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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Botanical illustration | 3/11 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_illustration | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:43:35.237685+00:00 | kb-cron |
In 1533 the first chair of botany in Europe was established in Padua. Luca Ghini, an Italian physician and botanist, founded the Orto botanico di Pisa (Europe's first university botanical garden) in 1544 with the support of Cosimo I de' Medici and published his first herbarium that same year. He is credited with inventing the herbarium (known as "hortus siccus", dried garden), around 1520 or 1530. His compatriot Ulisse Aldrovandi compiled one of the first floras in the mid-16th century. Jacopo Ligozzi worked for both Ghini and Aldovrandi. Pietro Andrea Mattioli's botanical masterpiece was his Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis, first published in Italian in 1544 with 500, and later 1,200 engravings. This work made a profound impression on the botanist Gherardo Cibo, who then illustrated some of the plants featured in Mattioli's work (with roots, flowers and fruit) in close-up set against a backdrop of a real (often inhabited) landscape depicting their natural environment. Many of the illustrations also feature two little botanists collecting specimens of the plant illustrated. The work (Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Discorsi, a herbal assembled and illustrated by Gherardo Cibo), dated 1564–1584, is accessible for online viewing on the British Library website. See the Gherardo Cibo page on Wikipedia in Latin for two more illustrations). Euricius Cordus, one of the founders of botany in Germany, wrote the Botanologicon (1534) and his son, Valerius Cordus (1515–1544), was the author of very important works such as the Historia stirpium libri V (1561), published after his death, in which 502 species are described. Like his father, he relied on systematic observation of many of the same plants described by Pedanius Dioscorides. The Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner devoted much of his life to the study of botany. He published two works in 1541 and 1542, but the remainder of his botanical writings were not published until the middle of the 18th century. The woodcuts that illustrated them were often reused, depicting plants with their roots, flowers and seeds. According to Christine Velut, "specialists agree in attributing the first illustrated plate of tulips to K. Gesner's De Hortis Germaniae Liber... published in 1561". Hieronymus Bock developed his own system to classify 700 plants. Bock also seems to have observed the plants for himself, since he includes ecological and distributional observations. His Kreuterbuch von Underscheidt, Würckung und Namen der Kreuter, so in teutschen Landen wachsen (1546), written in German, was illustrated by David Kandel. The Age of Discovery and the introduction of as yet unknown plant species (and other wonders of nature) in Europe sparked a great interest in nature. This led to the accumulation of specimens (in cabinets of curiosities and botanical gardens), their classification, the creation of catalogues, botanical works, and the emergence of scientific illustration. The passion for horticulture created a market for floral still lifes (painted for aesthetic purposes) and for more scientific miniatures. The Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis is an Aztec manuscript describing the medicinal properties of various plants used by the Aztecs. It gives the Nahuatl names of the plants and includes an illustration. The Florentine Codex, an encyclopaedia of the Aztec world dating from the mid 16th century, includes a Nahuatl text, a Spanish text and illustrations. Book 11 is a treatise on natural history. In the 1570s, Francisco Hernández de Toledo embarked on the first scientific mission in the New World (and particularly New Spain), a study of the region's medicinal plants and animals, and brought back thousands of illustrations for which he was assisted by local artists, "tlacuilos". It was to the Levant that Pierre Belon undertook extensive scientific travels to study fauna and botany. The work that he published in 1553 includes some illustrations. Leonhart Fuchs published De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (1542), accompanied by illustrations at least as accurate as those by Hans Weiditz. The drawings are by Albrecht Meyer and the engravings by Veit Rudolph Speckle. Fuchs included ornamental plants and plants brought back from the Americas, and had the whole plants, including roots, flowers and fruits, illustrated from life so that they could be identified. His work was reprinted many times and in several languages. The engravings were also widely reused. The book named the contributing artists and included their portraits. One way of copying precisely was offered by the Herbarium vivum: images were made by pressing ink-coated objects onto paper, leaving impressions; earlier methods used carbon black from soot. Impressions from dried plant materials could then be painted over in colour, pieces too bulky for pressing could be painted or drawn. Hieronymus Harder started a Herbarium vivum which reached 12 volumes, starting in 1562. Henrik Bernard Oldenland, a Cape Colony botanist assembled a Herbarium vivum of some 13 volumes at the end of the 17th c. Johann Hieronymus Kniphof's Herbarium Vivum of 1759 comprises some 1,200 botanical illustrations. In 1834 the astronomer John Herschel, faced with a similar problem of exact copying, used a camera lucida to copy the outlines of Cape Colony plants in pencil while his wife later painted the details. There are two illustrations on Wikipedia in Spanish. The Flemish painter Pieter van der Borcht the Elder was one of the first to work in the new medium of copperplate engraving and etching that came into use after 1564. Woodcuts (like wood engravings, much later) allowed in-text illustrations, unlike intaglio processes. Van der Borcht began illustrating botanical works in 1565, when the Antwerp printer Christophe Plantin commissioned plates from him for the herbarium of Rembert Dodoens. Further commissions (more than 3000 watercolours in all, engraved by Arnold Nicolaï, then Gerard van Kampen and Cornelis Muller) followed for works by Dodoens, Matthias de l'Obel and Carolus Clusius (a pupil of Guillaume Rondelet, like Gaspard Bauhin as well as Rabelais. Pierre Richer de Belleval was one of Rondelet's successors in Montpellier). Dodoens' Florum, coronariarum odoratarumque nonnullarum herbarum historia published by Plantin (1568) offers a description of ornamental flowers with engravings showing the whole plant (from flower to root). One whole chapter is devoted to tulips. In France, Jacques Daléchamps's Historia generalis plantarum (1586) is a compilation of all the botanical knowledge of his time, lavishly illustrated with engravings. Carolus Clusius, a French-speaking Flemish physician and botanist, created one of the first botanical gardens in Europe, the Hortus botanicus Leiden, and can be considered the world's first mycologist and the founder of horticulture, particularly of the tulip (of which he obtained seeds from Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq). He was also the first to give truly scientific descriptions of plants. He translated the works of Dodoens. Rariorum plantarum historia (published by Plantin in 1601) is a compilation of works on botany published earlier and has a pioneering mycological study on mushrooms from Central Europe. Joris Hoefnagel was a Flemish illuminator who belonged to the transitional period between medieval illumination and Renaissance still-life painting. He is known for his accurate representations of fruits, flowers and animals, which were taken as models by many other artists in the following centuries. Hoefnagel is also known to have painted birds (notably an illustration of the dodo) while working for the court of Emperor Rudolf II, famous for his cabinet of curiosities.