A single leafy stem rises from the bottom of the sheet, hung with nodding violet-blue bells that open into five pointed lobes. The leaves are coarsely toothed, like nettle leaves, and buds cluster at the tip. Below, engraved lettering gives its French and Latin names, with the draftsman's credit at left and the engraver's at right. Gerard van Spaendonck drew the nettle-leaved bellflower for Fleurs dessinées d'après nature, a set of 24 large flower prints issued in six wrappers in Paris in 1799–1801.

Pierre François Le Grand engraved it, and this impression, dated about 1800 by the Cleveland Museum of Art, is a stipple engraving with roulette, colored by hand. Van Spaendonck was one of only five artists who, between 1666 and the French Revolution, held the title of the king's miniature painter at the royal botanical garden in Paris, painting its collection of vellums. Pierre-Joseph Redouté had done that work under his direction, and in 1793, when the garden became the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Van Spaendonck took its new chair of natural-history painting. It is in the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland.