This is a sample visual essay demonstrating a few key features of a Visual Essay. Additional Documentation and examples are available for reference. Information about image interactions can be found here.
Hyacinthus orientalis is a garden ornamental distinguish by its columnar spike of waxy flowers. Much of the hyacinth’s story, however, actually revolves around its bulb. Reconstructing this narrative reveals how the hyacinth bulb contributed to the plant’s survival in its native range over millennia, enabled its mobility in trade networks under the Ottoman Empire, and culminated in its use for forcing indoors at the French court from the mid-1740s. Today, this story can also raise awareness of the environmental impact of the Dutch flower bulb trade and the need for sustainable solutions in modern flower gardening.1
If possible, please use digital images and other resources that are free and open access. A list of open access image collections for artworks that are out of copyright can be found here. Photographs of plants with a Creative Commons license can be accessed on Openverse and iNaturalist. When uploading a personal image to GitHub, use a Creative Commons license.
Visit the Visual Essay Image Tag to learn about customizing image display. The region attribute (region="0,421,3192,2590") is used to show a cropped region of an image in the image viewer. And the fit attribute defines how an image will be scaled or cropped in the image viewer window.
Full digital facsimiles of select titles in the Dumbarton Oaks Rare Book Collection can be accessed here. You are welcome to work with our Rare Book team to find something to feature.
Linnaeus further implored English nurseryman James Gordon for live specimens in 1772, to no avail. He was nonetheless susceptible to the awe Dionaea inspired, and his incredulity regarding the deadly trapping mechanism might simply be attributed to the lack of necessary empirical evidence. The flattened, dried, and inert specimens he received from correspondents failed to show the speed and precision of the lethal snap-trap in action and understandably inspired the impression of a sleeping eyelid, as Linnaeus described in his letter to Burman.
Today, black-eyed peas are grown commercially in at least 33 countries, reflecting the widespread embrace of the bean among geographically disparate peoples, places, and cultures. As acclaimed food historian and chef Michael W. Twitty points out: “Very few people in the modern West eat one cuisine or live within one culinary construct,” but rather enjoy a multiplicity of culinary histories.
The work has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary treatments. In 2006, the Dutch public selected it as the most beautiful painting in the Netherlands.
The Frick Collection in New York City has four paintings by Vermeer. Unlike Girl with a Pearl Earring, the Frick Vermeers are genre scenes. In addition to these paintings by Vermeer, the Frick Collection has works by Frans Hals, Rembrandt, and Meyndert Hobbema.
Multiple viewers may be defined for a single paragraph of text. The first viewer defined is displayed as the default viewer.
Others are selectable using icons displayed in the top right margin of the paragraph.