Visualising Medieval Medicine and Natural History PDF

 

VISUALIZING MEDIEV VISUALIZING MEDIEVAL AL MEDICI MEDICINE NE AND NATURAL NA TURAL HISTORY HISTORY,, 1200–15 1200–1550 50

 

 AVIST VISTA A Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art  is a  A

series produced produced by AVIST AVISTA A (The Associat Association ion Villard Villard de Honnecourt Honnecourt for Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science and Art), and published by Ashgate. The aim of the series is to promote the cross-disciplinary objectives of AVIST VISTA A by publishing in the areas of the history of science, technology, technology, architecture, and art. The society takes its name from Villard (Wilars) de Honnecourt, an elusive persona of the 13th century whose autograph portfolio contains a variety of fascinating drawings and descriptions of both the fine and mechanical arts. www.avista.org AVIST VISTA A President Robert Bork Volume Editors-in-Chief  Jeann A. Giv Jea Givens ens Karen M. Reeds Alain Touwaide Volume Editorial Board Ellen Shortell Anne Van Arsdall Steven Walton Lynn T. Courtenay Michael T. Davis Robert Bork

 

 AVIST A Studies in the History of Medieval Technology Technology,, Science and Art   AVISTA Volume 5

Visualizing Medieval1200–1550 Medicine and Natural History,

Edited by JEAN A. GIVENS, KAREN M. REEDS, ALAIN TOUWAIDE

 

First published 2006 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

 Routledge is an imprint imprint of the Taylor Taylor & Francis Group, an an informa business Copyright © Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, Alain Touwaide, Touwaide, 2006

Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, Alain Touwaide Touwaide have asserted their thei r moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.  Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History History,, 1200–1550. – (AVIST (AVISTA A Studies in the History of Medieval Technology Technology, Science and Art) 1. Leona Leonardo, rdo, da Vinci, Vinci, 1452–15 1452–1519. 19. 2. Medicine Medicine in art. 3. Art, Renaissan Renaissance. ce. 4. Art, Medieval Medieval 5. Literature, Literature, Medieval Medieval – History History and criticism. criticism. 6. Medicine Medicine in literature. 7. Renaissance. 8. Nature in art. I. Givens, Jean A. (Jean Ann), 1947– . II. Reeds, Karen. III. Touwaide, Touwaide, Alain 700.4’561 US Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Visualizing medieval medicine and natural history, 1200-1550 / edited by Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain Touwaide. p. cm. – (A (AVIST VISTA A Studi Studies es in the Histor Historyy of Medieva Medievall Techno Technology logy,, Science Science and Art) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Medicine, Medieval. 2. Science, Medieval. 3. Medical illustration – Early works to 1800. 4. Botan Botanical ical illustration illustration – Early works works to 1800. I. Givens, Jean A. (Jean Ann), 1947–. II. Reeds, Karen. III. Touwaide, Touwaide, Alain. Alain. IV IV.. Series. [DNLM: 1. History, History, Medieval. 2. Natural History – history. history. 3. Medical Illustration – history.. 4. Manuscripts, Medical–history. WZ 54 V834 2006] history R141V57 2006 610–dc22 2005033204 ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-52 978-0-7546-5296-0 96-0 (hbk)

 

Contents List of Illustrations

vii

Notes on Contributors

xiii

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction

xvii

 Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, Alain Touwaide Touwaide

1 Ima Image ge,, Wor Word, d, and and Med Medic icin inee in the the Mid Middl dlee Age Agess

1

Peter Murray Jones

2 La Lati tinn Cru Crusa sade ders, rs, By Byza zant ntin inee He Herb rbals als

25

 Alain Touwaide Touwaide

3 The Illuminated Tacuinum sanitatis Manuscripts from Northern Italy ca. 1380–1400: Sources, Patrons, and the Creation of a New Pictorial Genre

51

Cathleen Hoeniger

4 Erudit Erudition ion on on Display Display:: The The “Scien “Scientifi tific” c” Illust Illustrati rations ons in in Pico Pico della della Mirandola’s Manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History

83

Sarah Blake McHam

5 Rea Readi ding ng an andd Wri ritin tingg the the Il Illu lustr strat ated ed Tractatus de herbis, 1280–1526

115

 Jean A. Givens

6 Leonar Leonardo do da Vinc inci’ i’ss Ana Anatom tomical ical Stud Studies ies in in Milan: Milan: A ReRe-exa examin minatio ationn of Sites and Sources

147

 Monica Azzolini

7 (Hu)mo (Hu)moral ral Exemp Exemplars: lars: Type and Tempera emperament ment in Cinquec Cinquecento ento Paint Painting ing

177

Piers D. Britton

8 Leonar Leonardo do da Vinc incii and Bota Botanica nicall Illustr Illustratio ation: n: Natur Naturee Prints, Prints, Drawings, and Woodcuts ca. 1500

205

Karen M. Reeds

9 The Use Usess of Rea Realism lism in Earl Earlyy Moder Modernn Illust Illustrat rated ed Bota Botany ny

239

Claudia Swan

Index

251 v

 

Illustrations 1.11 1.

Feta Fe tall positi position onss withi withinn the womb womb.. Gilber Gilbertu tuss Ang Anglic licus us,, The Sekenesse of Wymmen. London, British Library, Sloane MS 249, fol. 197 recto. Fifteenth century 1.2 Caut Cautery ery sce scenes nes with Isai Isaiah ah rece receivi iving ng the the burn burning ing coa coal. l. Medi Medical cal miscellany. London, British Library, Sloane MS 1975, fol. 92 verso. Ca. 1190–1200 1.3 Gale Galen, n, the the King King,, and and light lightnin ningg burni burning ng the the book book.. Pseud Pseudo-G o-Gale alen, n,  Experimenta. Paneth Codex, New Haven, Yale University Cushing/Whitney Medical Library MS 28, p. 121. Ca. 1285–1300 1.4 Zod Zodiac iac man man from from a fold folding ing cale calenda ndarr. London London,, British British Libr Library ary,, 1.5 1.6

1.77 1. 2.1

2.2

Harley 5311, F.book Fifteenth Volv olvelle elleMS with with sainsection saints. ts. GuildGuild-boo k of thecentury Barber-Su Barber -Surg rgeon eonss of York York.. London, British Library, Egerton MS 2572, fol. 51 recto. 1486 Fistula in ano operation with instruments. John of Arderne, Practica. London, British Library, Additional MS 29301, fol. 25 recto. Ca. 1420–30 Coven Cov entry try Rin Ring. g. Lon Londo don, n, Briti British sh Mus Museu eum, m, MME MME AF 897 897.. Late fifteenth century  Adiantos  Adian tos vel polit politricum ricum (maidenhair). Illustrated herbal written in French and Latin. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Thott 190 2º, fol. 15 verso. Late thirteenth/early fourteenth century  Adiantos vel politricum (maidenhair). Dioscorides, De materia medica. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS med.

2.3

2.4

2.5

2.6

6

8 10 12

16 21

32

gr. 1, fol. 42 verso. Ca. 513 Cauda vulpina (horsetail). Illustrated herbal written in French and Latin. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Thott 190 2º, fol. 20 recto. Late thirteenth/early fourteenth century Cauda vulpina (horsetail). Dioscorides, De materia medica. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS med. gr. 1, fol. 144 verso. Ca. 513 Feves (beans). Illustrated herbal written in French and Latin. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Thott 190 2º, fol. 40 recto. Late thirteenth/early fourteenth century Feves (beans). Dioscorides, De materia medica. New York,

33

Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 652, fol. 75 verso. Tenth century

39

vii

 

4

36

37

38

viii

3.1

3.2 3.3

3.4 3.5

3.6 3.7 4.1

4.2

4.3

ILLUSTRATIONS Sparagus (asparagus). Tacuinum sanitatis. Paris, Bibliothèque

nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 26 recto. Ca. 1380–90  Roxe (rose). Tacuinum sanitatis. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 83 recto. Ca. 1380–90  Autumpnus (autumn). Tacuinum sanitatis. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS series nova 2644, fol. 54 verso. Ca. 1390–1400  La vigna (grape vine). Carrara Herbal. London, British Library, Egerton MS 2020, fol. 28 recto. Ca. 1390–1404  Hyemps (winter). Tacuinum sanitatis. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS series nova 2644, fol. 55 recto. Ca. 1390–1400 Coytus (coitus). Tacuinum sanitatis. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 100 verso. Ca. 1380–90  Rizon (rice). Tacuinum sanitatis. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 48 recto. Ca. 1380–90 Attribu Attr ibuted ted to to the Pic Picoo Master Master.. Portra Portrait it of Plin Plinyy the Youn ounger ger?? Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s Natural  History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 1 recto. Ca. 1480s Attribu Attr ibuted ted to to the the Pico Pico Mast Master er.. Frontis Frontispie piece ce of of Letter Letter to Titus with Pico della Mirandola’s coat of arms and portrait of Pliny the Elder. Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 3 recto. Ca. 1480s Attribu Attr ibuted ted to to the Pic Picoo Master Master.. Incipi Incipitt to Book Book Two. Two. Pico Pico della della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 27 recto. Ca. 1480s

Attr Attribu ibuted ted tomanuscript the Pico the Pico Mas Master . Incipi Incthe ipittElder’s to Book Book Five. Fiv e. Pico PHistory ico del della la Mirandola’s of ter. Pliny  Natural . Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 68 verso. Ca. 1480s 4.5 Attr Attribu ibuted ted to the the Pico Pico Mas Master ter.. Incipi Incipitt to Book Book Sev Seven. en. Pic Picoo della della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 96 recto. Ca. 1480s 4.6 Attr Attribu ibuted ted to Giuli Giuliano ano Ama Amadei dei.. Incip Incipit it to to Book Book 22. 22. Greg Gregori orioo Lolli Piccolomini’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s Natural  History. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, MS L. 1504–1896, fol. 321 recto. 1460s

56 60

64 70

71 74 79

91

94

99

4.4

 

100

103

105

ILLUSTRATIONS

4.7

4.8

4.9

4.10

5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4 5.5

Attributed Attribu ted to the the Pico Pico Mas Master ter.. Incip Incipit it to to Book Book 22. 22. Pico Pico del della la Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 286 recto. Ca. 1480s Attribu Attr ibuted ted to the the Pico Pico Mas Master ter.. Incip Incipit it to to Book Book 37. 37. Pico Pico del della la Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 446 verso. Ca. 1480s Attribu Attr ibuted ted to the the Pico Pico Mas Master ter.. Incip Incipit it to to Book Book 35. 35. Pico Pico del della la Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 420 verso (bis.) Ca. 1480s Cristoforo Cristof oro Cortese. Cortese. Incipit to Book Book 35. 35. Pliny Pliny the Elder’ Elder’ss  Natural History. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1278, fol. 210 recto. Ca. 1420–30 Prefac Pre face, e, tabl tablee of ent entries ries beg beginn inning ing with the lett letter er “A,” “A,” and aloen (aloe). Tractatus de herbis. London, British Library, Egerton MS 747, fol. 1 recto. Ca. 1280–1300  Appium commune (celery), appium raninum (buttercup), and appium risus (celery-leaved buttercup). Tractatus de herbis. London, British Library, Egerton MS 747, fol. 3 verso. Ca. 1280–1300  Appium emoroidarum emoroidarum (lesser celandine), amidum (starch), antimonium (antimony), and acatia (blackthorn). Tractatus de herbis. London, British Library, Egerton MS 747, fol. 4 recto. Ca. 1280–1300 Preface. Livre des simples médecines. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 227 2º, fol. 28 recto. Ca. 1430  Apium emoroidarum emoroidarum (lesser celandine) and amidum (starch).  Livre des simples médecines. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek

MS GKS 227(antimony). 2º, fol. 34  Livre verso. des Ca. simples 1430 médecines. 5.6  Antimonium Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek MS GKS 227 2º, fol. 35 recto. Ca. 1430 5.7  Registr  Registree of the chaptrees. The Grete Herball. Southwark: Peter Treveris, 1526. London, British Library, C.27.11 5.8  De aloe (aloe). The Grete Herball. Southwark: Peter Treveris, 1526. London, British Library, C.27.11 5.99 Table of Re 5. Reme meddie ies. s. The Grete Herball. Southwark: Peter Treveris, 1526. London, British Library, C.27.11 6.1 Leo Leonar nardo do da Vinc inci. i. Ana Anatomi tomical cal Drawi Drawings ngs.. Two Two small small drawin drawings gs of the alimentary system (with a note on the erection of the penis). Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19019v

 

ix

107

108

110

1111 11

120

122

124 126

129 130 139 140 142

149

x

6.2

6.3

6.4 6.5

6.6

7.11 7. 7. 2

7. 3

7.4

8.1

ILLUSTRATIONS

Leonardo Leonar do da da Vinc Vinci. i. Ana Anatomi tomical cal Drawi Drawings ngs.. Two Two drawin drawings gs of of the cranium (with the date of 2 April 1489). Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19059r Leonar Leo nardo do da da Vinci Vinci.. Ana Anatomi tomical cal Draw Drawing ings. s. Lar Large ge stud studyy of the left foot and leg, showing muscles of the calf and tendons; sketch of the arm and hand (with the date of winter, 1510). Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19016r Leonar Leo nardo do da da Vinci Vinci.. Ana Anatomi tomical cal Draw Drawing ings. s. The The super superfic ficial ial vein veinss of the left arm and the vessels of the young and old. Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19027r Leonar Leo nardo do da da Vinci Vinci.. Ana Anatomi tomical cal Draw Drawing ings. s. The The port portal al vein veinss in old age and notes recording observations on the death of an old man in Florence. Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19027v Leonar Leo nardo do da da Vinci Vinci.. Ana Anatomi tomical cal Draw Drawing ings. s. Coitio Coitionn of hemis hemisect ected ed man and woman (with dissection of the penis). Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, Collecti on, W. W. 19097v Dome Do meni nico co Gh Ghir irla land ndai aio. o. St Jerome in his Study. Fresco, 184 x 119 cm. 1480. Chiesa di Ognissanti, Florence Agnolo Br Bronzino. Eleonora of Toledo Toledo with her son Giovanni de’ Med Medici ici. Oil on panel, 115 x 96 cm. 1544–5. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Raphael. St Cecilia with Sts Paul, John Evangelist, Augustine, and Mary Magdalene. Oil on canvas (transferred from panel), 238 x 150 cm. Ca. 1513–16. Pinacoteca, Bologna Bernardino Luin inii. Christ Teaching [generally called Christ  Among the Doctors]. Oil on panel, 72.4 x 85.7 cm. Ca. 1515–30. National Gallery, London Leon Le onar ardo do da Vinc incii and and Fr Fran ance cesc scoo Mel Melzi zi.. Salvia (sage). Nature print and notes (in hypothesized original orientation). Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 197v, formerly  

8.22 8.

