Botanical illustration is the art of depicting the form, color, and details of plant species. They are generally meant to be scientifically descriptive about subjects depicted and are often found printed alongside a botanical description in books, magazines, and other media. Some are sold as artworks. Often composed by a botanical illustrator in consultation with a scientific author, their creation requires an understanding of plant morphology and access to specimens and references.
Many illustrations are in watercolour, but may also be in oils, ink, or pencil, or a combination of these and other media. The image may be life-size or not, though at times a scale is shown, and may show the life cycle and/or habitat of the plant and its neighbors, the upper and reverse sides of leaves, and details of flowers, bud, seed and root system.
The fragility of dried or otherwise preserved specimens, and restrictions or impracticalities of transport, saw illustrations used as valuable visual references for taxonomists. In particular, minute plants or other botanical specimens only visible under a microscope were often identified through illustrations. To that end, botanical illustrations used to be generally accepted as types for attribution of a botanical name to a taxon.Citation needed. However, current guidelines state that on or after 1 January 2007, the type must be a specimen 'except where there are technical difficulties of specimen preservation or if it is impossible to preserve a specimen that would show the features attributed to the taxon by the author of the name.' (Arts 40.4 and 40.5 of the Shenzen Code, 2018).
History
Up to the 15th century Early herbals and pharmacopoeia of many cultures include illustrations of plants, as in Ibn al-Baytar's Compendium on Simple Medicaments and Foods. Botanical illustrations in such texts were often created to assist with identification of a species for some medicinal purpose. The earliestList of florilegia and botanical codices surviving illustrated botanical work is the Vienna Dioscurides. It is a copy of Dioscorides's , and was made in the year 512 for Juliana Anicia, daughter of the former Western Roman Emperor Olybrius. The illustrations did not accurately describe the plants, which was potentially hazardous to medicinal preparations.
The oldest surviving manuscript of the 4th-century Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius, dates back to the 6th century.Leiden, Ms. Voss Q. 9 It includes stylized plant illustrations and their medicinal uses. Among the first people in Europe to take an interest in plants were monks and nuns, and physicians. Medicinal herbs were grown in monastic gardens and used for self-care and for tending to the sick in local communities. Hildegard von Bingen even wrote about natural medicine and cures in Causae et Curae and Physica. Matthaeus Platearius, a Salerno physician, is credited with the (12th century) "" manuscript, expanded over time into the Treatise on Herbs, containing 500-900 entries depending on version. Later illustrated versions, called Secreta Salernitana, produced from the 14th century onwardsGundolf Keil: ‘Circa instans’. In: Lexikon des Mittelalters. Band 2. München 1983, Sp. 2094–2096. influenced later herbals, such as Le Grant Herbier (1498), and its translation, the Grete Herball (1526 or earlier), the first illustrated herbal in English. The illustrations were in fact copies of a series of woodcuts which first appeared in an earlier German herbal, and the same woodcut could be used to represent several plants.
Another notable medical and botanical manuscript is the "Tacuinum Sanitatis", derived from the Taqwīm aṣ Ṣiḥḥa (or "Maintenance of Health"), an 11th-century Arabic medical text by Ibn Butlan, a physician from Baghdad. The text was translated into Latin in the mid-13th century. It was profusely illustrated and widely circulated in Europe, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries. Four handsomely illustrated complete late 14th-century manuscripts of the Tacuinum, all produced in Lombardy, survive, including one in Paris.Gallica The Tacuinum was first printed in 1531.
There are many perfectly identifiable flowers in books like The Book of HoursGallica (two volumes) by the Master of Flowers (Maître-aux-fleurs, 15th century) or Jean Bourdichon's Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany (between 1503 and 1508), with 337 plants from the Queen's garden, captioned in Latin and French. These artists' objective was, though, purely artistic.
At the end of the 16th century, an illustrated manuscript such as the Erbario Carrarese (British Library, London, Egerton Ms.2020), revealed the increased importance attached to plant observation. It is an Italian translation (produced in Veneto between 1390 and 1404 for Francesco Novello da Carrara) of a Latin translation of the Carrara Herbarium, a medical treatise likely written in Arabic by Serapion the Younger at the end of the 12th century, The Book of Simple Medicaments.
made great strides from the end of the 15th century onwards. 's approach was scientific. Like Bourdichon, he was a miniature painter (who was born in Venice and died after 1450) but he illustrated a book written by a physician and scholar from Conegliano, Nicolò Roccabonella (1386–1459), the Liber de Simplicibus (known as the Codice Rinio,Biblioteca Marciana, cod. Marc. Lat. VI, 59 = 2548 after the name of its second owner, Benedetto Rinio), between 1415 and 1449.
Printed herbals appeared in 1475; in 1485 Gart der Gesundheit, by Johannes de Cuba, was published in Mainz: it is the first printed book on natural history.
Sixteenth century In the 15th and 16th centuries, botany developed as a scientific discipline distinct from herbalism and medicine, although it continued to contribute to both. Several factors contributed to the development and progress of botany during these centuries: the evolution from miniature painting or woodblock printing to more modern techniques; the invention (and improvements) of the printing press, which facilitated the widespread dissemination of botanical knowledge; the advent of paper for the preparation of herbariums; and the development of botanical gardens, which allowed for the cultivation, observation, and study of plants from diverse regions. These developments were closely tied to advancements in navigation and exploration, which led to botanical expeditions that introduced numerous previously unknown species to Europe. As explorers and botanists traveled to new lands, they collected plants and expanded both the scope of botanical knowledge and the range of plants available. Together, these factors significantly increased the number of known plant species and facilitated the global exchange of local and regional botanical knowledge. During this period, Latin remained the universal language of science, ensuring that botanical discoveries could be shared and understood across national and linguistic boundaries.
Christian Egenolff attached great importance to the illustrations included in the books he published: Herbarum, arborum, fruticum, frumentorum ac leguminem (Frankfurt, 1546)Gallica features 800 woodcuts of plants and animals. Some of the woodcuts used were engraved by Sebald Beham, Heinrich Steiner and Heinrich Köbel while others were reproduced from Otto Brunfels and engraver Hans Weiditz 's Herbarium vivae icones (Botanical Sketch Book, with hand-coloured woodcuts), which prompted Johannes Schott, the printer, to take legal action against him.
From 1530 onwards (thanks in particular to German herbalists) appeared the first books illustrated with woodcuts based on direct observation of live plants, as opposed to relying on older, often incorrect depictions from ancient texts. Such works included those by Otto Brunfels, illustrated by Hans Weiditz: Herbarum vivae eicones ("Living Images of Plants", 1530–1536, in three parts) and Contrafayt Kräuterbuch (1532–1537, in two parts).
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.British Library 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,'« L'opinion changée quant aux fleurs » ? les historiens et la « culture des fleurs »: un terrain par trop délaissé', in Revue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine 2000/4 (no 47-4), pages 815 à 827, "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 wachsenUniversität Düsseldorf (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.