Flora
Federico Cesi's Botanical Manuscripts
By (author) B. Elliott By (author) L. Guerrini By (author) D. Pegler
This three-volume catalogue presents five manuscripts containing some 780 mainly botanical drawings, now in the library of the Institut de France. They were produced for Federico Cesi in the 1620s to further the research of the scientific society he had founded in Rome, the Accademia dei Lincei, of which Cassiano dal Pozzo was a member. The manuscripts were acquired by Cassiano in 1633 following Cesi’s death, together with three companion manuscripts dedicated to drawings of fungi (published in Part B.II of the catalogue raisonne). Many of the drawings depict plants such as ferns, bryophytes, mosses and liverworts, which had been considered ‘imperfect’ because (like fungi) they seemed to lack reproductive structures–flowers, fruit or seeds. In 1624, Galileo gave his fellow academicians a microscope, and with this novel ‘aid to the eyes’, wrote another Linceo, ‘our Prince Cesi saw to it that many plants hitherto believed by botanists to be lacking in seeds were drawn on paper’. Indeed, these drawings constitute some of the earliest microscopic studies in the history of science. One manuscript is dedicated to illustrations of seaweeds and is the first known sustained study of this subject, while another is a miscellaneous volume that includes 30 prints as well as drawings of fungi and lichen, insects, a bat, a hermaphrodite rat and other curiosities. Introductory essays discuss the importance of these drawings to Cesi’s researches and how the manuscripts made their way into the collections of the Institut de France, their botanical content and place in the history of botanical illustration. All drawings are reproduced as full-plate colour illustrations and accompanied by botanical identifications and commentary.
This three-volume catalogue presents five manuscripts containing some 780 mainly botanical drawings, now in the library of the Institut de France. They were produced for Federico Cesi in the 1620s to further the research of the scientific society he had founded in Rome, the Accademia dei Lincei, of which Cassiano dal Pozzo was a member. The manuscripts were acquired by Cassiano in 1633 following Cesi’s death, together with three companion manuscripts dedicated to drawings of fungi (published in Part B.II of the catalogue raisonne). Many of the drawings depict plants such as ferns, bryophytes, mosses and liverworts, which had been considered ‘imperfect’ because (like fungi) they seemed to lack reproductive structures–flowers, fruit or seeds. In 1624, Galileo gave his fellow academicians a microscope, and with this novel ‘aid to the eyes’, wrote another Linceo, ‘our Prince Cesi saw to it that many plants hitherto believed by botanists to be lacking in seeds were drawn on paper’. Indeed, these drawings constitute some of the earliest microscopic studies in the history of science. One manuscript is dedicated to illustrations of seaweeds and is the first known sustained study of this subject, while another is a miscellaneous volume that includes 30 prints as well as drawings of fungi and lichen, insects, a bat, a hermaphrodite rat and other curiosities. Introductory essays discuss the importance of these drawings to Cesi’s researches and how the manuscripts made their way into the collections of the Institut de France, their botanical content and place in the history of botanical illustration. All drawings are reproduced as full-plate colour illustrations and accompanied by botanical identifications and commentary.
- By (author) B. Elliott
- By (author) L. Guerrini
- By (author) D. Pegler
Other Titles in this Series
Similar Books
Balthasar Caymox of Nuremberg
Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Councils, Conflicts, Correspondence
Urban Diplomacy in Reval (Tallinn) and Lübeck (c. 1470–1570)
Volume 67
Innovationes Lovanienses: Arts, Law and Theology at the University of Louvain (1425–1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 2
Volume 18
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Recycling and Regeneration of Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries
Technologies, Applications, and Sustainable Futures
Staging the Spectacle of Majesty
Ceremonial, Courtly Space, and Collecting under the Spanish Habsburgs
Volume 9
Students, Scholars and Their Books at the University of Louvain (1425-1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 1
Volume 17
