Here is this stunning botanical illustration of the ancient Italian heirloom fig variety known as Fico Pissalutto. Highly esteemed for its scientific accuracy and great beauty, the plate depicts a cascade of a branch with four figs that show the life cycle of this fruit—from an intensive green youth to a ripe honey yellow tear drop with a very delicate vertical fissure close to the stalk.Created specifically for Giorgio Gallesio’s magnum opus, Pomona Italiana (first and greatest ever splendid folio devoted to Italian pomology), the work embodies the highest achievements of European natural history illustration of the 19th century. The collaboration of the Genoan artist Domenico Delpino and the Florentine engraver Stefano Rinaldi is embodied in the realistic stippling of three lobes of the leaves with their contrasting undersides.
