Brief History of illustrated herbals
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For the period from classical antiquity to the late Renaissance, illustrated botanical texts fall into the category of "herbals", while for the following period it is more correct to speak of "flora", "florilegia" and scientific texts on botany.
The herbal can be defined as "a book, used in classical antiquity until the last decades of the fifteenth century, which collects descriptions of plants and their pharmacological virtues, often accompanied by the names by which each plant essence was known in various languages and information on their habitats [...] the text also was soon well provided with depictions [... and] especially from the eleventh century, the images of the plants were often associated with human figures, with the explicit aim of more clearly illustrating the medicinal virtues or to exemplify specific harvesting methods" (from the Treccani Encyclopedia of Medieval Art).
With regards to flora we refer technically to the composite of plants and plant species that live in certain geographic areas, but the term also includes the texts, often illustrated, that describe these plants.
The scientific texts on botany, however, examine the plants from only a scientific point of view, analysing distinguishing characteristics, component parts, habitat, life, evolution, mutual differences and similarities...
The term anthology (florilegium), although rarely used with this meaning in the Italian language, refers to a collection of images of plants and flowers, a work dedicated to the plants more from an aesthetic, rather than practical, point of view.
It is difficult, especially for the oldest periods, to define a clear boundary between herbal, flora and anthology.
The greek and roman world
The first illustrated herbal which we know about is the one by Crateua, the physician of Mithridates IV Eupator, King of Pontus (120-63 BC). The original work was lost but the images of the plants were certainly from live observations, since there lacked any previous works for inspiration.
The most famous text on medical botany is by Dioscorides, a physician at the time of Emperor Claudius (10 BC - 54 AD), which included more than 500 plants, probably devoid of images, which, however, were added in successive copies. We do not possess the original; the oldest illustrated copy is a codex kept in Vienna and made in 512 AD in the Constantinople area, known as Vienna Dioscurides. There is a pergameneous codex from the same period kept in Naples.
The images in this codex, entirely painted, are basically realistic but with highly stylised elements that made scholars hypothesise that these are not the true depictions derived from observation of the plants, but copies made of older models, even more realistic and rich in detail or, alternatively, the images created by a miniaturist relying on textual descriptions as some representations, which are definitely less close to reality, lead us to believe.
Video produced by the Aboca Museum on the Naples Dioscurides
In Latin times, they had in all probability to circulate illustrated herbals that included images made from copies of previous versions, increasingly less realistic and detailed, to the point that Pliny the Elder argued in his Naturalis Historia that often it was not in any way possible to recognise plants from such images, sustaining to a certain degree the futility of botanical representations (Nat. Hist., XXV, 4-8).
Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, published by Melchiorre Sessa and Pietro Ravani, Venice 1525 (Malatesta Library – Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism).
The middle ages
During the Middle Ages, botanical illustrations continued to be based on ancient models through copies and copies of copies gradually less and less true to the original, partly also due to a new mentality which focused attention more on the ideal rather than on reality: even the plants are to some extent idealised, schematised, or reduced to the essence or enriched with imaginative details or related to (real or alleged) therapeutic properties of plants rather than to their actual appearance.
The study of botany is essentially the study of the classical authors, of what was said by Dioscorides, Pliny, Theophrastus ... whose knowledge and beliefs are not challenged, but continue to be passed down in a mixture of science and magic, where the power of the voice of the "greats" of the past is stronger than critical thinking and real life.
One example is the depiction of the mandrake, a toxic plant of the Solanaceae family that actually exists, to which magical powers were attributed. The particular shape of the root, which vaguely resembles a human being, had fuelled numerous legends associated with this plant, in particular its power to kill anyone who dared to harvest it with a piercing scream. In order to harvest the plant, it was therefore advised to tie the base to a leash of a dog that, set free, would run and tear out the plant and die from the cries while making it possible for his master to take it. Despite the fact that simply observing the plant would suffice to understand that this was a legend, the evocative power of popular belief and texts from the past was such that in many medieval texts the mandrake is depicted with anthropomorphic features and tied to the leash of a dog.
Image taken from Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina, Codex Vindobonensis Series nova 2644 - Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, folio 40, recto (from Wikimedia).
During this period, the work of an author of the fourth century AD, known as Pseudo Apuleius (to distinguish him from the more well-known Apuleius of Madauros) was particularly widespread; the oldest copies have been lost, but their appearance was probably very similar to that of two thirteenth-century, "luxury" editions, one kept in Vienna (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. Vind. 93), the other in Florence (Biblioteca Laurenziana, mc. Plut. 73.16).
