Incunabulum (printed volumes published up until 1500 inclusive are so defined) replicating, just like the book presented on the previous page, the text of an author of the fourth century AD known as Pseudo Apuleius, printed in Rome between 1481 and 1484 (or perhaps a few years earlier, Pier Andrea Saccardo, for example, dates it to 1479) by the publisher Giovanni Filippo de Lignamine.

The text is accompanied by very simplified and schematic xylographic images, to the point that, for the most part, the plants represented are unrecognisable if not thanks to the names listed above.

The illustrations are followed by the list of the different names by which the plant is known among the different peoples and data relating to its therapeutic and medicinal uses.

There are animals in many depictions, linked to the medicinal properties of the plant represented: if, for example, the image includes a snake, the plant is useful against snake bites. An exception is the mandrake, depicted with human features and tied to a leash of a dog, which in this case refers to the legend on how to collect it.

In the copy found in the Library of the Botanical Garden, the black and white prints have been lightly coloured with red and yellow pencils.

Browse the entire volume in Phaidra.

Go to the catalogue entry.

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