Antique naturalist engraving of Gesner's Tulip by Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Gesner's Tulip is an illustration that captures the liveliness of this flower with its delicate petals and vibrant colors. Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the famous 18th-century botanical illustrator, demonstrates his talent for capturing the beauty and diversity of flowers through his engravings.

In the publication dated 1827 from which the plate is taken, the detail of this illustration is given as follows:
One of the figures executed by Mr. Redouté represents a group of yellow, pinkish-violet and variegated yellow varieties. The Garden Tulip or Gesner Tulip (Tulipa Gesneriana L.) was first described by Conrad Gesner in 1539. He had seen it blooming in a garden in Augsburg and the bulbs came from Constantinople. So it was initially thought that this plant grew only in the Orient, but since then it has been found wild in almost all the southern countries of Europe. It was not until half a century later that tulips were cultivated in France. The Dutch had preceded us in the cultivation of this flower, and even today it is among the florists of this nation that one finds the richest collections of tulips, the number of which rises above six hundred varieties. There was a time when some rare varieties were paid crazy prices; Thus, we speak of tulip bulbs that were bought for four or five thousand florins. It is even said that in Lille, a passionate amateur gave a very beautiful brewery for a single species of tulip. This craze for a single genus of plants is today considerably weakened, perhaps because of the large number of other plants that our gardens have been enriched with, and which are not inferior to tulips in terms of beauty.