Rappresentation of dracontea, from Pseudo Apuleio of Vienna (from Wikimedia).
Illustration of Viper’s grass by Pseudo Apuleius kept at the Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit di Leida (Voss. Lat. Q.9), one of the oldest known copies, dating back to the sixth-seventh century AD
The fourteenth century
During the fourteenth century, we witness great changes in the representations found in the herbals that were also influenced by Arab culture and medicine which arrived in Italy in particular through the medical school of Salerno, and began to move away a bit from the classical tradition.
Even the botanical images differ from those of previous texts, and, for the first time, show the need for greater naturalism, leading to illustrations produced through live observation of plants and no longer through copies of previous images or based only on textual descriptions.
The most significant example in this regard is the so-called Carrarese Herbal or Liber agregà, today in London (British Library, Eg. 2020) but made in Padua and dated between 1390 and 1404. It is a summary in vernacular Paduan of an Arab medical treatise, in which the text is accompanied by depictions of extremely detailed and realistic plants, believed to be the first of this period to be painted by observing the real plants. The attention to realism is such that the plants are represented in their different stages of development and in all their parts (flowers, fruits, roots, leaf undersides...).
Two images of the Carrarese Herbal (the British Library)
During the same time, on the contrary, there is even widespread diffusion of the so-called "alchemical herbals", which are, in fact, linked to alchemy and magic practices, and in which the depictions of the plants are anything but realistic, with schematic images and often distinguished by an unnatural symmetry.
The Renaissance
During the Renaissance, there is a beautiful blossoming of botanical images, which finds its roots in the fourteenth-century tradition and witnesses a particular development in the Veneto area, especially in Padua thanks to the presence of the University.
The study of plants still replicates ancient texts, as evidenced by the manuscript and printing production of volumes which once again reproduce the text of the so-called Pseudo Apuleius.
At this time, as can be seen just from an admirable copy by Pseudo Apuleius preserved in the Library of the Botanical Garden, the demand for more realistic and recognisable images begins to assert itself: next to highly stylised representations there are images much closer to reality and the desire for realism even affects the mandrake, still portrayed with anthropomorphic features, but with a strong realism.
Comparison between gentian and chamomile, by Pseudo Apuleio housed in the Library: the strong schematic appearance of the first image with respect to the realism of the second is evident
In 1455, the invention of the printing press brought about a number of novelties even in the field of botanical illustration, because incunabula, in which the text is accompanied by images, almost immediately make their appearance.
After the first examples of incunabula illustrated with stylised and hardly recognisable images (an example of a Roman incunabula is kept at the Library of the Botanical Garden), volumes with realistic and lifelike images appear such as those by Brunfels and Fuchs. In fact, it is during the sixteenth century that the importance of illustration in scientific texts (botanical amongst others) is mainly affirmed: "my Artworks have to be printed with figures, because without figures it is a vanity" (Ulisse Aldrovandi - naturalist, botanist and entomologist, in a letter of 1577).
Depiction of a gladiolus in the Roman incunabula (1481) and in Fuchs’ volume (1549): the different degree of realism of the two images is unmistakable.
From the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries
During the seventeenth century, botany began to establish itself as an autonomous science and not simply as a branch of medical science: all aspects of plants begin to be studied and their distinctive characteristics, also independent of the pharmacological properties, are investigated.
Volumes from this period, therefore, begin to include more pictures which tended to illustrate the anatomy of plants, with details of the flowers, seeds and fruits, and representations of the undersides of leaves and flowers. The great attention to detail is aided by the increasing use of xylography (engraving of images on metal plates), which replaces chalcography (engraving on wooden slabs) and which allows an even greater degree of detail.
This trend can be seen, for example, in the work of the French physician and botanist Paul Reneaulme, Specimen Historiae Plantarum of 1611 (catalogue entry): the images begin to take on increasingly scientific value and demonstrate a high level of attention to the depicted plant’s anatomy and the texts accompanying the figures include, in addition to notes on the various names of the plant, detailed information on its appearance, as well as on the place and season of bloom, and, only at the end, observations on its properties and medicinal uses
Representation of a sunflower in Reneaulme’s volume, in which one senses this new trend: the stem is represented in two distinct parts in order to highlight its height and the undersides of the leaves and flower are also depicted (full text on the Internet Archive).
Despite this trend towards “autonomous and scientific” botany which, on one hand, leads to the production of the first truly scientific texts dedicated to plants and, on the other, to the creation of volumes in which attention to the plants (no longer necessarily linked to medical and pharmaceutical aspects) which take on aesthetic features, even up until the end of the eighteenth century, herbals continued to be produced in imitation of the ancient ones.