Most studies of the imperial botanical expeditions to the New World recount the heroic tales of these expeditions’ leaders or focus on how the expeditions’ texts contributed to the development of specific fields of scientific inquiry or, more broadly, to the creation of imperial science. Art historian Daniela Bleichmar’s beautifully illustrated book steps beyond such discussions. Bleichmar argues that visual production, including the creation of more than 12,000 botanical illustrations, consumed much more of the expedition organizers’ efforts than scholars have recognized. This surprisingly high output of visual material, she claims, was an extension of techniques used by previous Span-ish imperial administrations, and it contributed to the Iberian scientific and intellectual Enlightenment. To analyze the construction and operation of what she terms a “visual empire,” Bleichmar poses three deceptively simple questions about the botanical images produced by these Spanish imperial expeditions: What is a botanical image? Why were they created?...
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