8.3

 

fol. 72v–a. 1507 Attr At trib ibut uted ed to tAfter o Konr Konrad ad von von But Butze zenb nbac ach. h. Elifagus (sage), pilifagus i[d est] salvia (sage), herba virga pastorum (teasel), siriaca i[d est] malva (mallow) [identified from top left]. Nature prints and mantic text. German and Latin medical–astrological miscellany. Salzburg, University Library Salzburg MS M I 36, fol. 155 recto. 1425 or later Wenzeslaus Bra racck. Celidonia? (celandine?). German and Latin miscellany of magic, astrology, and medicine. Nature print and line-drawing. Prague, Národni knihova, MS XXIII F 129, fol. 213 verso. Late fifteenth century

156

157

164

165

169 185

192

198

201

206

213

214

ILLUSTRATIONS

8.44 8.

8.5

8.6

8.7

8.8

8.9

9.1

Leonard Leon ardoo da da Vin inci ci.. Two “r “rus ushe hes” s”:: Scirpus (top) and Cyperus. Pen and ink over traces of black chalk. Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 12427. Ca. 1510–14 Ciperj (Cyperus). Erbario [Herbal containing 192 drawings of plants]. Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419, fol. 33 verso. Late-fifteenth-century drawing  Angales (anagallis, pimpernel). Erbario [Herbal containing 192 drawings of plants]. Drawing. Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419, fol. 34 recto. Early-fifteenthcentury drawing (clary,, catnip?). Erbario [Herbal containing Salvia salvaticha (clary 192 drawings of plants]. Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419, fol. 99 verso. Late-fifteenthcentury nature print Ciperus (Cyperus). Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum [ Herbarius  Herbarius  Latinus]. Vicenza: Leonardus (Achates) de Basilea and Gulielmus de Papia, 1491, C. XLIII Cicorea (chicory). Woodcut [printed upside down]. Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum [ Herbarius  Herbarius Latinus]. Vicenza: Leonardus (Achates) de Basilea and Gulielmus de Papia, 1491, C. XXXII Self-p Sel f-port ortrait raitss of the art artists ists,, Heinri Heinricus cus Fül Füllmau lmaurer rer and and Albe Albertu rtuss Meyer, and of the blockcutter, Vitus Rodolph Speckle. Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium. Basel: Michael Isingrin, 1542 [897]

xi

223

225

227

228

233

235

242

 

Notes on Contributors Monica Azzolini

Monica Azzolini teaches at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She is a 2006 Ahmanson Fellow at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and a former fellow of the Society of Scholars, The Simpson Center for the Humanities, the University of Washington. She is the author of  two other essays on Leonardo da Vinci which have appeared in  Ea  Earl rlyy Sc Scie ience nce and   Medic  Med icin inee (2004) and Re  Rena naiss issan ance ce Stu Studi dies es (2005). This latter essay, entitled “In Praise of Art: Text and Context of Leonardo’s Paragone and its Critique of the Arts and Sciences” was awarded the Renaissance Studies Essay Prize for the best essay published by the journal in 2005. She is currently working on a monograph on learned medicine and astrology at the Sforza court. Piers D. Britton

Piers D. Britton is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Redlands, Redlands, California, USA. While his primary area of specialization is art in Rome and Florence during the sixteenth century, he has also co-written a book on production design for television, Re  Read adin ing g Betwe Between en Desi Design gnss (with Simon J. Barker; University of  Texas Press, 2003). The author of several articles on the invocation of humoral theory in the literature of the arts during the Renaissance, he is currently preparing a study on Francesco Salviati and the notion of “the melancholy artist” in cinquecento Florence. Jean A. Givens

Jean A. Givens is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Connecticut, Observation Image-Making in Storrs, Connecticut, USA. She is Press, the author (Cambridge University 2005).ofThe recipient ofand fellowships from the Gothic Art  American Council of Learned Societies, Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the J. Paul Getty Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, her current project is Picturing the Healing Arts: Word, Image, and the Illustrated Tractatus de Herbis, 1280–1526 .

Cathleen Hoeniger

Cathleen Hoeniger is a specialist in Italian Renaissance art who has long been interested in the relationship between art, science, and medicine, particularly the rise of naturalism in the pictorial arts. Her publications include articles on Simone Martini and a book, The Renovation of Paintings in Tuscany, 1250–1500 (Cambridge University Press, 1995). She is Associate Professor of Art History at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. xiii

 

xiv

CONTRIBUTORS

Peterr Mur Pete Murray ray Jones Jones

Peter Murray Jones is Fellow and Librarian at King’s College, Cambridge, UK. Author of Med  Medie ieva vall Med Medic icin inee in in Ill Illum umin inat ated ed Man Manusc uscri ript ptss (British Library and Centro Tibaldi, 1998), he has also written on medical books and libraries, and on the practice of  medicine and surgery in the Middle Ages. Sarah Blake McHam

Sarah Blake McHam, Professor of Art History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and has won fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. She has written several books and numerous essays on fifteenthand sixteenth-century Italian sculpture and painting, most recently an article on sculpted memorials to Roman authors erected in Italy in the fifteenth century published in  Renai  Ren aiss ssanc ancee Stud Studie iess. She is currently working on a book about the influence of Pliny the Elder’s Na  Natu tura rall His Histo tory ry in Italian Renaissance art and theory. Karen M. Reeds

Karen Meier Reeds, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, is the author of  Bo  Bota tany ny in in Medi Medieva evall and Renaissance Universities (Garland, 1991) as well as books on biomedical discovery and on New Jersey’s medical heritage. For the 2007 Linnaeus Tercentenary

at the American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia, she serves as guest curator of the exhibit, “Linnaeus and America.” She is a visiting scholar in the History of  Science at the University of Pennsylvania and affiliated with the Princeton Research Forum and the National Coalition of Independent Scholars. Claudia Swan

Claudia Swan is Associate Professor of Art History at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA. Her publications include The Clutius Botanical Watercolors: Plants and Flowers of the Renaissance (Harry N. Abrams, 1998); Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World  (University of  Pennsylvania Press, 2004) with Londa Schiebinger; and Ar  Art, t, Sci Scien ence, ce, an and d Wit itchc chcraf raftt in  Early  Ea rly Mo Moder dern n Hol Holla land: nd: Jac Jacqu ques es de Gh Ghey eyn n (15 (1565 65–16 –1629 29)) (Cambridge University Press, 2005). She has been a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1998–99) and a fellow at the Max-Planck Institute (2002). Alain Touwaide

Alain Touwaide is Historian of Sciences at the National Museum of Natural History of  the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. The recipient of many grants, awards, and honors; he has published extensively on the history of therapeutics in the cultures of the Mediterranean world from antiquity to the Renaissance.

 

Acknowledgments As the words of thanks in each essay make clear, many individuals and institutions generously supported the research in these collected studies. The volume and the conference sessions on which the book is based also benefited from the help and encouragement of still others. First of all, thanks are due to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Continuing their generous funding of the arts, the Kress Foundation awarded a Sharing-of-Expertise grant to this project, and their support helped bring international scholars to the International Congress for Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo to speak; they also provided a much-appreciated subvention that has helped underwrite the cost of this volume. These papers derive from sessions sponsored by AVIST VISTA A and the History of  Science Society at the 2003 International Congress for Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, as well as the session sponsored by the International Congress of  Medieval Art at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the College Art Association. We could have asked for no better venues in which to start this conversation about the intersection of art, science, and medieval intellectual traditions; and we are profoundly grateful for the interest and support of our colleagues that helped make these events possible. Above all, at the most personal level, it is, of course, our families whose interest, patience, and good humor ultimately helped this project to go forward, and it is to Bruce Raymond, Jim Reeds, and Emanuela Appetiti that this volume is dedicated with thanks and affection.

xv

 

Introduction Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain Touwaide Touwaide

This volume represents a conversation among scholars in fields at the intersection of the history of art, science, and medicine. Like most cross-cultural encounters, this one brings together participants who might not otherwise meet and who often talk past each other when they do. As a consequence, as editors and writers, we find ourselves engaged in a process of translation. As we discovered, little can be taken for granted; basic, common knowledge in one field is arcana in another. As important, few definitions are universally applicable to our multiple communities, and all profit from a degree of clarification. In the process of defining ourselves and our assumptions, we have discovered that the conversation is well worth having: we have learned as much about our own work and our own working premises as we have learned about other fields. One of the first and most obvious points requiring clarification concerns the framework and, by extension, the chronology established in this volume’ volume’ss title. Why “medieval” medicine and natural history, and why the dates “1200–1550?” This volume focuses chronologically and geographically on what most scholars would regard as the high and late Middle Ages from Byzantium to the British Isles. That said, this territory offers no clear boundaries between medieval and Renaissance – or as it is more often characterized these days – “early modern” culture. Moreover, when it comes to chronology, there is a reasonably clear divide, north and south. For students of southern European history, history, 1550 is decidedly post-medieval territory, but when it comes to northern Europe, continuity with the products and practices of  earlier “medieval” centuries is evident well into the sixteenth century. The history of art and that of science similarly diverge when it comes to the task of locating works of art and intellectual approaches within these parameters. For students of the visual arts, changes in workshop practice and conventions (among them, the shift from the anonymity of medieval craft to the authority of  named artistic personalities) as well as the mastery of observational techniques and naturalistic rendering define an opposition between medieval and Renaissance visual culture that is one of the central tropes of most histories of art. It is useful to note that Leonardo da Vinci – the focus of several articles in this volume – normally figures within this narrative structure as the Renaissance artist  par excellence, a master who clearly breaks with medieval traditions in style, subject matter, and intellectual ambition. Even so, for historians of science, Leonardo’s xvii

 

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science – if not his visual productions – has a decidedly retrospective, “medieval” cast, particularly in light of his reliance upon Galenic tradition. The picture of Leonardo that emerges in the essays by Piers Britton, Monica Azzolini, and Karen Reeds helps bridge these disciplinary commonplaces. Leonardo’s work clearly registers Galenic tropes and ways of understanding the body and personality, a conceptualizing mode available to other artists of the period (and perhaps, as Britton puts it, given a “new complexion” by Leonardo). For Azzolini, juxtaposing Leonardo’s Leonardo’s anatomical drawings with wi th what we know of  his access to autopsies and dissections reveals him in a new light, as a figure whose work is deeply embedded in practices common to other professionals in fifteenth-century Milan. Finally, as discussed in Karen Reeds’s essay, the nature prints associated with the circle of Leonardo reflect both a process of technical experimentation and a context for that experimentation that is older, broader, and more diverse in its implications than heretofore suggested. As these comments on Leonardo suggest, the essays in this volume often highlight elements of continuity rather than rupture in European intellectual life through the early sixteenth century. Moreover, Moreover, the research presented here reflects a rich and frequently retrospective interplay between classical and post-classical ways of knowing about the body and the world. Among these, the many and various ways in which the teachings of Galen, the writings of Pliny, and the botanical knowledge of Dioscorides and others inform the speculation of writers in subsequent centuries play a key role. As revealed here, this dialog registers a continuous – if multifaceted – tradition, and one in which past knowledge and ways of understanding the world are actively reshaped for present need. Thus, for example, as Alain Touwaide’s account of a previously unstudied herbal from the late-thirteenth- or earlyfourteenth century shows, much older Greek manuscripts of Dioscorides’  De materia medica continued to serve as the foundation for the study of herbal medicine. Even though Jean Givens highlights different technologies and intellectual contexts, she similarly demonstrates the manner in which a text first assembled for the use of thirteenth-century scholars was remade, both textually and graphically, in ways that preserved its utility well into the sixteenth century. This volume follows medieval practice by taking an ecumenical approach to our subjects, concluding that natural history and medicine are best construed very broadly. This conclusion comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with Pliny’s  Natural History, an encyclopedia built on a particularly expansive notion of what constitutes nature (and illustrated in a comparably wide-ranging manner in the manuscript described by Sarah McHam). The Tacuinum sanitatis manuscripts discussed by Cathleen Hoeniger encompass a similar breadth; as they build upon the remedies and the precepts for healthful living in an Arabic treatise in translation, they also express belief in the fundamental equivalence of the sound body and the foundations of a well-run society. Although most of the essays in this volume deal with books and the pictures

 

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they contain, our interest and that of our authors extends well beyond what is generally considered scientific illustration – as important and broad a topic as that may be. Our choice of the word “visualization” is deliberate, for as Peter Murray Jones aptly put it, our aim has been “to eschew anachronistic assumptions about medical illustration in the Middle Ages and consider the relationship of image, word, and medicine afresh.” There are several parts to this topic, among them the functions served by visual imagery in the context of medicine and natural history. And Jones’s essay masterfully defines a range of possibilities that extends well beyond the material within the covers of books to include images and their use within the healing setting of hospitals; the instrumental, therapeutic benefits invested in healing tokens and amulets; as well as the use of images to validate the healer’s authority authority.. Several of the essays in this volume further explore the synergy between visual and verbal communication. Givens and Swan suggest that at times pictures and other visual cues supplemented, extended, and even replaced words in both manuscripts and printed books devoted to topics in medicine and natural history. As Swan reminds us, what she aptly calls the “functional” account of herbal illustration, for example, holds that images – and particularly descriptive images  – “closed the gap between textual knowledge of nature and the experience of it.” The essays in this volume, however, offer an expanded range of relationships between visual and verbal communication and between reading, readership, and the communication of medical and scientific knowledge. As Peter Jones observes, in many cases, images take priority over words, particularly in genres such as cautery images, “cases where the texts themselves appear only inscribed within the image, not as discursive entities written in defined areas of the written page.” In a related vein, Jean Givens highlights the manner in which book design and the incorporation of a paratextual apparatus of  locational devices that are as much visual as verbal might assist and direct a reader’s experience as a seeker of information. Approaching the topic of function still more broadly, Claudia Swan’s discussion of a text that was not  illustrated, Euricius Cordus’ Cordus’ss  Botanologicon, offers a cognitive explanation for the presence of illustrations and one that highlights their mnemonic function. The conclusions reached here offer an alternative to the ways in which the production of medieval medical and scientific illustrations often has been described. Whereas several classic accounts (one by no less a figure than Pliny himself) memorably highlight the ways copying pictures could reduce and garble visual information, the essays in this volume reveal several other dynamics of  visual communication, including the medieval illustrators’ practice of gathering models from multiple sources to expand their repertoire and to satisfy their patrons’ expectations. Jones cites “medical” images that clearly rework the visual language contained in religious texts. According to Hoeniger’s analysis of the Tacuinum sanitatis manuscripts, the illuminators of these luxury productions appropriated image-types from the moralizing context of the “labors of the

 

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months,” from courtly imagery, from romance manuscripts, as well as seemingly more obvious, related texts such as herbals. In some cases, notably the nature prints examined by Reeds, first-hand knowledge of the subject under discussion may have formed part of the illustrator’s repertoire. But even when it did not, and we clearly find evidence of copying as in the corpus of illustrations described by Touwaide, or the relationship between the Latin and French copies of the Tractatus described by Givens, the results suggest deliberate change and modification. Along with highlighting the  producti  production on of images (and imagery), these essays underline the conditions of patronage and their reception – both intended and actual. In this context, geography matters, whether it is on a small scale as in Azzolini’s discussion of Milanese medical practice, or large-scale as in Touwaide’s account of heretofore unrecognized contacts between Byzantine East and Latin West. Equally important, technology matters, too, and it is here that the economics of book production – both in manuscript and in print – come into play. play. Several of the books discussed in this volume were clearly intended for the leisured or learned classes, among them the Egerton Tractatus de herbis manuscript discussed by Givens (a work that was almost certainly made for scholars at Salerno), the Tacuinum sanitatis manuscripts discussed by Hoeniger, and Pico della Mirandola’s copy of the  Natural History, as discussed by McHam. The ownership of others is less certain, and best treated with a degree of  circumspection, particularly when it comes to printed books. Even so, in this last context, the economics of the early book trade certainly played a role; despite the sixteenth-century popularity of illustrated medical texts, they clearly were expensive to produce. In virtually all of the settings discussed in this volume, images required a special effort – no less in human time and the cost of materials than in intellectual commitment. The producers, audiences, and disseminators of this imagery certainly knew this and, clearly, the decision to employ visual images implicates both the viewer and the viewed. As our authors repeatedly remind us, medieval medicine and natural history were deeply logocentric enterprises. Even so, the works surveyed here reflect both the capacity and the desire of multiple communities to capitalize on the unique capacities of visual communication. Finally, as these essays demonstrate, images and imagery powerfully and meaningfully give concrete form to essential relationships: between healer and patient, between the cure of souls and cures of the t he body, body, and between memory and the mastery of the healing arts.

 

For Bruce Raymond, Jim Reeds, and Emanuela Appetiti Appetiti

 

Chapter 1

Image, Word, and Medicine in the Middle Ages Peter Murray Jones

Images in medical manuscripts from the Middle Ages are commonly and understandably described as medical illustrations.1 Trouble arises only when we start to assume that the conventions of twentieth-century medical textbooks, written by doctors, illustrated by professional medical illustrators or photographers, and published by specialist medical publishers, apply to the Middle Ages. The nexus of author, illustrator and publisher that is taken for granted as defining medical illustration is anachronistic when it comes to medieval manuscripts. Even the idea of authorship does not really fit well. Many medical texts do not have authors in the modern sense – they may be compilations and written for the use of the scribe himself – while auctoritas may attach to them in varying degrees. There were no professional medical illustrators; illuminators, whether monks or lay persons, would never have considered themselves as medical illustrators, and would be far more likely to have been employed by owners or commissioners of books than by authors. The publication of a manuscript might involve an author giving out his work to selected friends or patrons with a view to its being circulated more widely; it was not the equivalent to launching a modern medical textbook on a selected market of potential purchasers. The aim of this contribution is to see what happens if we try deliberately to eschew anachronistic assumptions about medical illustration in the Middle Ages, and consider the relationship of image, word, and medicine afresh. We will still need, of course, a pragmatic definition of what is to be included and what is to be left out. So far as books are concerned, we can include images found in medical books from the first survivors of the Western medical codex in the sixth century CE to an end-point assumed rather arbitrarily as the end of the medieval period around 1500 CE. There might reasonably be some argument at this point as to whether images of medical subjects that are found in non-medical books should 1

See, for example, the pioneering surveys of Loren C. MacKinney,  Medical  Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965); and Robert Herrlinger, History of Medical Illustration Illustration from Antiquity Antiquity to A.D. 1600, trans. G. Fulton-Smith (London: Pitman Medical, 1970). 1

 

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be included. Does St Roch showing a plague sore on the thigh found in a Book of  Hours count, or should astrological and alchemical imagery be included simply because these sciences were employed sometimes for healing purposes? 2 I propose for present purposes to be inclusive rather than exclusive, and not to try to distinguish medical books from non-medical books too sharply. Part of being watchful against anachronistic assumptions is avoiding too rigid a definition of  what constituted a medical book, and, as shall see, images with a part to play in healing are found in other places than books. books .3 A trawl through the medical manuscript books in any substantial library will yield a haul of images that might be called medical illustrations if we are simply establishing a population to consider. In the 1980s I carried out such a trawl in the British Library and the Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine; more recently,, I have done the same in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library recently and the Cushing/Whitney Historical Medical Library at Yale. Yale.4 However However,, since my days working through manuscripts in London, when I was happy to classify these images as medical illustrations under different chapter headings – anatomy, diagnosis, and prognosis; materia medica, cautery, and surgery; diet, regimen, and medication – I have become more and more puzzled about explaining how exactly these images function in relation to the texts they accompany. Apart from the anachronism potentially involved in talking of medical illustration, there are other problems with that model that arise out of the interaction of words and images in medical manuscripts.

Problems with the Model of Medical Illustration

One difficulty with the model of medical illustration applied to manuscripts is that there are many cases where images that we want to label as illustrations do not accompany medical texts, because there are no texts, or because text and image have gone separate ways. In some instances, particularly those created at dates nearer 1000 CE than 1500 CE, we may be tempted to assume that the illustrations we have found did once accompany a text, but that as a result of some accident in the transmission by copying from manuscript to manuscript, text and image became separated. This is presumably the case for the image of a seated physician 2

Peter Murray Jones,  Medieval Medicine Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1998), fig. 13: London, British Library, Additional MS 18854, fol. 146 verso; French Book of Hours, 1525. 3 I am confining the discussion here to Western medieval manuscripts, though I believe the same considerations could apply to Byzantine or to Islamic material. 4 Peter Murray Jones,  Medieval Medical Miniatur Miniatures es (London: British Library, 1984), revised as  Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts; exhibition, “The Art of  Medicine: Medical Manuscripts from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library,” Beinecke Library, 16 April–22 May 2004 (www.artofmedicine.yale.edu).

 

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taking the pulse of a woman patient found in a German medical manuscript of the thirteenth century, which seems to have no connection with any of the other medical texts in the book.5 Moreover, we cannot assume that even when text and image are found together that they have always kept company. There is, for instance, a set of thirteen images of fetal positions within the womb. In the earliest ninth-century CE example these images accompany a text of Muscio Gynaecia, but in manuscripts of the thirteenth century and later, the set detaches itself from that text and circulates independently (Fig. (Fig. 1.1). 1.1). To add to the confusion, the set reappears in the fifteenth century with extracts on obstetrics from Muscio, where it is translated into Middle English, and included without ascription to any author, in the so-called The Sekenesse of Wymmen, a version of Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicinae, itself adapted from Roger de Baron, Practica medicinae.6 We cannot presume, therefore, that all medical “illustrations” can be considered as the intended accompaniment to a particular text – some may have circulated with no text at all, or with alternative texts. This looseness of fit between text and image is not at all uncommon as a phenomenon, and may in part at least be due to varying preferences among copyists for one at the expense of the t he other. Second, even in cases where we have both text and illustration, and they seem to be a good fit, we cannot assume that the text takes priority over the illustration. Because university medicine in the Middle Ages Ages was so logocentric in its devotion to exposition of authorities, and to commentary on texts (like other scholastic disciplines), it is tempting to assume that word determines image, that illustration is really a means of enhancing access for readers to the text.7 But there are instances in which the words are secondary to the images. Take, for example, the cases where the texts themselves appear only inscribed within the image, not as discursive entities written in defined areas of the written page. Sets of cautery figures, very widely circulated in the early Middle Ages, have instructions for burning at a particular place on the body depending on the nature of the disease 5 London, British Library, Arundel MS 295, fol. 256 recto; Jones,  Medieval Medicine, fig. 37. Presumably, if it accompanied a text originally originally,, that was a work on pulse. I refer to images from Jones,  Medieval Medicine, wherever possible as a convenient resource for looking up images. 6 See London, British Library, Sloane MSS 249 and 2463 (the latter edited in Beryl Rowland, Medieval Woman’ Woman’ss Guide to Health: the First English Gynecological Gynecological Handbook  Handbook  (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981). The complicated fortunes of text and images are discussed in Monica H. Green, “Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts in Middle English,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 14 (1992): 53–88, esp. 81–2, and Jones, Medieval  Medicine, 39–41, figs 28–9. For Gilbertus Anglicus, see O. Riha, “Gilbertus Anglicus und sein ‘Compendium medicinae’: medici nae’: Arbeitstechnik und Wissensorganisation,” Wissensorganisation,” Sudhoffs Archiv 78 (1994): 59–73; and for Roger de Baron, see E. Wickersheimer,  Dictionnaire  Biographique des Médecins en France au Moyen Age, Hautes Etudes Médiévales et Modernes 34 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1979), 720–1. 7 On the teaching of medicine see Cornelius O’Boyle, The Art of Medicine: Medical Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250–1400 (Leiden: Brill, 1998).

