From the preface:
"It is interesting how, in the era of total digital reproducibility of natural reality, botanical illustration created with pen and ink and watercolour and tempera is far from having exhausted its function in science and is instead experiencing an era of fruitful renaissance all over the world. Of course, one might ask whether there is a special reason for choosing to observe the history of scientific illustration through the magnifying glass of the female gender, as Ossenbach has done in this book. My response, upon reading the extraordinary accounts presented by the author, is that this reason not only exists, but it is also certainly valid."
– Franco Pupulin