Advertisement

Botanical Illustration and the Idea of the Garden in the Sixteenth Century Between Imitation and Imagination

  • Alessandro TosiEmail author
Conference paper
First Online:
  • 1.1k Downloads
Part of the Trends in the History of Science book series (TRENDSHISTORYSCIENCE)

Abstract

The paper presents some motifs of reflection on the idea and the image of the garden that developed during the course of the sixteenth century and on the relationship between art and science. In particular, the most relevant works in the first age of modern botany (by Brunfels, Fuchs, and Mattioli) that affirm the relevance of images as a method of investigation and identification, are strictly connected to a perception of the garden as a space of organization of knowledge, but also of new cultural and social relations. On one hand, an idea of the garden born from and for science, in which images play a central role in the condivision and communication of knowledge; on the other, the idea of the garden spread in the years 1570–1590 by a flourishing production of prints which underline this evocative, architectural, and emotional dimension. In this encounter between art and science at the end of the century, the garden finds new models of representation and definition ready for further development.

Keywords

Botanical Garden Sixteenth Century Title Page Opus Omnia Botanical Work 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Bibliography

Sources

  1. Anguillara, Luigi. 1561. Semplici. Venezia: Valgrisi.Google Scholar
  2. Gessner, Conrad. 1561. De Hortis Germaniae. Strasbourg: Rhiel.Google Scholar
  3. Mattioli, Pietro Andrea. 1554. Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Medica Materia. Venetiis: in officina Erasmiana, apud Vincentium Valgrisium.Google Scholar
  4. Mattioli, Pietro Andrea. 1555. I Discorsi. Venezia: Valgrisi.Google Scholar
  5. Mattioli, Pietro Andrea. 1559. I Discorsi. Venezia: Valgrisi.Google Scholar
  6. Mattioli, Pietro Andrea. 1568. I Discorsi. Venezia: Valgrisi.Google Scholar
  7. Mattioli, Pietro Andrea. 1598. Petri Andreae Matthioli Medici Caesareiet Ferdinandi Archiducis Austriae Opera quae extant omnia, hoc est Commentarii in VI Libros Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Materia medica… Francofurti: ex officina Nicolai Bassaei.Google Scholar