 

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Fetal positions within the womb. Gilbertus Anglicus, The Sekenesse of  Wymmen. London, British Library, Sloane MS 249, fol. 197 recto. Fifteenth century. Photo by permission of the British Library

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with which the patient is afflicted (“for sickness of the head and swelling of the chest, and torturing pain of hands, knees, and feet, burn thus,” written round the head of the patient pictured). These instructions are normally written within the confines of the image itself rather than alongside it or above or below it on the page. It would not make sense to talk of these as cautery illustrations, for they do not illustrate a text; rather the text explains how to interpret the image.8 There is a third further difficulty. Can we be confident that illustrations that accompany medical texts in manuscripts are exclusively medical in their range of  signification? There are examples of images in medical manuscripts that cannot be explained without recourse to the importing of motifs from religious art. The same illustrated set of the points at which the hot cautery iron is to be applied mentioned above contains one image that at first sight has nothing to do with cautery. On fol. 92 verso of London, British Library, Sloane MS 1975, a hand appears from a cloud and puts a burning coal on the tongue of a man whose head is in profile (Fig. (Fig. 1.2). 1.2). This is not a recommendation to use heated coals on the tongue for medical purposes. The hand is from heaven, and the motif is borrowed from the story of Isaiah 6:6–7, in which the burning coal brought by a seraph symbolizes the forgiveness of sin and the gift of prophecy. Its relevance to cautery is metonymic; the brazier in which the cautery irons are heated is also depicted, and must have suggested the story of the hot coals and Isaiah. It is not a case of a model in religious art supplying a solution to the technical challenge posed to the artist by a medical image. Instead the artist has supplied an image that is borrowed directly from biblical art, but has no medical meaning.9 This should force us to think not just of the technical challenges posed to the artist, but of the vocabulary of images that artists and spectators must have had in common – based on their shared participation in the visual conventions of contemporary religious art, so much more readily present to them within churches, in processions, as well as in the Bible and other illustrated religious books. Finally, there is the question of illuminated and historiated initials in medical manuscripts. From the thirteenth century onwards, it became common in both university and lay circles for illuminators to supply images in the initials at the beginning of medical texts. Normally the historiated initial is identifiably relevant to the subject of the text, and in some sense may be said to introduce or at least supply a visual marker for the text. As an example we may take the so-called 8

Examples may be found in Jones, Medieval Medicine, figs 5, 18, 68–70, in Italian and English manuscripts ranging from ca. 1000 to ca. 1300 CE. Examples illustrated there include: Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS plut. 73.41, fol. 127 verso and fol. 122 recto; Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 1382, fol. 2 verso and fol. 19 recto; and London, British Library, MS Sloane 2839, fol. 1 verso. 9 London, British Library, MS Sloane 1975, fol. 92 verso (online image at http://bs001.colo.firstnet.net.uk/britishlibrary/controller/home). This manuscript was made either in northern England or northern France around 1190–1200, and was owned by the monastery of Ourscamp, a Cistercian house near Noyon, north of Paris. See Nigel Morgan,  Early Gothic Manuscripts, Manuscripts, [I], 1190–1250 1190–1250 (London: Harvey Miller, 1982), no. 10.

 

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Cautery scenes with Isaiah receiving the burning coal. Medical miscellany. London, British Library, Sloane MS 1975, fol. 92 verso. Ca. 1190–1200. Photo by permission of the British Library

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Paneth codex, illuminated towards the end of the thirteenth century in Bologna.10 It contains as many as 42 texts, and in fact there are 57 initials to medical texts; there are some texts without historiated initials, but other texts have initials at major divisions as well as at the beginning. Two artists were involved, and while they may have received instructions from a patron who commissioned the manuscript, it seems that they chose the subject of the images without any sustained commitment to differentiating all the medical texts or sticking to the most obvious Both artistsmedical bring asubject. certain literalness of approach to the task of illustration. The first artist illustrating the lapidary text on the 12 gems or 13 stones attributed to King Evax of Arabia shows the seated King wearing a crown and holding a scepter as he proffers a green stone to a man standing before him. This represents the first words of the text “ Evax rex arabum … ” and one of the gems or precious stones mentioned in the title.11 Similarly the second artist illustrates a pseudoGalenic text on medicinal experiments by showing Galen talking to a king facing him (Fig. (Fig. 1.3). 1.3). Between them, a red bolt comes out of the cloud above and sets on fire a book, which is lying at Galen’s feet. The first words of the prologue to the text are “ Dixit Galienus Galienus Ignis qui descendit descendit de celo super altarem altarem combuxit libros libros regum.”12 The subject of the picture is, thus, not one suggested by any feature of  the text proper, but what Galen is supposed to have said by way of prologue about the circumstances in which the text came to be written, involving the destruction of a number of royal books. Taking the first or early words of the text written alongside the space left for the illuminator to fill was a very common strategy for illuminators seeking a subject for initial pictures, and it is no surprise to find that both artists of the Paneth codex relied on that strategy rather than on an informed 10

The Paneth codex is New Haven, Yale University Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, MS 28. It takes its name from Fritz Paneth and his family, early owners of the manuscript. The contents are described and numbered in Karl Sudhoff, “Codex Fritz Paneth,” Archi  Archivv für Geschichte der Mathematik, Mathematik, der Naturwissenschafte Naturwissenschaften n und  2–31. A valuable listing and description of the the images within this der Technik  12 (1929): 2–31. of Medieval Medical Images in North America, which may work is to be via found the Index be accessed theinRLG Union Catalog on the World World Wide Wide Web Web or the UCLA Digital Library. One initial on p. 1149 at the beginning of the Tractatus de oleis of the  Rogerina has been missed in the IMMI listings: author Roger de Baron, wearing an academic cap and ermine-trimmed gown, gestures with both hands, facing half right. For further discussion of the program of images in the Paneth Codex, see Jones, “Picturing Medicine in the Age of Petrarch,” forthcoming in Petrarca e la Medicina. Atti del Convegno di studi, Capo d’Orlando, 27–28 giugno 2003, Messina, ed. Tiziana Pesenti and Vincenzo Fera (Messina: Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Umanistici, 2006). 11 This is the opening chapter to an incomplete version of  Marbode of Rennes’ (1035–1123) De Lapidibus, ed. John M. Riddle, Sudhoffs Archiv, Beiheft 20 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), 34. The text, with its initial “E,” begins on p. 1197 of  Cushing/Whitney MS 28, Sudhoff, “Codex Fritz Paneth,” no. 37. The Paneth codex is not listed among the manuscript witnesses known to Riddle. 12 Pseudo-Galen, Experimenta, Cushing/Whitney MS 28, p. 121, Sudhoff; “Codex Fritz Paneth,” no. 12.

 

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Galen, the King, and lightning burning the book. Pseudo-Galen,  Experimenta. Paneth Codex, New Haven, Yale Yale University Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, MS 28, p. 121. Ca. 1285–1300. Photo courtesy of Yale Yale University, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library

 

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medical judgment of what would best represent the author’s work. The sense in which such initial images can be said to illustrate the text is very different from the circumstances we have in mind when we suppose a medical author commissioning a set of images to throw light on the various subjects of his work. The illuminators to the Paneth codex also supplied images in the illuminated borders that might best be characterized as displaying an ironic or at least detached view of medicine as a subject. 13

Practical Images

These four problems stand in the way of any simple assumption that what we find in medical manuscripts of the Middle Ages are medical illustrations. Images in medical manuscripts turn out to have ambiguous or even non-existent relationships to the words of the texts, those words we might have thought of as originating and determining the character of the images. There are causes that help to explain this breakdown of the model of medical illustration in the face of the variability of relation between word and image in medical books. We need in particular to bear in mind that medicine in the Middle Ages was an art as well as a science, and that medical books might be related in an instrumental way to medical practice, as well as being a means of transmitting medical knowledge. Some of the distinctive features of medieval medical images are closely related to this instrumental or practical orientation.14 A good example example of this practical orientation orientation is to be found found in the so-called so-called physicians’ physician s’ calendars. These These have a distinctive and spectacular appearance appearance as books, quite different from what we think of as the usual codex form. They were written and illuminated on parchment leaves which were subsequently folded into an oblong shape, sewn together at one end and connected to a silken cord, from which the calendar hung at the physician’s belt or in a purse at his waist. Each of the separate leaves might contain sets of monthly tables of astrological data or a medical text and image. The images in these calendars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries typically include tables with circular eclipse diagrams, colored urine glasses, a bloodletting man, and a zodiac man (Fig. (Fig. 1.4). 1.4). For each of these kinds of image we find canons, sets of rules to interpret and to explain how to use the image. The images themselves are really parchment instruments or calculating engines, a kind of medical technology. They were used to determine when and where to let blood or to apply medicines, in conjunction with the calendrical data. They are not illustrations to the text in the sense that gives the text priority – it is really the opposite way round, where the text plays a secondary role in explaining how the image is to be used. 13

For the “ironic” potential of border illumination, see the Smithfield Decretals (London, British Library, Royal MS 10 E IV), fol. 54 illustrated in Jones,  Medieval  Medicine, fig. 39 and Cushing/Whitney MS 28, p. 92. 14 The series of cautery pictures discussed above is clearly related to practice.

 

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1.4

Zodiac man from a folding calendar. London, British Library, Harley MS 5311, section F. Fifteenth century. Photo by permission of the British Library

The physician’s calendar may have had a social as well as an instrumental use. It seems likely that the physician’s calendar had a role to play in the encounter of  doctor and patient; it was perhaps meant to impress and reassure the patient as much as to enable the doctor to make diagnostic and therapeutic decisions. The rather elementary foundorized in thebymedical images andwho textual canons might easily, in fact,information have been memorized mem the learned owner, would have had little need for such a guide. Frequent mistakes in the execution of images and text perhaps hint at more concern for display and embellishment than accuracy. 15 15

On physicians’ physicians’ calendars see J. P. P. Gumbert, “Über “Über Faltbücher, Faltbücher, vornehmlich vornehmlich Almanache,” in  Rationali  Rationalisierung sierung der Buchherstel Buchherstellung lung im Mittelalt Mittelalter er und in der früher  Neuzeit , ed. Peter Rück (Marburg: Institut für Historische Hilfswissenschaft, 1994), 111–21; 11 1–21; Hilary M. Carey, “What is the Folded Almanac? The Form and Function of a Key Manuscript Source for Astro-medical Practice in Later Medieval England,” Social History Talbot, “A Medieval Physician’s Vade Vade Mecum,” of Medicine 16 (2003): 481–509; and C. H. Talbot,  Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 16 (1961): 212–33, as well as the examples shown in Jones, Medieval Medicine L ibrary,, Sloane Medicine, figs 45, 46: London, British Library MS 2250; and London, British Library, Harley MS 5311 5311..

 

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It is not uncommon to find urine flasks wrongly colored, or indication lines running to the wrong captions. Perhaps the calendars were badges of authority and opening up the leaves was an impressive part of the ritual of medical consultation. consultati on. There are images that are used for purposes of calculation and prognosis in medicine. The volvelle constructed of parchment for the Company of BarberSurgeons of York in 1486 is one such (Fig. ( Fig. 1.5). 1.5). The graduated circle drawn on the page gives the days of the month throughout the calendar year, while inside it are signs which of the zodiac. There is a movable disk could attached by athethread has a long finger attached.circular The finger be tosetthetopage any calendar day and would indicate the sign and degree of the zodiac concerned. On the outside of the disk are written the days of the moon from 1 to 30. Inside the disk should be another (actually missing from the manuscript), whose finger could be moved to set at the day of the moon. With both dials set, the barber-surgeon could determine the zodiacal sign and degree of the moon for the day concerned, which would allow him to work out whether it was a good or bad day for a procedure, whether bloodletting or a minor operation. The symbolic appearance of Saints Cosmas and Damian, and of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, the patron saints of the guild, in the four corners of the t he page containing the volvelle were not simply added decorations to the working instrument but suggest an additional ceremonial function. Since the volvelle is found not in a manuscript that was privately owned, but in the Guild-book of the Company, it may be that its function was as much ceremonial and symbolic for the membership of the Company as it was instrumental.16 Other instruments of  prognostication used by practitioners were less spectacular. They include the Sphere of Pythagoras or sphere of life and death, a means of forecasting the outcome of an illness from the letters of the patient’s name. 17 Another practical factor affecting the relationship of text and image in medieval medical manuscripts was the need to describe the appearance of things so that the reader could visualize them for himself.18 The skills of diagnosis from 16

Guild-book of the Barber-Surgeons of York, London, British Library, Egerton MS

 Medieval Medicine Medicine 2572, see Jones, 17 For a sphere of life and death, fig. in a48.very early version of ca. 1050 CE see Jones, L ibrary,, Cotton MS Tiberius C VI, fol. 6 verso.  Medieval Medicine, fig. 44: London, British Library See also H. E. Sigerist, “The Sphere of Life and Death in Medieval Manuscripts,”  Bulletin of the History of Medicine 11 (1942): 292–303; and Linda E. Voigts, “The Latin Verse and Middle English Prose texts on on the ‘Sphere of Life and Death’ in Harley 3719,” Chaucer  Review 21 (1986): 291–305. 18 Many of the same considerations that apply to the medieval surgery as described here also apply to other categories of practical medical image – for instance those found in herbals. Despite the enormous interest shown by modern scholarship in illustrated medieval herbals, far too little attention has been paid to issues of the practical use of such herbals and the relationship of image to text. For a recent survey of the subject of herbals see Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Li brary,, 2000). The Illustrative Tra Traditions ditions (London: British Library work of Jerry Stannard,  Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Katharine E. Stannard and Richard Kay (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) is exceptional in relating herbal texts to herbalism.

