Pierre-Joseph Redouté was born in 1759 in Saint-Hubert in the Ardennes into a poor family of decorators and it is precisely in this context that he manifests a great interest in painting and flowers, which he himself called "the stars of the earth”. As a child he leaves his father's house and tries to earn a living by being a traveling painter. At the age of 20 or so, he moved to his brother's in Paris where he planned and drew scenarios with his brother.
But so used to living in the country he couldn't help but spend his little free time in the royal garden sketching herbs and flowers. And it was precisely these drawings that attracted the attention of an influential person with a passion for botany, the Charleston Supreme Court judge L'Héritier de Brutelle, who taught him to select plants and then draw them according to a scientific criterion.
Thus began a true professional collaboration, L'Heritier he wrote botany texts and Redouté illustrated them.
It was L'Héritier himself who introduced Redoutè to the curator of the Royal Library's Parchment Collection, a certain Gerardus van Spaendonck. From him he learned the technique of painting on parchment - stillborn calfskin made waterproof through a special treatment - and became so good as to be hired as a collaborator of the collection.
Married at the age of 27 to Marie Marche Gobert, he had three children, in 1793 he won the competition for the position of official painter of plants of the parchment collection at the court of Marie Antoinette.
Loved by his colleagues for his attention to detail, to the point that he was often offered collaborations. With the Swiss botanist De Candolle he published the Historie dea audience fatness, where he used for the first time the technique of screen engraving, i.e. engraving dots instead of lines on copper sheets, thus obtaining the finest shades of color.
In 1799, Giuseppina Bonaparte filled the gardens and greenhouses with Malmaison with the rarest specimens of the Old and New Continent, almost 200 species including roses, dahlias, eucalyptus, magnolias and rhododendrons, and called Redoutè for the classification, giving him the title of official painter of the Flowers of the Empress. For her, with the help of the botanist Étienne Pierr Ventenat, I created the work in two volumes The godmother of the Malmaison.
By now having become a great master of his art, Redoutè dedicated himself to his monumental work in eight volumes, Les Liliacée with 486 plates.
Napoleon, struck by the magnificence of this work, decided to have over 80 copies produced, which he sent to men all over the world, thus spreading the fame of Redoutè. When in 8, when Napoleon divorced Josephine, he became a painting teacher of the Empress Maria Luisa, but never breaking relations with Josephine.
In this period he also began to work on the 170 illustration of the book that would ensure his immortality, Les Roses. In seven years, together with the botanist Claude Antoine Thorobreds, completed the work by visiting parks around the world. The work, in thirty installments, was published for the first time in 1817.
Redouté worked until the last day without glasses or magnifying glasses, in June 1840 his daughter gave him a white lily as a gift, the artist was 80 years old, retired to his studio, arranged the lily next to his easel and began to paint , for him it was the last chance.
Napoleon"More flowers, Mr. Redoutè, why don't you immortalize great men,"
Redouté: I'm not educated enough to succeed as a painter of historical facts"
Today, old illustrated botany books have once again become objects of worship and collecting, where the sinuosity of the curved leaf of a lily, the tendrils of the sweet pea, the lightness of the mimosa or the fleshy consistency of the stem of a tulip can sublimate the desire to delve into the secrets of nature and love the real ones stars of the earth.
