Iris | Vintage Botanical Print

Vintage Botanical Print | 16th-Century Flower Illustration | Antique Herbal Art | Printable Floral Wall Decor | Digital Download

Bring historical elegance into your space with Iris, a graceful botanical watercolor illustration from the 16th century, painted by Italian artist and botanist Gherardo Cibo. This artwork, part of Mattioli’s expanded edition of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica, showcases the majestic iris plant towering over a rustic landscape, with fine detail and classical charm.

Perfect for lovers of vintage flower art, antique botanical prints, natural history illustrations, and printable decor inspired by the Renaissance.

➤ Instant digital download
➤ High-resolution file, ready to print
➤ Ideal for cottagecore interiors, herbalist collections, floral wall art, or academic spaces

Pixartiko Collective – Usage License

Prints allowed for personal use and resale only as physical products in local shops. Use in other physical goods permitted if pixartiko.com is credited when possible.
Digital resale, sharing, or publishing is strictly forbidden.
Designs are not public domain and cannot be distributed online.

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Print Sizes

🖼 Included Print Sizes (No Cropping Needed)

This high resolution digital file is optimized for printing at the following standard sizes, no cropping or borders required. Just download, print, and frame:

Inches	Centimeters	Suggested Use
11.7 x 16.5	A3 – 29.7 x 42	Wall art, poster, vertical frame
8.3 x 11.7	A4 – 21 x 29.7	Standard frame, home office decor
5.8 x 8.3	A5 – 14.8 x 21	Small prints, journaling inserts
4.1 x 5.8	A6 – 10.5 x 14.8	Greeting card, mini gift
7 x 10	17.8 x 25.4	Portrait print, versatile framing
5 x 7	12.7 x 17.8	Classic photo size, shelf display

 

🖨️ All sizes are print-ready at 300 DPI, maintaining the original image ratio. No cropping or borders required.

📂 Your download includes:

• 1 high resolution JPEG file (2134 x 2988 px).
• Artistic Declaration Certificate in PDF.
• Free gift: The Ages of Painting guide — a visual journey through the history of painting.

🎨 Need a different size or format?
No problem! Just send me a message and I’ll be happy to adapt it for you.

Art Review

“Iris” by Gherardo Cibo: A Floral Colossus Rooted in the Renaissance Imagination

With “Iris”, the 16th-century artist and botanist Gherardo Cibo continues his extraordinary tradition of turning the quiet language of plants into majestic visual theater. Towering over rustic dwellings and distant hills, this violet iris is no mere specimen: it is a sovereign presence, rising with architectural elegance from a rhizome as sinuous and grounded as the foundations of the earth itself.

The iris flower —a long-standing symbol of royalty, wisdom, and divine communication— is rendered here in full bloom, its deep indigo petals unfolding against a moody, celestial sky. One open flower, one budding, and one about to bloom: a triptych of life cycles captured in a single botanical gesture. Cibo’s attention to detail is unmatched — the veining in the petals, the papery sheath at the stem’s base, the thick, sculptural texture of the rootstock.

And yet, Cibo’s work is never content with anatomical perfection alone. As always, he places his plant within a living world. The village at its base is dwarfed by the plant’s scale, not as a trick of proportion, but as a philosophical statement: nature’s grandeur exceeds human architecture. A tiny figure walks beside the enormous root, giving scale, yes — but also humility. In the distance, townspeople gather, as if to observe or honor this vegetal deity.

The sky itself, in swirling grays and pale violets, seems stirred by the presence of the iris. There is movement in the clouds, in the birds, even in the subtly tilted horizon. As in much of Cibo’s work, the botanical subject is not static, but alive — not a fixed specimen, but an active participant in the cosmos.

What elevates “Iris” beyond a mere botanical illustration is its layered symbolism. The plant becomes monument, myth, and metaphor all at once. It is a bridge between heaven and earth, art and science, humility and splendor. Cibo’s composition reminds us that to understand a plant is not simply to catalog its parts — it is to contemplate its place in the symphony of existence.

With this work, Gherardo Cibo affirms his place not just as a master of naturalistic representation, but as a visionary of ecological reverence — a Renaissance soul who painted not only what he saw, but what he understood.