 

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Volvelle with saints. Guild-book of the Barber-Surgeons of York. London, British Library, Egerton MS 2572, fol. 51 recto. 1486. Photo by permission of the British Library

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the appearance of the patient could only be described by attempting to convey the visual experience of looking at particular signs on the body. body. It is not surprising that the use of images to supplement and extend the work of the prose surgery followed soon after the first surgeries came into circulation. Roger Frugardi’s Chirurgia, dating from the late twelfth century, was the first to be illustrated, and is the most frequently illustrated of medieval surgeries, at least until that of the English surgeon John of Arderne in the late fourteenth century century.. Early examples of  surgical illustration stick to chapters the pattern thatthe introduce and exemplify the subject matter of particular of of theinitials work, but constraints of this format led illuminators to experiment with forms of illustration that would be more responsive to the challenge of surgery’s inherent bias towards visuality. We find, for example, that the early-fourteenth-century program of illustrations to Roger’s Chirurgia found in London, British Library, Sloane MS 1977 abstracts from the text the miniatures that would normally introduce separate chapters, and groups them in an illuminated series before the text begins. The surgery miniatures form the bottom two registers on each page of illuminations while the top register is taken up with a narrative of the life of Christ. This allows the first page, for example, to show successive stages of an operation for depressed fracture of the skull. Other images in the series are closely related to the words of the text, despite their physical separation, and they 19display a surprising literalness of approach to the business of illustrating surgery. The techniques of operational surgery or the administration of certain certai n remedies had to be described so as to be envisaged by the reader, as did the instruments that were to be used in the course of an operation, or the bandages that had to be applied afterwards. Thus surgical texts in particular were far more likely to seek to describe the appearance of things than even practical medical texts of other kinds. Surgeons devoted much effort to trying to distinguish different forms of  ulcer, or the precise sequence of events in an operation, and they sought to evoke not just the appearance of things, but their smell, taste, or how they felt to the touch. They might employ similes or metaphors to help in this task, talking of the ulcer that gnaws like a rodent, or the gazelle-like pulse. It is no accident, of course, that surgical texts also contained more case histories than other kinds of text, and that surgeons were more likely to stress the unusualness and novelty of the cases they had treated. The storytelling involved in such narrationes was a means to the end of illustrating the phenomenon of particularity, so that the general rules could be shown to apply in practice. 20 19

Jones, Medieval Medicine, figs 75, 76, 78: London, British Library, Sloane MS 1977, fols 2 recto, 6 recto, and 6 verso. The same approach is taken in another French Roger Frugardi manuscript, as discussed by Helen Valls, “Illustrations as Abstracts: the Illustrative Programme in a Montpellier Manuscript of Roger Frugardi’s Chirurgia,” Roger ’s Chirurgia, see Tony Hunt, The Medieval  Medicina nei nei Secoli 8 (1996): 67–83. On Roger’ Surgery (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992) and Hunt,  Anglo-Norman Medicine, vol. 1 (Woodbridge: (W oodbridge: Boydell, 1994). 20

 

The descriptive language employed by medieval surgeons is emphasized in Marie-

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In rhetorical terms, surgeons were given to ecphrasis, attempting to summon up the appearance of the person or object using all the linguistic devices at their disposal. Not surprisingly, however, surgical texts are also more frequently accompanied by images than other sorts of medical text. The most inventive use of images is that of the English fourteenth-century surgeon John of Arderne.21 In a series of over 250 marginal images he exploits the potential of such imagery as an extension of the descriptive power of words. He uses the phrase “ sicut hic depingitur

… on ” (as is here or some variant of might this, toshow, introduce images that will carry where the shown), words leave off. The image for instance, the pattern of fistulous holes as it presents itself in particular cases of  fistula in ano, the subject of his most famous treatise or Practica, or the appearance of a medicinal plant called for in the text, or the correct way to pass a needle under the vein when sewing up a severed s evered blood vessel. What Arderne seems to be telling us is: if you the reader are going to be able to make a proper diagnosis, perform the necessary procedures in an operation, use the right implements and medicaments, you need to be able to visualize them – and this means you need to have them described to you as accurately as possible in both words and images. This is not to say that Arderne was inhibited in any way by a commitment to the world of appearance. In one example from his series of marginal pictures we see a corkscrew-like device represented. This image pictures not some instrument used in surgery but the pain of the iliaca passio  – the guts are twisted as if by a gimlet, says the text alongside. Arderne’s simile of the gimlet is actually what is pictured in the margin.22 The program of marginal images can reasonably be regarded as the visual equivalent of a commentary on the text, glossing words and illustrating concepts as well as objects. But the program is more than a just a visual commentary, because Arderne deliberately seeks to use images to do the descriptive work that words cannot. Time is involved as well as spatial understanding. Surgical operations involve a sequence of events that must be followed, from the first encounter with the sick patient to the dressings that will eventually be removed from the healed wound. In the absence of the medieval equivalent of a video camera, this imposes quite a challenge on the surgeon instructor. Words can do most of the work because Christine Pouchelle, Corps et chirurgie à l’apogée du Moyen Age: savoir et imaginaire du corps chez Henri de Mondeville, chirurgien de Philippe le Bel (Paris: Flammarion, 1983), translated as The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990). On case histories see C. Álvarez-Millán, “Practice versus Theory: Tenth-Century Case Histories from the Islamic Middle East,” Social History of Medicine 13 (2000): 293–306; 293–306; and Nancy Siraisi, “L’‘individuale’ “L’‘individuale’ nella medicina tra medioevo e umanesimo: I ‘casi clinici,’” in Umanesimo e medicina: il problema dell’individuale, ed. Roberto Cardini and Mariangela Regoliosi, Humanistica 17 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1996), 33-62. 21 For this treatise see John Arderne, Treatises of Fistula in ano, Haemorrhoids, and  Clysters by John Arderne, from an Early Fifteenth-century Manuscript Translation , ed. D’Arcy Power, EETS 139 (New York: H. Frowde, 1910). 22

 

See, for example London, British Library, Harley MS 5401, fol. 17 verso.

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sentences can construct a sequential narrative, but it is easy to lose the big picture as the details succeed each other in the course of describing an operation. Arderne produces in response to this challenge a tour de force of part-schematized, partnaturalistic visualization in the half- or full-page drawings that accompany the description of his big operation for  fistula in ano (Fig. 1.6). 1.6). Here we see successive stages in the operation pictured side by side, with the appropriate instruments for each stage in their proper positions. An index sign to that place in the narrative relevant stagesophisticated in the operation is described a key to each of thewhere four images imthe ages here. This passing back andprovides forth between text and image has few or no rivals as an example of how to represent dispositions dispositi ons both in time and space on the pages of a book – in the late Middle Ages or, or, for that matter, today.23

The Healing Image

We have exposed some of the problems that attach to trying to define medical images in their relation to texts within medical books, and some of the effects that practical interests had on the use of medical imagery in text and pictures. It is instructive to compare these manuscript images with forms of imagery that had a much more direct impact on the patient, rather than on the reader of medical books. For this exercise, we need to examine what part visualization and the production and consumption of images played in the healing of the sick or the warding off of illness. This takes us into a world of visual imagery beyond medical manuscripts. That world includes: pilgrim badges; frescoes in hospitals; devotional images of Christ, Christ , the Virgin Virgin Mary, Mary, and the saints; amuletic suspensions and ligatures worn on the body. body. All of these images played a part in healing, heali ng, as we can learn from contemporary literary and archival sources. If sometimes, as in the case of amulets worn to ward off disease and sudden death, they have survived only in the exceptional case of valuable jewelry rather than the far more widely used vegetables, stones, and scraps of parchment used for humbler amulets, we still have enough material to study and to gain a better appreciation of the role of  visual culture in healing. There are many texts prescribing the use of amulets, even though the objects themselves have disappeared. The first field to consider is that of institutional medical art, the imagery that was used in the late-medieval hospital. Second we will consider apotropaic 23

The fistula in ano operation is shown in Jones,  Medieval Medicine Medicine, fig. 82. See also Peter Murray Jones, “ ‘Sicut hic depingitur … ’: John of Arderne and English Medical Illustration in the 14th and 15th Centuries,” in  Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert , ed. Wolfram Prinz and Andreas Beyer (Weinheim: VCH, 1987), 103–26; and Jones, “John of Arderne and the Mediterranean Tradition of Scholastic Surgery,” in Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. Luis Garcia-Ballester, Roger French, Jon Arrizabalaga, and Andrew Cunningham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 289–321.

 

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operation with instruments. John of Arderne, Practica. London, British Library, Additional MS 29301, fol. 25 recto. Ca. 1420–30. Photo by permission of the British Library Fistula in ano

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images intended to ward off evil as well as therapeutic images deployed in suspensions and ligatures worn on the human body, or sometimes displayed more publicly. Let us start with the use of pictures in hospitals of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is important to realize here that medieval hospitals did not began as medical institutions, and, indeed, that most medieval hospitals at the end of the Middle Ages were not medical at all. Hospitals were primarily places where pilgrims, lepers, the old, and the poor congregated to receive charity, to carry on athose monastic of devotions, and toItpray for the patrons and so asfifteenth to help rich round folk through purgatory. is only in hospital the fourteenth centuries and, above all, in Italy and France that hospitals were founded, or rededicated in some cases, to give medical care to the sick. The most influential model for the medicalized hospitals was the great hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, founded towards the end of the thirteenth century, and extensively expanded and redeveloped over the following two hundred years. In hospitals generally, the cure of souls continued to be as important as the cure of the body – even in an institution that employed physicians, surgeons, and nurses to give medical care to a population of patients who left the hospital when they were considered to be better. In fact, cure of souls was seen as more important, for the Lateran Council of 1215 instructed the physician to summon the physician of  24

souls administering medicines. Thebefore inspiration for the bodily medical hospital can be seen in the sermons of St Augustine in which he figured Christ as the divine physician, Christus medicus.25 Christ receives and cares for the sick poor in the image of Christ the pilgrim. The medical hospital expressed this imagery in terms of the buildings, its community of staff and patients, and in the liturgy that was at the center of daily life. The architectural shape of these hospitals was often cruciform, with long male and female wards intersecting so as to allow for the liturgy of the mass and the daily offices to take place within sight of the whole community. The hospitals also had chapels attached in which those patients pati ents not bed-bound could worship. The wards and the chapels had elaborate programs of visual decoration. The Pellegrinaio at the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala near the Duomo in Siena has an intact series of fifteenth-century murals taking up all the wall space of the room in which the male beds were placed. Santa Maria Nuova in Florence had a similar series of  the Life of the Virgin in the female ward, fragments of which still remain in the Archivio Notarile, which has taken over the space once occupied by the ward. Patrons, sometimes confraternities or other groups rather than single individuals, commissioned such programs, and they addressed the cure of the souls and of the bodies of the patients who could see them every day from their beds. Similarly the chapels of the hospitals were the sites of altarpieces, statuary, and other images in 24

H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decre Decrees es of the General Councils. Councils. Text, Text, Translation Translation and  and  Commentary (St Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1937), 570 (Latin), 263 (translation). 25 See Rudolph Arbesmann, “The concept concept of ‘Christus Medicus’ in St Augustine,” Traditio 10 (1954): 1–28.

