many of which were published as large, coloured s ...

. After the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

of 1789, additions to the collection focused largely on wildlife. Claude Aubriet (1665-1742), followed Jean Joubert, Nicolas Robert's successor, as painter of the plants in the royal botanical garden. Aubriet’s drawings are meticulously done, matching the standards set by Robert. Aubriet was patronised by

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (5 June 165628 December 1708) was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants. Botanist Charles Plumier was his pupil and accompanied him on his voyages. Lif ...

(1656-1708), a leading French botanist who commissioned him to illustrate his celebrated ''Elemens de Botanique'', published in Paris in 1694. Two colleagues of de Tournefort, Sebastien Vaillant (1669-1722) and

Antoine de Jussieu Antoine de Jussieu (6 July 168622 April 1758) was a French naturalist, botanist, and physician. Jussieu was born in Lyon, the son of Christophe de Jussieu (or Dejussieu), an apothecary of some repute, who published a ''Nouveau traité de la ...

(1686-1758), also made use of Aubriet's talents to illustrate their works. In 2016 the firm of ''Citadelles & Mazenod'' published a 624-page volume depicting 800 of the plates from the collection.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vélins du Roi, Les Manuscripts Biology books