Viola odorata | Vintage Botanical Print

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

Celebrate the delicate beauty of nature with Viola odorata, a charming botanical watercolor illustration from the 16th century by Italian artist and botanist Gherardo Cibo. This artwork, part of Mattioli’s expanded edition of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica, features the sweet violet in bloom, captured with stunning detail and set against a peaceful countryside scene.

Perfect for lovers of vintage botanical art, wildflower illustrations, natural history decor, and printable floral wall art with timeless elegance.

➤ Instant digital download
➤ High-resolution file, ready to print
➤ Ideal for cottagecore interiors, herbalist studios, romantic home decor, or academic collections

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

“Viola odorata” by Gherardo Cibo: The Humble Violet Suspended Between Earth and Elegy

With “Viola odorata”, Gherardo Cibo creates not just an ode to the sweet violet, but a moment of visual poetry — a botanical reverie suspended between earth, sky, and memory. In this 16th-century folio, the violet is lifted from the ground, its roots adrift in air, and its delicate blossoms arrayed in an almost celestial arch. Rarely has modesty been rendered with such quiet majesty.

The Viola odorata, known for its fragrance and long-standing medicinal use, appears here enlarged but not exaggerated — its heart-shaped leaves and deep violet blooms painted with tender precision. Each petal is a whisper of pigment, each vein a suggestion of breath. And yet, the plant is not rooted. It floats, midair, like a botanical apparition — or perhaps a soul — its roots exposed, as if searching not for soil but for meaning.

Beneath it, a pastoral scene unfolds with Cibo’s characteristic narrative flair. A woman kneels to collect violets at the riverbank, her red robe vivid against the greens and browns of the landscape. To the right, a stone mill hums silently beside a flowing stream, water cascading with subtle energy. The mood is pastoral, but not idyllic — there is movement, labor, contemplation.

And above all, there is light. The soft sky, tinged with rose and blue, stretches behind the plant like an infinite parchment, echoing the Renaissance belief that knowledge of the natural world brings one closer to the divine. The birds in flight, the curve of the hills, the curling roots — all contribute to a sense that this is not simply a drawing of a plant, but a portrait of something fleeting, fragrant, and eternal.

What Cibo captures so exquisitely in “Viola odorata” is the paradox of the violet itself: grounded, yet ephemeral; medicinal, yet poetic; modest in stature, yet immense in symbolic weight. This is not an illustration. It is a eulogy in watercolor — an image that honors the resilience of beauty and the dignity of the overlooked.

In this floating violet, we see not just a plant, but a philosophy: that every living thing, no matter how small, carries the memory of the earth — and the longing to rise beyond it.