 

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stone, wood, and paint which reinforced the invitation to direct meditation and prayer to the intercessor saints or to the Virgin. Virgin .26 The most spectacular works of art conceived for medieval hospital chapels are the mid- to late-fifteenth-century altarpieces for the Hôtel Dieu in Beaune, painted by Rogier van der Weyden, the Portinari altarpiece at Santa Maria Nuova in Florence painted by Hugo van der Goes, and the Isenheim altarpiece painted by Matthias Grünewald, slightly later in 1508–16. Less well known is the fifteenthcentury altarpiece in the possession almshouse at Sherborne Dorset, The and painted by a follower of Rogier van of derthe Weyden, probably based ininPicardy. circumstances in which this picture arrived in the almshouse are unclear; local tradition holds that it was hanging in the Chapel there before the Reformation. The almshouse was dedicated to Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, and had been founded by royal charter from King Henry VI in 1431. The license granted was for 20 brethren, 12 poor or sick and impotent men and four women, with a chaplain. The Chapel was completed in 1442. Above the nave of the Chapel is a gallery, enabling the infirm to participate in the services from above. Like the original by van der Weyden on which it was probably based, the picture was certainly meant for such a hospital or almshouse. The miracles depicted are the Raising of Lazarus in the central panel, Christ casting out the devil in the left wing, andofChrist the son of the of Nain in background the right wing. Further miracles healingraising and resurrection are widow represented in the of the wing scenes, the Healing of the blind man Bartimaeus in the left wing and the Raising of the daughter of Jairus in the right wing.27 To gaze on images of these miracles will have helped the sick viewer to meditate on the hope of healing and salvation they held out. No doubt the chaplain would have been able to explain to the sick and the poor the story of each of the biblical miracles, and to encourage the appropriate devotions. The meaning of the picture did not need any written words to accompany it. Of course, similar subject matter was also pictured in Books of Hours, whose purpose was also to stimulate meditation and devotion, but in a private rather than a public space. The very same subjects of the healing miracles of Christ are, for example, to be found in detached leaves from a late-fifteenth-century Italian Book of Hours, a near contemporary of  26

I am following here the account given in John Henderson, “Ospedali fiorentini ed opere d’arte nel Rinascimento: valore storico e ruolo sanitario-devozionale,”  Medicina nei secoli 12 (2000): 273–95. See also Carole Rawcliffe, “Medicine for the Soul: the Medieval English hospital and the Quest for Spiritual Health,” in  Religion, Health Health and Suffering Suffering, ed. John R. Hinnells and Roy Porter (London: Kegan Paul, 1999), 316–38. 27 Christ Christaa Grössinger Grössinger,, “The Raising of Lazarus: Lazarus: A Frenc Frenchh Primitive in Sherborne Sherborne (Dorset),”  Journal of the British Arc Archaeological haeological Association 132 (1979): 91–101 (plates XIV, XVa, XVb); and Grössinger,  North-Eur  North-European opean Panel Paintings: A Catalogue of   Netherlandish and German Paintings befor beforee 1600 in English Churc Churches hes and Colleges

(London: Harvey Miller, 1992), no. 54; Richard Marks and Paul Williamson, eds, with Eleanor Townsend, Gothic: Art for England 1400–1547  (London: Victoria and Albert Publications, 2003), no. 346.

 

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the Sherborne altarpiece. One leaf shows Jesus curing the centurion’s servant of  paralysis. The prayer alongside invokes Christ’s aid for a child sick with paralysis. Here the literacy of the book owner can be assumed, and the prayers and images work in a complementary way to encourage the reader to invoke Christ’s intercession for healing.28 A secon secondd way in which images images were used used in healing was in warding warding off off or healing sicknesses when the imagery was worn on the body – and sometimes transferred to were othernot more publictosites. Most medieval amulets prescribed medical texts designed last longer than the illness thatascaused them in to be made, so we do not have a huge body of surviving material to draw on for evidence. But we do have texts, recipe books, surgeries, and practical treatises on medicine, on the one hand; and saints’ lives, exempla and manuals of pastoral care on the other, which prescribe their use and tell us how they are to be made and how they are to be used (also, particularly important in penitentiaries and records of bishops’ bishops’ visitat visitations, ions, how they they are not  to be made and used). With the help of  these written sources we can hypothesize the widespread use of the wax agnus dei, stamped with the image of the lamb and the words “ ecce agnus dei.” This was used like baptismal water to protect prot ect from illness and sudden death – for, of course, these wax images do not often survive, as they were carried and worn by 29

individuals. Othercollections. forms of apotropaic amuletsstones do survive, however, in medieval jewelry Certain precious were known to notably have both spiritual and bodily significance – blue sapphires, for example, invoking the blue of the Virgin’ Virgin’ss robe but also supposed to have the virtue of healing heali ng diseases of the eye and other complaints. Ancient cameos and astrological sigils were also much prized for their supposed efficacy in warding off disease. Finger rings might be set s et with such stones or cameos but they could also figure f igure particular saints, or even act as ring reliquaries.30 Quite often, such rings could feature both images and texts. Take for example, 28

The leaves are from New Haven, Yale University Cushing/Whitney Historical

Medici ne,tofig. Medical Library, MS 55. also Jones, Medicea Laurenziana, MSSee plut. 23.6, fol. Medieval 128 recto;Medicine Praying St 14: Paul.Florence, Biblioteca 29 W. Brückner, “Christlicher Amulett-Gebrauch der frühen Neuzeit: Grundsätzliches und Specifisches zur Popularisierung der Agnus Dei,” in Frömmigkeit: Formen, Geschichte, Verhalten, Zeugnisse (Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck zum 70. Geburtstag) , ed. Ingold Bauer (Munich: Deutsches Kunstverlag, 1993), 108–17, distinguishes primary (paschal candle), secondary (amulet), tertiary (coins, medals), uses of the agnus dei. See also Liselotte Hansmann and Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck, Amulett und und Talisman: Talisman: Erscheinungsform Erscheinungsform Call wey,, 1977). und Geschichte (Munich: Callwey 30 Joan Evans, Magical Jewels Jewels of the Middle Middle Ages Ages and the Renaissance Renaissance:: Particularly Particularly in  England  (Oxford: Clarendon, 1922); R. W. Lightbown,  Mediaeva  Mediaevall Europe European an Jewellery Jewellery:: With a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992); Lea T. Olsan and Peter Murray Jones, “Middleham Jewel: Ritual, Power and Devotion,” Viator 31 (2000): 249–90; John Cherry, “Healing through Faith: the Continuation of Medieval Attitudes to Jewellery into the Renaissance,”  Renaissance Studies Studies 15 (2001): 154–71.

 

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the Coventry Ring, a fifteenth-century ring now in the British Museum (Fig. (Fig. 1.7). 1.7). This is a massive broad band, engraved on the outer side with Christ standing in the box-shaped tomb. The Cross and the Instruments of the Passion are behind him, and the Five Wounds encircle the hoop at intervals. The Five Wounds of  Christ, pictured as oval mouths, are labeled each with their own title, “the well of  pitty, the well of merci, the well of confort, the well of gracy, the well of  ewerlastingh lyffe.” Inside the ring we find engraved “Vulnera quinque dei sunt  medicine mei pia/crux et passio Christi medicina michiarejaspar/melchior baltasar ananyzapta tetragrammaton ” (the sunt five wounds of God my medicines;

the holy cross and passion of Christ are my medicine; Jaspar, Melchior, Baltasar Ananizapta Tetragrammaton). In this formula, the holy medicines of the Five Wounds, the Cross and Passion of Christ are linked with the powerful names of  the Three Kings (who are most often found, though again not exclusively, in epilepsy charms) and with the pair of words of power “ Ananizapta” and “Tetragrammaton.” The medicines are thus represented by images of the wounds and Christ’s resurrection on the outer side of the ring, and by words alone inside the ring.31 Most medieval jewelry is nowhere near as elaborate in terms of images and text as the Coventry Ring, of course, but we can recognize the same apotropaic elements the Coventry Ring in i n much humbleramulet jewelry, and 32 brooches.used Butinperhaps the commonest medieval of pendants, all was therings, pilgrim badge, made of tin–lead alloy, or poor-quality pewter. These badges were sacralized by being touched to a relic or shrine of the saint commemorated. It could even be done by holding up a badge with a mirror attached so that the rays of light thought to proceed from a holy relic or image as it was processed through the streets would imbue the badge with immaterial powers. This moment of  sacralization, of so much importance to the individual pilgrim, turned each badge into a repository of apotropaic power as well as a token that the individual wearing it had completed a pilgrimage. But the virtues inherent in the badge were not necessarily restricted to the pilgrim him- or herself. Once properly sacralized, a pilgrim badge could be given to a relative or close friend, or even to a community, and still retain its power to work for protection or relief from the ills of the world. 33 31

Discovered in 1802, the ring has been associated with the late-fifteenth-century will of Sir Edmund Shaw which specifies the making of 16 rings made of “fine gold” and “graven with the well of petey, the well of mercy and the well of everlasting lyff,” which were to be given to those close to him. See Marks and Williamson, eds, Gothic: Art for  England , no. 211; Olsan and Jones, “Middleham Jewel,” 280–1. 32 Geoff Egan and Frances Pritchard, Dre  Dress ss Acces Accessories sories c. 1150–c. 1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 3 (London: HMSO, 1991), esp. nos 1336, 1337, 1360–3, 1618. 33 On pilgrim badges see Kurt Köster, “Mittelalterliche Pilgerzeichen,” in Wallfahrt  kennt keine Grenzen: Themen zu einer Ausstellung des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums und  des Adalbert Stifter Vereins, München, ed. Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck and Gerda Möhler

(Munich: Schnell and Steiner, 1984), 202–23; H. J. E. van Beuningen and A. M. Koldeweij, eds,  Heilig en profaa profaan: n: 1000 laatmiddele laatmiddeleeuwse euwse insignes uit de collectie H. J. E. van  Beuningen (Cothen: Stichting Middeleeuwse Religieuze en Profane Insignes, 1993); Denis

 

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1.7

Coventry Ring. London, British Museum, MME AF 897. Late-fifteenth century.. Photo © Copyright The Trustees of the British Museum century

Pilgrim badges might be obtained specifically to fulfill their role as amulets. The French King Charles V, whose health was always delicate, obtained three enseignes “for the disease of the kidneys,” as recorded in 1379–80. 34 Sometimes they were used not just on the individual’s body but to protect other people, places, or animals. Pilgrim badges could be attached to the door of a house, hung over the bed or on the wall, or incorporated in the bell of a church, once they were brought home. Animals and crops were thought to benefit from the protection of  a badge in the right place in a stable or on a gate. The protective or apotropaic role of the pilgrim badge is often simply implicit in the design itself, whether in the inscription or the depiction of the saint, who is frequently shown in the act of  intercession. Inscriptions are normally limited to the name of the saint, or  A  Ave ve Bruna,  Enseignes de pèlerinage et enseignes profan profanes es (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1996). On pilgrim numbers, see B. W. Spencer, “Medieval Pilgrim Badges,” in  Rotterdam  Rotter dam Papers: A Contribution to Medieval Arch Archaeology aeology, ed. J. G. N. Renaud (Rotterdam: Coördinatie Commissie van Advies Inzake Archeologisch Onderzoek Binnen het Ressort Rotterdam, 1968), 139. The trade in pilgrim badges is analyzed in Estelle Cohen, “‘In haec signa’: the Pilgrim Badge trade in Southern France,” Journal of Medieval  History 2 (1976): 193–214. The authoritative survey in English is Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 7 (London: Stationery Office, 1998). 34 J. R. A. Texier,  Dictionnai  Dictionnaire re d’Orfevr d’Orfevrerie erie in Encyclopé Encyclopédie die Théologique, ed. J.-P. Migne, 27 (1856), s.v. “Enseigne,” cited by Spencer, “Medieval Pilgrim Badges,” n. 51.

 

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 Maria,

but one elaborate example reads, “All weakness and pain is removed; the healed man eats and drinks, and evil and death pass away.” 35 The head of St Thomas of Canterbury is one of the most popular pilgrim badges of all, the head being actually not a representation of the saint so much as of the head-reliquary at the shrine in Canterbury Cathedral. One example of this badge is accompanied not  just by the saint’s saint’s name but by the inscription “optimus egrorum medicus sit thoma bono(rum)” (Thomas is the best doctor of the worthy sick).36 These kinds of personal objects, worn or carried as amulets, do not belong to the world of liturgy as performed in the medieval hospital and its chapel, but to that of personal piety or superstition. They also have perhaps more to do with protection, the warding off of disease and sudden death than with healing, although pilgrim badges were sometimes obtained for those already sick by their relatives or friends. The inscriptions on these objects were necessarily lapidary, not discursive, texts, because of the small size of the rings or pendants, and they employed primarily the potent names of saints and single words of power such as “Tetragrammaton” and “ Ananizapta.” The images were principally of saints, their attributes or relics, and should be thought of primarily as repositories of protective power as well as stimulants to devotion. By wearing such words and images close to the body the wearer was at the same time declaring her or his allegiance to the 37

saint and these intercessor, assimilating power toassociated that body. with the What healingandimages tell usthe is protective that the problems concept of medical illustration arise out of too t oo limited a view of the role of images and words in medicine. What goes on in books is not restricted to the passing on of concepts and information, but a great deal that relates more directly to the interests of medical practice and to display. The practical bias of much medical imagery is easy to establish, the uses of display less so. The social uses of medical imagery include display of communal books to members of a company or guild for ceremonial purposes, or impressing a patient with the owner’s medical credentials (as with the case of the calendar almanac). We need to be on the lookout for other kinds of activity, not discussed here, which might provide the context for the use of images in manuscript. One of these contexts might be the university classroom, for even if the primary business of the class was examination of the text, it was allowed that medical knowledge might involve the 35

Victor Gay, Glossaire archéologique du moyen âge et de la renaissance , 2 vols (Paris: Société Bibliographique, 1887), vol. 1, 31; Spencer, “Medieval pilgrim badges,” n. 54. 36 Brian Spencer, “Pilgrim Souvenirs from the Medieval Waterfront: Excavations at Trig Lane, London 1974–76,” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 33 (1982): 304–23, no. 1. 37 A related instance of an image used used for healing and protection is the display of of the veronica or sudarium (a copy of the image of Christ’s face imprinted on a cloth given to St Veronica) as a parchment image on the wall of a house, accompanied by a prayer of  intercession. See Gabriele Finaldi, The Image of Christ  (London: National Gallery Gallery,, 2000), no. 37, and section 3, “The True Likeness,” 74–103.