Secondary Literature

  1. Aikema, Bernard, and Beverly Louise Brown (eds.). 2000. Il Rinascimento a Venezia e la pittura del Nord ai tempi di Bellini, Dürer, Tiziano, exhib. cat. Milano: Bompiani.Google Scholar
  2. Arber, Agnes. 1912. Herbals: their origin and evolution. A chapter in the history of botany 1470-1670. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  3. Azzi Visentini, Margherita. 1984. L’Orto botanico di Padova e il giardino del Rinascimento. Milano: Il Polifilo.Google Scholar
  4. Azzi Visentini, Margherita. 2008. “… ma spesse volte fa bisogno all’architetto accomodarsi più alla volontà di coloro che spendono che a quello che si devrebbe osservare”. Il ruolo della committenza nei giardini veneti del Rinascimento. In Delizie in villa. Il giardino rinascimentale e i suoi committenti, eds. Gianni Venturi and Francesco Ceccarelli, 147-184. Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
  5. Baroni, Alessandra. 2011. I ‘libri di stampe’ dei Medici e le stampe in volume degli Uffizi. Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
  6. Battisti, Eugenio. 1972. Natura Artificiosa to Natura Artificialis. In The Italian Garden, ed. David R. Coffin, 1-36. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks.Google Scholar
  7. Battisti, Eugenio. 2004. Iconologia ed ecologia del giardino e del paesaggio. Ed. Giuseppa Saccardo Del Buffa. Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
  8. Blunt, Wilfrid. 1950. The Art of Botanical Illustration. London: Collins.Google Scholar
  9. Clayton, Virginia Tuttle. 1990. Gardens on paper. Prints and drawings 1200-1900. Washington: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
  10. Comito, Terry. 1971. Renaissance Gardens and the Discovery of Paradise. Journal of the History of Ideas 32, 4: 483-506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Comito, Terry. 1979. The Idea of the Garden in the Renaissance. Hassocks: The Harvester Press.Google Scholar
  12. Conan, Michel. 2004. Essais de poetique des jardins. Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
  13. Conforti, Claudia. 1981. Mitologia classica e pagana nel giardino mediceo fiorentino dall’Umanesimo al Manierismo. In Giardini italiani. Note di storia e conservazione, 13-21. Roma: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali.Google Scholar
  14. Corbett, Margery. 1977. The engraved title-page to John Gerarde’s Herball or General Historie of Plantes, 1597. Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 8: 223-230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Crisciani, Chiara. 1999. Il ‘giardino di carta’ di Pietro Andrea Mattioli. In Scienziati a Siena, 7-18. Siena.Google Scholar
  16. Dackerman, Susan (ed.). 2011. Prints and the pursuit of knowledge in early modern Europe. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  17. De Jong, Erik A. 2000. Gärten auf Papier. Hans Vredeman de Vries und sein Hortorum Viridariorumque elegantes et multiplicis formae von 1583. In Gärten und Höfe der Rubenszeit im Spiegel der Malerfamilie Brueghel und der Künstler um Peter Paul Rubens, ed. Ursula Harting, 37-49. München: HirmerVerlag.Google Scholar
  18. De Jong, Erik A. 2004. Graceful ornament or formal mockery? Dutch topiary between taste and trend. In Topiaria. Architetture e sculture vegetali nel giardino occidentale dall’antichità a oggi, ed. Margherita Azzi Visentini, 57-70. Treviso: Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche.Google Scholar
  19. De Jong, Erik A. 2008. A Garden Book made for Emperor Rudolf II in 1593: Hans Puechfeldner’s Nutzliches Khunstbuech der Gartnereij. In The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400-1850, eds. Therese O’Malley and Amy R.W. Meyers, 187-203. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  20. De Nave, Francine, and Dirk Imhof (eds.). 1993. Botany in the Low countries (end of the 15th century – ca. 1650), exhib. cat. Antwerp: Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon.Google Scholar
  21. De Toni, Giovanni Battista. 1910. Contributo alla conoscenza delle relazioni del patrizio veneziano Pietro Antonio Michiel con Ulisse Aldrovandi. Memorie della R. Accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti in Modena 3, 9: 21-70.Google Scholar
  22. De Toni, Giovanni Battista. 1919. Lettere di Giovanni Vincenzo Pinelli bibliofilo del secolo XVI. Archivio di storia della scienza 1 (1910-1920): 297-312.Google Scholar
  23. Di sana pianta 1988. Di sana pianta. Erbari e taccuini di sanità. Le radici storiche della nuova farmacologia, exhib. cat. Modena: Panini.Google Scholar
  24. Eamon, William. 1994. Science and the secrets on nature. Books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  25. Egmond, Florike. 2007. Clusius and friends: cultures of exchange in the circles of European naturalists. In Carolus Clusius: towards a cultural history of a Renaissance naturalist, eds. Florike Egmond, Paul Hoftijzer and Robert Visser, 9-48. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.Google Scholar
