Botanical Illustrations

Info

Data Set created: January 2020

Data Set updated: 17 May 2023

Content

Images of botanical illustrations from the 19th century.

Data Provenance and Quality

The images provided in this data set were digitized in 2015. In 2020 they were joined to a collection for the platform ÖNB Digital. The Labs Team made them available as IIIF 

International Image Interoperability Framework. Standardizes the provision of images and audiovisual data from servers in different web environments...

Collection in 2023. The images are provided in .jpeg 

Joint Photographic Experts Group. Commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, especially for images created by digital photography...

 format with 300 ppi 

pixels per inch. Unit of measurement for the dot density of images, refers to the level of detail of the image

. The metadata stems from the catalogue of the Austrian National Library, containing information on the technique of the illustrations as well as personal name of the artists linked to GND entities. The metadata was edited manually by librarians in the Austrian National Library’s Picture Department.

Historical Background

The Habsburgian emperor Franz I./II. had a botanical garden built for himself behind the Hofburg building, an area now know as Burggarten. Franz I. and his successor Ferdinand I. commissioned artists, namely Johann Jebmayer (1770–1858), Matthias Schmutzer (1751–1824) and Leopold Brunner (1788–1866) to paint plants of this garden, mostly in gouache technique.

Maintenance

This data set can be updated irregularly.

  • 1.855
  • Documents
  • 1.855
  • Images
  • 1.855
  • IIIF Manifests

Illustration of a Camellia japonica drawn by Johann Jebmayer

Reuse

Information on Rights and Reuse

License

Cite as

ONB Labs. “Data Set Botanical Illustrations.” ONB Labs. May 17, 2023. Accessed on Aug 19, 2025, https://labs.onb.ac.at/en/datasets/botanical-illustrations/.

Preview

Documents in the Data Set

Data Set Items

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    Data

    Download and Access Options

    Sample

    • 30 selected images from different artists
    • 30 .jpeg files, 30 metadata records
    • Readme explanation of properties used
    • .zip archive (142.6 MB)

    Metadata Records

    • Bibliographic metadata for all documents
    • Readme explanation of properties used
    • .csv table (1.3 MB)

    IIIF Collection

    • IIIF collection with URLs to all images
    • 1.855 images in .jpeg format with metadata
    • .json file format

    Use Cases

    Areas of Application Related to the Data Set

    Possible Uses

    The images in the data set could be used to train a CV 

    Computer Vision is a field of artificial intelligence (AI) focused on enabling computers to interpret and understand visual information from the wor...

    /ML 

    Machine Learning (ML) is a branch of artificial intelligence (→ AI) focused on developing algorithms and statistical models that allow computers to le...

    -model that is meant to be able to automatically recognize illustrations of botanical species. Since the data set contains metadata to documents containing images as well as text, it could be used to gain an exemplary understanding of the relation between text and image. It might also be possible to automatically analyze stilistical differences of the painters. The data set could also be used to generate synthetic illustrations of non-existing plants.