 

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use of images. Anatomy might be taught from pictures in the absence of a dissected corpse, or so the surgeons claimed. 38 This is much closer to our modern understanding of the role of medical illustration. Another far grander place than the classroom where there was an occasion for medical picture making was in the commissioning or giving as gifts of great illuminated manuscripts. Subjects included bathing, as with copies of De balneis balneis Puteolanis, and regimens of health, as in the Theatrum sanitatis, or  Li livres dou sante of Aldobrandino da Siena composed at the request of Beatrix de Savoie, or the Secretum secretorum presented to King Edward III. Another favored aristocratic genre was the illustrated herbal, as with the magnificent plant portraits in the example made for Francesco Carrara II of Padua, ca. 1400.39 The giving of advice on the preservation and restoration of health to princes and great lords and ladies could be made the occasion of splendid presentation and gift giving. Here the picture making was elaborate and in many cases clearly took precedence over the text (which, perhaps surprisingly, is often less carefully edited than in more mundane and unillustrated manuscripts). The ownership of such lavishly illuminated books was in itself a matter of prestige and the projection of authority. What is more, images have a significant role to play in the business of healing outside the world of the book, as we have seen. Healing images, sometimes supported by words thatofidentify significant people sayings the image, were familiar sources protection and objects of and devotion to within many who never encountered images in medical books. Many of these healing images would now be classified as religious art or folkloric, but this should not prevent us from appreciating their role in the economy of healing for the Middle Ages. Pictures with healing themes were commissioned by the patrons of hospitals and almshouses to promote their dual purpose of restoring health and saving the souls of the poor and infirm. They directed the viewer’s attention to the importance of  meditating and praying to the holy intercessors whose images (and often names) were provided by the artist. The instructions for making amulets with images are 38

Henri de Mondeville used full-length pictures for lectures on anatomy in Paris in 1306; they appear first in Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.2.44. Guido de Vigevano, writing in the 1340s, said “I demonstrate dissection … by figures accurately drawn, just as the organs are … . The pictures show them better than in a human body, because when we make an anatomy on a man it is necessary to hasten on account of the stench,” as quoted in translation by Loren C. MacKinney, “The Beginnings of Western Western Scientific Anatomy: New Evidence and a Revision in Interpretation of Mondeville’s role,” Medical History 6 (1962): 203–9, on which this note is based. 39 Jones,  Medieval Medicine, fig. 62: London, British Library, Egerton MS 2020 (Carrara Herbal); fig. 64: Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 4182 (Theatrum sanitatis); fig. 91: London, British Bri tish Library, Additional MS 47680 (Secretum secretorum); figs 95, 98, 99: London, British Library, Sloane MS 2435 ( Li livre livress dou sante): fig. 96: Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, MS 1474 ( De  De balneis Puteolanis). For further discussion of these issues and some of these illuminated manuscripts see Cathleen Hoeniger’s article in this volume: “The Illuminated Tacuinum sanitatis Manuscripts from Northern Italy ca. 1380–1400: Sources, Patrons, and the Creation of a New Pictorial Genre,” Chapter 3. 3.

 

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to be found in medical treatises written writ ten by university doctors as well as in humbler remedy books.40 The objects themselves have survived in surprisingly large numbers, at least in the case of pilgrim badges and jewelry. We need to develop a broader concept of the rhetoric of healing and medicine in the Middle Ages, a rhetoric that could be subsumed under that usefully ambiguous rubric “the Art of  Medicine,” and then we might be able to appreciate properly the variety of  possible manifestations of the relationship between word and image.

40

Lea T. Olsan, “Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice,”

Social History of Medicine

 

16 (2003): 343–66.

Chapter 2

Latin Crusaders, Byzantine Herbals Alain Touwaide* Touwaide*

On 12 April 1204, the Western military forces of the Fourth Crusade seized and sacked Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire, which they held for more than half a century, until 1261. 1 The  Devastatio Constantinopolitana  – as a chronicle of that time called it – was dramatic.2 According to Charles Homer Haskins’s classic study, the Fourth Crusade was simply “a ‘crime against civilization’ civiliz ation’ by its wanton wanton destruction destruction of the material material remains remains of Byzantine Byzantine culture.”3 In the words of Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, “the victorious Latins feasted on the bloated corpse of New Rome … Soldiers stripped the homes of all wealth, took up quarters here, and, after forcing them to reveal their buried treasures, expelled the owners … Imperial palaces were occupied by * It is a pleasure to thank my two fellow co-editors, especially Jean Givens for initiating the sessions from which the present volume derives and for the invitation to contribute an article, as well as Karen Reeds for her masterful editing of what I thought to be the final version of my text. A first draft of it was discussed with both and greatly improved thanks to our repeated interdisciplinary exchanges. Nevertheless, neither of the two should take responsibility for the lacunas of this first study, which, I hope, will be followed by a more exhaustive analysis. 1 For recent editions of primary sources on the Fourth Crusade and the subsequent Latin empire of Constantinople, see: Alfred J. Andrea, Contemporary Sources for the Fourth Crusade (Leiden: Brill, 2000); The Capture of Constantinople: The “Hystoria Constantinopolitana” of Gunther of Paris , ed. and trans. Alfred J. Andrea (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); and Alfred J. Andrea, “The  Devasta  Devastatio tio Constantinopolitana: A Special Perspective Perspective on the Fourth Crusade Crusade – An Analysis Analysis,, New  Historical al Reflec Reflections/Ré tions/Réflexions flexions Historique Historiquess 19 (1993): Edition, and Translation,”  Historic 107–49. Recent analyses of the Fourth Crusade include: Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Antonio Carile, Per una storia dell’impero latino di Costantinopoli (1024–1261) (Bologna: Patròn, 1972); Anna Maria Nada Patrone,  La quarta crociata e l’Impero l ’Impero latino di Románia (1 (1198–1261) 198–1261) (Turin: G. Giappichelli, 1972); Robert Lee Wolff, Studies in the Latin Empire of Constantinople (London: Variorum, 1976); and Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium 1261–1453 , 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1–57. 2 The Latin text of Devastatio Constantinopolitana was first published in Carl Herman Friedrich Johann Hopf, Chroniqu Chroniques es gréco-romanes inédites ou peu connues, publiées avec notes et tables généalogiques (Berlin: Weidmann, 1873), 86–92. Andrea, “The  Devastatio Constantinopolitana.” 3 Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), 271–2. 25

 

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the crusading leadership … In the holy sanctuaries the Latins Lati ns stripped the altars of  all precious furnishings, smashed icons for the sake of their silver or gems … Aside from stealing ecclesiastical treasures, the crusaders also destroyed many priceless artifacts of antiquity.”4 In recent years an increasing number of studies has addressed the relationships between East and West West during the Crusades, with a special focus on the exchanges between Christians and Muslims.5 Even so, little or no attention has been paid to exchanges between the Latins and Byzantines, let alone to the possible circulation of books and ideas between the two groups. 6 In their history of the Fourth Crusade, Queller and Madden briefly noted that “we know of no source that mentions lost manuscripts, but it is true that Constantinople harbored a great many ancient texts found nowhere else in the world … Presumably some of these would have been lost either in the three fires or in the looting of palaces and monasteries. Nicetas [i.e. the Byzantine historian hist orian Niketas Choniates, 1155/7–1217] does record that the largely illiterate crusaders often mocked Byzantines by taking a quill and pretending to write in books … This disdain for Greek learning and literacy probably took more tangible forms on occasion.”7 A document that has escaped attention until now opens new perspectives on the Latins’ possible interest in Byzantine Byzantine books and scientific culture. An illustrated herbal with century text in French and Latin probably written in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth reproduces a large number of illustrations from Byzantine manuscripts. This codex, with 256 colored illustrations of plants, is preserved today in the Kongelige Bibliotek (Royal Library) of Copenhagen as MS Thott 190 2°.8 The sources of more than two-thirds of its plant representations are identified here for the first time as two Byzantine copies of Dioscorides’ De materia medica that were in Constantinople during the period of the Fourth Crusade. This essay proposes a tentative reconstruction of the sequence of events that produced the unexpected combination of Byzantine plant images with western 4 5

Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 193–5. See, for example, Isabelle Draelants, Anne Tihon, and Baudouin van den Abeele, eds, Occident et Proche-Orient: contacts scientifiques au temps des Croisades. Actes du colloque de Louvain-la-Neuve, 24 et 25 mars 1997  (Turnh (Turnhout: out: Brepols, 2000). 6 Piers D. Mitchell,  Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 206–12, examines the question of a possible transfer of knowledge between Crusaders and local populations, stressing exchanges between Arabic and western scientific literature. However, the focus is principally on the translation of Arabic medical treatises into Latin in the Near East and does not take Constantinople and the Byzantine world into consideration. 7 Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 291, n. 19. 8 For a recent mention of Thott 190, see Minta Collins,  Medieval Herbals: The  Illustrative Traditions Traditions (London: British Library, 2000), 2000), 83, 112, n. 315, for a comparison of  it to a late-medieval herbal (auctioned in London, 19 June 1990, Sotheby’s lot 103) now Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419. For the Schoenberg herbal, see the essay by Karen Reeds in this volume: “Leonardo da Vinci and Botanical Illustration: Nature Prints, Drawings, and Woodcuts ca. 1500,” Chapter 8. 8.

 

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European texts displayed in Thott 190. I argue that during the thirteenthcentury Latin occupation of Constantinople, copies of some plant pictures from two large Byzantine Dioscorides manuscripts – both still extant – were made (or commissioned). At least 114 illustrations were then arranged alphabetically into an album, which I call the Thott Album. To the Thott Album, at least another 142 additional illustrations were added (probably not all at once and perhaps in more than one stage); some were copied from the same two Dioscorides codices, others from sources not yet identified, and some perhaps, from direct observation of nature. This further accumulation of images I call the Thott Addition. The resulting two-part manuscript of at least 256 plant illustrations ( Album  Album with  Addi  Addition tion ) was the Thott Archetype. The  Archety  Archetype pe initiated the line of copies of which Thott 190 is a member. The immediate progenitor for Thott 190, the Thott Model, might have been the  Archety  Archetype pe itself, but there could well have been some intervening copies before the Thott   Model was produced. At some point along the line, a descendant of the  Archetype  Archety pe of these plant illustrations was brought from Constantinople to the Latin West. The implications of this proposed reconstruction are particularly interesting: the codex, I would argue, reflects an intellectual interchange between the Latins and during to thethe crusader occupation of Constantinople. chapter offersByzantines a first approach evidence; a more detailed and nuancedThis discussion must be left to future studies.

A Descr Descriptio iption n of Thott Thott 190

Before I attempt any historical analysis of Thott 190, the structure of the manuscript itself requires scrutiny. Its complex layout and its variety of hands, texts, and illustrations all offer hints about the genesis of the volume. Thott 190 was described as early as 1844 in N. C. L. Abrahams’s catalogue of  the French manuscripts in the Copenhagen Royal R oyal Library. Abrahams supposed the work to be the treatise on simple medicines by Manfredus de Monte Imperiale, a fourteenth-century physician active in southern Italy (Salerno or Naples). Naples) .9 Later, in the 1926 Copenhagen catalogue of Latin manuscripts, its text was regarded as an anonymous treatise on plants and animals used in medicines ( De viribus herbarum and  De animalibus atque eorum virtutibus), written in French with Latin additions, but not otherwise identified. 10 The 1926 catalogue dated the manuscript as fourteenth/fifteenth century.11 In 1952, however, an exhibition 9

N. C. L. Abrahams,  Description des manuscrits français du moyen âge de la  Bibliothèque royale de Copenhague (Copenhagen: Imprimerie de Thiele, 1844), 34–8. 10 Ellen Jørgensen, Catalogus codicum latinorum Medii Aevii Bibliothecae Regiae  Hafniensis (Hafniae [Copenhagen]: in Aedibus Gyldendalianis, 1926), 441–2. 11

Jørgensen, Catalogus codicum latinorum 441.