  26. Egmond, Florike. 2010. The world of Carolus Clusius: natural history in the making. 1550-1610. London: Pickering & Chatto.Google Scholar
  27. Elliott, Brent. 2012. The world of the Renaissance herbal. In Locus amoenus: gardens and horticulture in the Renaissance, ed. Alexander Samson, 24-41. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Ferri, Sara (ed.). 1997. Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Siena 1501-Trento 1578). La vita e le opere. Perugia: Quattroemme.Google Scholar
  29. Findlen, Paula. 1999. The formation of a scientific community: natural history in sixteenth-century Italy. In Natural particulars. Nature and the disciplines in Renaissance Europe, eds. Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, 369-400. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
  30. Findlen, Paula. 2005. The market and the world. Science, culture, and collecting in the Venetian Republic. In Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima, eds. Bernard Aikema, Rosella Lauber and Max Seidel, 55-68. Venezia: Marsilio.Google Scholar
  31. Fuchs, Leonhart. 1999. The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, 1542. Eds. Frederick G. Meyer, Emily Emma Trueblood and John L. Heller, vol. 1. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  32. Garbari, Fabio, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, and Alessandro Tosi. 2002. Giardino dei semplici. Garden of Simples. Pisa: Plus.Google Scholar
  33. Gentilini, Anna Rosa (ed.). 1985. Faenza. Bibliotheca Botanica. Erbario e libri dal Cinquecento al Settecento del naturalista Lodovico Caldesi (1821-1884), exhib. cat. Imola: Santerno.Google Scholar
  34. Ginzburg, Carlo. 1970. Il nicodemismo. Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’Europa del ‘500. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar
  35. Giorgetta, Franco. 2010. Hortus librorum, liber hortorum. L’idea di giardino dal XV al XX secolo attraverso le fonti a stampa. Cremona: Il Polifilo.Google Scholar
  36. Gothein, Marie Luise. 2006. Storia dell’arte dei giardini. Firenze: Olschki. (1st ed.: Geschichte der Gartenkunst, 1914).Google Scholar
  37. Habsburg 2008. Habsburg: das Haus Habsburg und die Gartenkunst. Worms: Werner. (Die Gartenkunst, 20, 2, 2008).Google Scholar
  38. Hellerstedt, Kahren Jones. 1986. Gardens of Earthly Delight. Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Gardens, exhib. cat. Pittsburgh: The Frick Art Museum.Google Scholar
  39. Hocquette, Maurice. 1951. Histoire générale des jardins. Jardins flamands et lillois. Lille: Bibliothéque Universitaire.Google Scholar
  40. Hollstein, F.W.H. 1949. Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 4. Amsterdam: Hertzberger.Google Scholar
  41. Hollstein, F.W.H. 1954. German engravings, etchings and woodcuts, ca. 1400-1700, 2. Amsterdam: Hertzberger.Google Scholar
  42. Hollstein, F.W.H. 1996. Hollstein’s Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, 1450-1700, 44. Ed. Christiaan Schuckman. Rotterdam: Sound & Vision.Google Scholar
  43. Ivins, William M. Jr. 1985. Prints and Visual Communication. Cambridge: The MIT Press. (1st ed. 1953)Google Scholar
  44. Keene, Bryan C. 2013. Gardens of the Renaissance, exhib. cat. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.Google Scholar
  45. Knight, Leah. 2009. Of books and botany in early modern England: sixteenth-century plants and print culture. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
  46. Kusukawa, Sachiko. 1997. Leonhart Fuchs on the importance of pictures. Journal of the History of Ideas 58, 3: 403-427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  47. Kusukawa, Sachiko. 2000. Illustrating nature. In Books and the Sciences in History, eds. Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine, 90-113. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  48. Kusukawa, Sachiko. 2012. Picturing the book of nature. Image, text, and argument in Sixteenth Century human anatomy and medical botany. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  49. Landau, David, and Peter Parshall. 1994. The Renaissance Print. 1470-1550. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  50. Lenzi, Maria Ludovica. 1997. Dal “Regno di Iatria” alla corte di Praga. In Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Siena 1501-Trento 1578). La vita e le opera, ed. Sara Ferri, 83-104. Perugia: Quattroemme.Google Scholar
  51. Limentani Virdis, Caterina. 1988. I piaceri della villa nel Pozzoserrato. In Toeput a Treviso: Ludovico Pozzoserrato, Lodewijk Toeput, pittore neerlandese nella civiltà veneta del tardo Cinquecento, eds. Stefania Mason Rinaldi and Domenico Luciani, 71-77. Asolo: Acelum.Google Scholar
