3. - Schlösser-Magazin

4.
TEMPLE OF BOTANY
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Prof. Dr. Michael Hesse
4. State of Conservation and Factors Affecting the Property
„ “
A pantheon-like structure covered in simulated bark, the Temple of Botany (1779/80), with its
iconography of fertility, of growth and decay in the course of the seasons and of the zodiac, at
first glance conforms to what one would expect of a typical garden building. There is, however,
the very unusual pictorial connection of natural rhythms with modern science – presented,
moreover, in a way that appears to comment on history: the ancient authorities of Theophrastus
and Pliny meet the modern natural scientists, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and Carl von Linné.
It is only appropriate, then, that the statue of the goddess of fertility should present the revolutionary
findings of a contemporary Swedish scientist, the „Caroli Linnei Sistema Plantarum“.