Paeonia mascula | Vintage Botanical Print

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

Add a touch of Renaissance elegance to your home with Paeonia mascula, a magnificent botanical watercolor illustration from the 16th century, painted by Italian artist and botanist Gherardo Cibo. Featured in Mattioli’s expanded edition of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica, this artwork depicts the wild peony in bloom and seed, with a lush landscape backdrop.

Perfect for collectors of vintage botanical art, antique floral prints, natural history illustrations, and printable wall decor with historical beauty.

➤ Instant digital download
➤ High-resolution file, ready to print
➤ Ideal for cottagecore interiors, herbalist collections, botanical 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

“Paeonia mascula” by Gherardo Cibo: The Peony as Icon of Power and Rebirth

In “Paeonia mascula”, Gherardo Cibo —the Renaissance’s great painter of plants and philosopher of the natural world— offers not just a botanical portrait, but a meditation on beauty, vitality, and permanence. This is not a flower simply observed, but exalted. Rendered with a sense of monumentality and near-mystical reverence, the peony towers before a serene landscape, as if nature itself had crowned it king.

The composition rises from a richly textured rhizome, which anchors the plant with earthy weight, while above, two dominant stems split the page vertically. On one side, a lush crimson bloom opens wide, revealing its golden heart — a celebration of life in its most expressive state. On the other, a split capsule reveals a cluster of indigo seeds, glistening like jewels — a rare moment of vulnerability and future potential.

The contrast is no accident: Cibo shows the peony not in a single instant, but in multiple temporalities — budding, blooming, seeding. In this, the viewer encounters a complete cycle, a botanical memento mori where decay is not an end but a beginning.

The leaves, radiating in groups of five and seven, frame the flower heads with graphic intensity, creating a rhythmic dance of line and shadow. Their deep green contrasts exquisitely with the softness of the sky, which shifts in tone from pale ivory near the ground to celestial blue above — a chromatic echo of ascension. In the background, a soft line of hills rolls toward a distant village, and two figures, barely visible, walk among trees — the human scale humbled by vegetal grandeur.

Unlike the scientific herbals of his contemporaries, Cibo’s work pulses with narrative intent. The peony is not only a medicinal plant, long valued for its healing properties and mythic symbolism; here, it is a sovereign presence. Bold, vulnerable, and eternal.

With “Paeonia mascula”, Gherardo Cibo reaffirms his mastery not only of watercolor and draftsmanship, but of visual philosophy. This is art that dignifies life in all its forms — reminding us that within each root, leaf, and petal lies a quiet truth: nature does not speak loudly, but it always speaks clearly.