  52. Lugli, Adalgisa. 1985. Una biblioteca di immagini. In Bibliotheca Botanica. Erbario e libri dal Cinquecento al Settecento del naturalista Lodovico Caldesi (1821-1884), ed. Anna Rosa Gentilini, exhib. cat., 49-70. Imola: Santerno.Google Scholar
  53. MacDougall, Elisabeth. 1972. Ars Hortulorum: Sixteenth Century Garden Iconography and Literary Theory in Italy. In The Italian Garden, ed. David R. Coffin, 37-59. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks.Google Scholar
  54. MacDougall, Elisabeth. 1983. Introduction. In Hortus librorum: early botanical books at Dumbarton Oaks, iii-v. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks.Google Scholar
  55. Mangani, Giorgio, and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi (eds.). 2013. Gherardo Cibo. Dilettante di botanica e pittore di ‘paesi’. Arte, scienza e illustrazione botanica nel XVI secolo. Ancona: Il lavoro editoriale.Google Scholar
  56. Michiel, Pietro Antonio. 1940. I Cinque libri di Piante. Ed. Ettore De Toni.Venezia: Ferrari.Google Scholar
  57. New York 2013. The Renaissance Herbal, exhib. cat. New York: The New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
  58. Nicolson, Benedict. 1955. The Sanford Collection. The Burlington Magazine 97, 628: 207-214.Google Scholar
  59. Ogilvie, Brian W. 2003. The many books of nature: Renaissance naturalists and information overload. Journal of the history of ideas 64, 1: 29-40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  60. Ogilvie, Brian W. 2006 The science of describing. Natural history in Renaissance Europe. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  61. Olmi, Giuseppe. 1991. ‘Molti amici in varii luoghi’: studio della natura e rapporti epistolari nel secolo XVI. Nuncius. Annali di storia della scienza 6, 1: 3-31.Google Scholar
  62. Olmi, Giuseppe. 1992. L’inventario del mondo. Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
  63. Palmer, Richard. 1985. Medical botany in Northern Italy in the Renaissance. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 78: 149-157.Google Scholar
  64. Palmer, Richard. 1988. La botanica medica nell’Italia del Nord durante il Rinascimento. In Di sana pianta. Erbari e taccuini di sanità. Le radici storiche della nuova farmacologia, exhib. cat., 55-60. Modena: Panini.Google Scholar
  65. Parshall, Peter. 1994. Art and the theater of knowledge: the origins of print collecting in northern Europe. Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin 2, 3: 7-36.Google Scholar
  66. Pavord, Anna. 2005. The naming of names. The search for order in the world of plants. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
  67. Pigozzi, Marinella (ed.). 2006. Filtri di salute, d’amore, di morte, di conoscenza. I trattati di botanica della Biblioteca Comunale Passerini-Landi, exhib. cat. Piacenza: Tp.le.co.Google Scholar
  68. Prest, John. 1981. The Garden of Eden. The Botanic Garden and the re-creation of Paradise, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  69. Ramaix, Isabelle de. 2003. The Illustrated Bartsch. Johan Sadeler I. 70, 4. New York: Abaris books.Google Scholar
  70. Remmert, Volker R. 2006. ‘Docet parva pictura, quod multae scripturae non dicunt’. Frontispieces, their functions, and their audiences in seventeenth-century mathematical sciences. In Transmitting knowledge: words, images, and instruments in early modern Europe, eds. Sashiko Kusukawa and Ian Maclean, 239-270. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  71. Sellink, Manfred. 2007. Bruegel. The complete paintings, drawings and prints. Ghent: Ludion.Google Scholar
  72. Smith, Pamela H. 2008. Artisanal knowledge and the representation of nature in sixteenth-century Germany. In The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400-1850, eds. Therese O’Malley and Amy R.W. Meyers, 15-31. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  73. Strauss, Walter L., and Tomoko Shimura (eds.). 1986. The Illustrated Bartsch. Netherlandish artists: Cornelis Cort. 52. New York: Abaris books.Google Scholar
  74. Strong, Roy. 1979. The Renaissance Garden in England. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
  75. Swan, Claudia. 1995. Ad vivum, near het leven, from the life: defining a mode of representation. Word & Image 11: 353-372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  76. Swan, Claudia. 2005. Art, science, and witchcraft in early modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1629). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  77. Swan, Claudia. 2011. Illustrated Natural History. In Prints and the pursuit of knowledge, ed. Susan Dackerman, 186-191. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  78. The Botanical Garden of Padova 2013. The Botanical Garden of Padova. Venice: Padova University Press.Google Scholar
