A lady holding a basket of flowers and gardeners planting in a Renaissance garden, a fortified town next to a river beyond

Professor Lucia Tomasi has identified the plant in the foreground as an Agave americama L., one of the most familiar species of agaves, native of tropical America and introduced into Europe in about the middle of the 16th century and is now widely cultivated for its handsome appearance. This type of agave was first recorded in a drawing by Jacopo Ligozzi in the Uffizi, Florence (1928 Orn.), dated around 1580-90. On the left hand side of this picture a Canna indica is visible, native of the Caribbean and tropical Americas and also widely cultivated as a garden plant. The tulips depicted in the basket and in the flower-bed were also exotic for the time and were imported from the East in the second half of the 16th century.

We are grateful to Professor Lucia Tomasi Tongiorgi for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.