Colombian botanical illustration is the finest scientific watercolor tradition in the Americas. Between 1783 and 1816, José Celestino Mutis's Real Expedición Botánica in Mariquita trained a workshop of indigenous and mestizo painters who produced nearly seven thousand folio sheets of Andean orchids, palms, frailejones, Cinchona, and Heliconia — each rendered in translucent pigment on cream rag paper.

The aesthetic is exhaustive observation on a blank page: a single oversized hero flower, precise venation of every leaf, root system drawn with anatomical care, labeled in Spanish, Latin, and indigenous tongues. It says nothing that the specimen does not say itself.