  79. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia. 1983. Projects for Botanical and Other Gardens: a 16th-Century Manual. Journal of Garden History 3, 1: 1-34.Google Scholar
  80. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia. 1988. Image, symbol and word on the title pages and frontispieces of scientific books from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Word & Image 4, 1: 372-382.Google Scholar
  81. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia. 1997. Il problema delle immagini nei “Commentarii”. In Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Siena 1501-Trento 1578). La vita e le opere, ed. Sara Ferri, 369-376. Perugia: Quattroemme.Google Scholar
  82. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia. 2000. L’immagine naturalistica: tecnica e invenzione. In Natura-cultura.L’interpretazione del mondo fisico nei testi e nelle immagini, eds. Giuseppe Olmi, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi and Attilio Zanca, 133-151. Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
  83. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia. 2002a. The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the Medici. In The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the Medici, eds. Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, and Gretchen A. Hirschauer, exhib. cat., 15-107. Washington: National Gallery of Art.Google Scholar
  84. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia. 2002b. L’illustrazione botanica nell’Orto patavino e le tavole di Baldassarre Cattrani. Un caso esemplare di fine Settecento. In L’orto rappresentato. Scienza, didattica e immagine a Padova tra Sette e Ottocento, ed. Luciana Sitran Rea, 43-69. Cittadella: Biblos.Google Scholar
  85. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia. 2004. Tradizione iconografica, simbologia e scienza in alcuni progetti di arte topiaria tra Cinquecento e Seicento. In Topiaria. Architetture e sculture vegetali nel giardino occidentale dall’antichità a oggi, ed. Margherita Azzi Visentini, 104-113. Treviso: Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche.Google Scholar
  86. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia, and Alessandro Tosi (eds.). 1990. “Flora e Pomona”. L’orticoltura nei disegni e nelle incisioni dei secoli XVI-XIX, exhib. cat. Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
  87. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia, and Paolo Tongiorgi. 1984. La nascita della moderna iconografia botanica. In Immagine e natura. L’immagine naturalistica nei codici e libri a stampa delle Biblioteche Estense e Universitaria. Secoli XV-XVII, exhib. cat., 53-59. Modena: Panini.Google Scholar
  88. Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia, and Tony Willis. 2009. An Oak Spring Herbaria. Herbs and herbals from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. A selection of the rare books, manuscripts and works of art in the collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon. Upperville: Oak Spring Garden Library.Google Scholar
  89. Tosi, Alessandro. 1989. Ulisse Aldrovandi e la Toscana. Carteggio e testimonianze documentarie, ed. Alessandro Tosi. Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
  90. Tosi, Alessandro. 1997. In Matthioli effigiem. In Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Siena 1501-Trento 1578). La vita e le opere, ed. Sara Ferri, 377-389. Perugia: Quattroemme.Google Scholar
  91. Tosi, Alessandro. 2007. Portraits of men and ideas. Images of science in Italy from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Pisa: Plus.Google Scholar
  92. Touwaide, Alain. 2008. Botany and humanism in the Renaissance: background, interaction, contradictions. In The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400-1850, eds. Therese O’Malley and Amy R.W. Meyers, 33-61. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  93. Veldman, Ilja M. 2001. Profit and pleasure. Print books by Crispijn de Passe. Rotterdam: Sound & Vision.Google Scholar
  94. Vignau-Wilberg, Thea. 2000. Devotion and observation of nature in art around 1600. In Natura-cultura. L’interpretazione del mondo fisico nei testi e nelle immagini, eds. Giuseppe Olmi, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi and Attilio Zanca, 43-55. Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
  95. Zucchi, Luca. 2003. Brunfels e Fuchs: l’illustrazione botanica quale ritratto della singola pianta o immagine della specie. Nuncius. Annali di storia della scienza 18, 2: 411-465.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del SapereUniversità di PisaPisaItaly

Personalised recommendations

Cite paper

Buy options