Mutis Expedition Drawings

What it is

In 1783 the Spanish physician and naturalist José Celestino Mutis took charge of the Royal Botanical Expedition to the New Kingdom of Granada, the colonial name for what is now Colombia. The work went on for more than three decades, first from a base in Mariquita and later from Santa Fe, today's Bogotá. The expedition surveyed some 8,000 square kilometres around the Magdalena River, and its great legacy turned out to be drawings rather than dried specimens.

This site is the online archive of those drawings, run by the Real Jardín Botánico in Madrid, where the collection is kept today. It holds 7,617 digitised sheets: more than five and a half thousand large plates in colour and monochrome, nearly a thousand "anatomies" dissecting flowers and fruit, and copies made from other botanical works. The interface is in Spanish and English.

Why we picked it

This is one of those places where science looks like art. More than forty painters worked on the plates, and Mutis personally oversaw their training and every stage of the work. The site names Francisco Javier Matís, Salvador Rizo and the Cortés brothers among them, and notes that Matís has the largest number of attributed drawings. They painted in tempera, and the expedition developed a recognisable house style: the plant set on a central axis, a dissected flower and fruit below, a delicate play of reds and greens, sometimes an almost baroque flourish.

The drawings also show how botanically rich Colombia is. Heliconias, salvias, the genus Mutisia named after Mutis himself: hundreds of species most Europeans had never seen. And there's national history in here too. The expedition chased cinchona, American cinnamon and "Bogotá tea", and one member, Francisco José Caldas, made nature prints straight from plants on his field trips. The great Flora Mutis planned never appeared in his lifetime; its first volume was printed only in 1954, under an agreement between Spain and Colombia.

Where to start

• Open the English home page, which shows a sample of plates; click any of them to see the drawing large alongside its record and scientific name.
• Switch to the colour-only browse, the quickest way to get a feel for the expedition's style.
• Browse by draughtsman and compare how different artists handled leaves and petals.
• Try a search by family, such as orchids or heliconias.
• Read the page about the drawings for a short history of the expedition, its artists and techniques.

Who it's for

Botanical illustrators and anyone who draws plants: this is a masterclass in composition. Gardeners and biologists curious about how Andean flora looked through eighteenth-century eyes. Anyone heading to Colombia, or already in love with it, who wants to see the country through its plants. And people who simply enjoy browsing beautiful old things slowly.

A note on language: the home page and search are in English, but the fields on each record, such as titles, inscriptions and notes, are in Spanish. The Latin species names need no translation.

Quick answers

Can I download and reuse the images? You can view everything freely. Commercial use is not allowed, and publishing an image requires written permission from the garden; there's a request form on the site.

Why are the drawings in Madrid rather than Colombia? In 1817 the expedition's materials were shipped to Spain, and today they are held at the Royal Botanic Garden in Madrid.

Who was Mutis? A Spanish physician and naturalist who led the expedition from 1783 and personally oversaw the painters' work until his death in 1808.