Lilium superbum (Superb Lily), 1805, de Gouy; Artist: After Pierre-Joseph Redouté, French, Flemish (active France), 1759-1840, 20 1/8 x 13 7/8 in. (51.12 x 35.24 cm) (sheet, margins cut), Color stipple engraving with hand-coloring, Belgium, 19th century, Botanical illustrators working in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries devoted themselves to the medicinal qualities of plants and sought to render plant structure and function as precisely as they could. Later, European explorers brought specimens back from exotic locales, and artists carefully reproduced them for an audience fascinated by new discoveries. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, artists had shifted their emphasis from scientific illustration to the innate beauty of the plant or flower.