 

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catalogue put the date ca. 1300 and stated that Thott 190 had been copied in southern Italy or Spain.12 As this uncertainty suggests, the history of the manuscript is almost entirely unknown, although from the mid-sixteenth century on the codex was in French hands. In 1559 Anthoine Urban inscribed his name on fol. 9 recto; he also owned Thott 191 where he defined himself as an appothécaire. In 1622 Johannes Anthonius Meynererius wrote his name on fol. 1 recto and referred to himself as a  pharmacopoeus in Apt – a southern French town now in the department of  Vaucluse (north of Marseille and Aix-en-Provence; east of Avignon).13 In its current state, Thott 190 contains 130 mid-size folios (283 x 192 mm) of  heavy parchment. The manuscript originally consisted of a set of large illustrations of plants on fols 12 verso–130 recto (except fol. 102 verso, which is blank); the first 11 leaves were added later. These colored representations of plants, normally one per page, fill most of the central area of each folio.14 From the way the captions, texts, and other drawings respect the contours of the plant images, it is clear that the plants were drawn first; see, for example, fol. 20 recto (Fig. ( Fig. 2.3). 2.3). The wide outer margins (from fol. 12 verso to fol. 92 verso) provide room for small illustrations of zodiacal signs or animals and accompanying accompanying text. A detailed paleographical and codicological examination remains to be done to determine when and ruling other elements of the manuscript were incorporated. Thethese original of the folios apparently consisted of just two vertical lines. One defined the inner margin of the pages. The other divided the width of each page into two unequal parts: a large central area for the pictures of plants, and a wide outer column for smaller pictures of the zodiac and animal-based remedies (fol. 15 verso, Fig. 2.1). 2.1). Later on, perhaps in several stages, horizontal ruling was added for the captions and texts. The number of horizontal lines varies from folio to folio (apparently according to the length of text). The pictures and the horizontal rules create three spaces for the texts: four or so lines above the plant representations sometimes stretching across the entire width of the folios; lines above and below the small figures in the outer columns; and approximately 9 to 15 lines underneath the plant representations, againimages sometimes taking upwritten the fullbelow widththem of the sheet. Most of the plant have captions in red ink; these are regularly present up to fol. 77 verso and occasionally from fol. 78 recto on. Following or surrounding these red captions, there are usually two to nine lines of  French and Latin text written in black ink. 12

Kåre Olsen and Carl Nordenfalk, Gyllene Böcker: Illuminerade Medeltida  Handskrifter i Dansk och Svensk Ägo, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Maj–September 1952 (Stockholm: National Museum, 1952), 51, no. 80. 13 Abrahams,  Description des manuscrits français , 38, reproduces the ex-libris inscriptions of the two pharmacists. See also Jørgensen, Catalogus codicum latinorum, 442. 14 There are two illustrations on fols 31 recto, 36 recto, 42 recto, 48 verso, 49 recto, 50 recto, 56 verso, 59 recto, 60 recto, 61 verso, 63 verso, 64 recto, 65 recto, 65 verso, 66 verso, 67 recto, 67 verso, and 127 recto; and three on fol. 60 verso.

 

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These black-ink texts are written in two main hands. The passages written by Hand 1, in French, are similar to Italian Gothic hands, and they include ornamented initials. The passages I attribute to Hand 2 are written in Latin (from fol. 14 verso onward), and they have a more cursive and modern m odern ductus. The Latin texts always appear below those by Hand 1 on the page – a clear indication that they were written later (Fig. (Fig. 2.1). 2.1). The French texts by Hand 1 may also have been added at some point after the original production of the plant drawings, since Hand 1 does not seem to be the one who wrote the red captions beneath the plant illustrations. However, Hand 1 is probably responsible for the texts underneath the small zodiacal and animal figures in the outer columns. Still other hands have added supplementary texts in all parts of the folios. The texts, whether in French (Hand 1) or in Latin (Hand 2), accompanying the plant figures generally provide two types of information: first, the therapeutic properties of the plants according to the system of four qualities (warm and cold; dry and wet) established by Galen. 15 Following the authority of Galen, the relative intensities of these medicinal properties – from the first to the fourth degree – also are provided.16 Second are medical recipes in which the plants represented on the pages serve as an ingredient. 17 15 On Galen (AD 129–after 216 [?]), see the recent synthesis and bibliography by Vivian  Brill’ss New Pauly: Encyclopaedia Encyc lopaedia of the Ancient World , Nutton, “Galen of Pergamum,” in  Brill’ ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2004), vol. 5, cols 654–61. Galen’s  De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus (On the Mixtures and Properties of Simple Medicines) was edited by Karl Gottlob Kühn in Claudii Galeni Opera omnia (Leipzig: Knobloch, 1826), vol. 11, 379–892 and vol. 12, 1–377. No English translation is currently available. 16 See, for example, fol. 13 recto on asphodel: “ Affrodille est chaut et sec on le secont  [de]gre … .” For the text related to iris, see Abrahams, Description des manuscrits français, 36. On the four qualities in the ancient medical system, see Erich Schöner,  Das Viererschema in der antiken Humoralpathologie, Humoralpathologie, Sudhoffs Archiv Archiv, Beiheft 4 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1964). For the equivalent system in Aristotle’s biology, see Jochen Althoff, Warm, kalt, flüssig und fest bei Aristoteles: Die Elementarqualitäten in den  zoologischen Schriften, Hermes, Einzelschriften 57 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Stei ner Verlag, Verlag, 1992). On the broader medieval cultural significance of the four elements and their qualities, see Gernot Böhme and Harmut Böhme, Feuer, Wasser, Erde, Luft: Eine Kulturgeschichte der  Elemente (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1996); Danielle Buschinger and André Crepin, eds,  Les quatre éléments dans la culture médiévale. Actes du Colloque des 25, 26 et 27 mars 1982 Université de Picardie. Centre d’études médiévales; Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 386 (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, Verlag, 1983). For Galen’s theory of pharmacological degrees, see: Georg Harig, Bestimmung der Intensität im medizinischen System Galens: ein Beitrag  zur theoretischen Pharmakologie, Nosologie und Therapie in der galenischen Medizin (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, Verlag, 1974); and Alain Touwaide, Touwaide, “La thérapeutique médicamenteuse de Dioscoride à Galien. Du  pharmaco-centrisme au médico-centrisme,” in Galen on Pharmacology: Philosophy, History and Medicine. Proceedings of the Vth International Galen Colloquium, Lille, 16–18 March 1995, ed. Armelle Debru, Studies in Ancient Medicine, 16 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 255–82. 17 See, for example, fol. 12 verso: the first formula, which begins “Succus agrimonie e de la rute for cuit ou miel bien escume,” and the second formula, which begins “ Recepta ,

agrimonia, salvia, bretonica, viola.”

 

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On the first few folios (12 verso–15 recto) of the main body of the manuscript, the outer columns contain a text on the influence of the moon on human health. 18 Each column is headed by the zodiacal sign related to the text, with crude pen drawings on fols 12 verso–13 recto. Beginning on fol. 15 verso and continuing through 92 verso, the text in the outer columns provides formulas for medicines that either use parts of animals as ingredients or counteract venomous bites and stings by snakes and scorpions. 19 Again, the texts in these wide margins begin with pictures of animals, snakes, and scorpions. The animal drawings are colored from fol. 15 verso on, and framed from fol. 39 verso on. Although there is normally one such illustration i llustration in the outer margin of the folios, some folios have as many as three.20 The first 11 folios of Thott 190 were inserted to serve, in effect, as front-matter for the plant illustrations. Their page numbering – along with a Latin alphabetical index, topical list, and other material in this section – helps establish the sequence of the manuscript’s construction. The manuscript’s current numbering begins with this front-matter; hence the first folio of the plant illustrations and their accompanying text is numbered [fol.] 12. However, the two-column index on fols 6 recto–8 recto refers to the numbers of pages of the manuscript in its original state, that is, beginning with the first plant drawing rather than with the frontmatter. A comparison of the two systems of page numbering indicates that two of  Thott 190’s original leaves have been lost: the folios numbered 6 and 30 by the index (respectively, a folio between current fols 16 and 17, and a folio between current fols 39 and 40). The alphabetical index in the front-matter must have been made after the plant illustrations were completed; it is based on the red-ink captions and it leaves blank spaces for the illustrations that do not have a caption. 21 Fol. 8 recto, column 2, contains a 28-line list in Provençal of some of the “topics dealt with in this herbal” and locates them by the original folio numbers. 22 The front-matter also incorporates a leaf – the current fol. 5 – that was taken from another manuscript and has been variously dated by modern scholars. 23 Each face of fol. 5 displays four gynecological figures in the style of those in the Brussels manuscript of the 24

Pseudo-Moschion (i.e. Muscio in the Latin manuscripts). The front-matter also 18

See fol. 12 verso, illustration: Aries; text: “Quant la lune est est (sic) en ariete il e[st] bon … .” 19 See fol. 15 verso, illustration: a horse; text: “dolour de dent […]chevau.” 20 See, for example, fols 12 verso, 13 recto, 13 verso, 42 recto, 52 recto, and 55 recto. 21 See, for example, fol. 6 verso, col. 1, lines 9 and 23, corresponding to fols 44 recto and 50 recto respectively respectively.. 22 Incipit: “Segon si la taulas de las causas adioustadas en aquest present herbolari … .” On this list, see Abrahams,  Description des manuscrits français f rançais, 35. 23 This folio is dated to the twelfth to thirteenth century in the 1926 catalogue (Jørgensen, Catalogus codicum latinorum, 441), and to 1200–1250 in the catalogue of the 1952 exhibition (Olsen and Nordenfalk, Gyllene Böcker, 51). 24 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, MS 3714. On this manuscript, see Roger sci entifiques de la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique Bel gique, 2 Calcoen,  Inventaire des manuscrits scientifiques

 

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includes notes by the two sixteenth- and seventeenth-century owners (fols 1 recto, 3 recto and 9 recto/verso). Fols 1 verso, 2 recto/verso, 4 verso, and 8 verso–12 recto are blank (as is the final page of the whole manuscript, 130 verso). Several points suggest that, initially, Thott 190 was a sort of botanical album, containing only plant representations, and that the smaller illustrations (the signs of the zodiac and animals) in the side columns were added later as a form of  secondary discourse. Points in support of this interpretation include: the disposition of the plant images on the pages, the irregular presence of captions from fol. 78 recto onward, the way that the horizontal ruling takes the illustrations into account and, finally, the absence of any text from fol. 112 verso on. Equally important, as we will see, the texts now accompanying the plant representations are distinctly different from the texts in the Byzantine models that formed the basis of the illustrations.

Sources of the Plant Illustrations: Three Examples

A page-by-page comparison of the plant figures in Thott Thott 190 and other medieval illustrated herbals in Greek, Latin, and Arabic reveals that many pictures in Thott 190 correspond closely to illustrations in two Greek – that is, Byzantine – copies of Dioscorides’ De materia medica. Indeed, the proportion is very high: 187 out of 256 plant figures in Thott 190, that is, 73 percent, show marked similarities to the Byzantine figures. Before describing these two manuscripts – Vienna, Österreichische National Bibliothek, MS med. gr. 1, and New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 652 – it will be helpful to consider briefly three images from Thott 190 and their equivalents in the Greek codices. Our first example is  Adiantos vel politricum (maidenhair) as represented in Thott 190, fol. 15 verso, and MS med. gr. 1 Vienna, fol. 42 verso (Figs 2.1 and 2.2).25 Elements of the two images are very similar si milar and include: the hairy bulb-like vols (Brussels: Bibliothèque royale, 1965–75), vol. 1, 73–5; see esp. 74, n. 32, and 75, n. 11. Its illustrations have been frequently reproduced. See, for example, Robert Herrlinger, Geschichte der medizinischen Abbildung von der Antike bis um 1600 (Munich: Heinz Moos Verlag, 1967), 21, published in English as History of Medical Illustration from Antiquity to  A.D. 1600, trans. G. Fulton-Smith (London: Pitman Medical, 1970); and, more recently, Alfred Stückelberger,  Bil  Bildd und Wort ort:: Das ill illustr ustrier ierte te Fac Fachbuc hbuchh in der anti antiken ken  Naturwissenschaft, Medizin um Technik , Kulturgeschichte der antiken Welt, 62 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1994), 93–4. On Muscio, see the handlist of medieval gynecological texts and references in the Appendix to Monica H. Green, Women’s Healthcare in the  Mediev  Med ieval al West est:: Text extss and Cont Context extss, Variorum Collected Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2000), 21. 25  Adiantum capillus-veneris L., maidenhair. For convenience, plant names are quoted here in the form they have in Thott 190 (usually Latin, but also medieval French). Scientific and English common names are given in the notes. Identifications are tentative – proposed on the basis of current literature, principally post-Linnaean discussions of Dioscorides,  De materia medica. For an inventory of such works, see Alain Touwaide, “Bibliographie

 

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2.1  Adiantos  Adiantos vel politricum politricum (maide (maidenhair) nhair).. Illustrated Illustrated herbal written written in French and Latin. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Thott 190 2º, fol. 15 verso. Late thirteenth/early fourteenth century. Photo courtesy of the Royal Library,, Copenhagen Library

 

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2.2  Adiantos vel politricum (maidenhair). Dioscorides, De materia medica. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS med. gr. 1, fol. 42 verso. Ca. 513. Photo courtesy of the Bildarchiv d. ÖNB, Wien rhizome; the straight, leafless shoots; the disposition of the fern’s fronds; and the shape and number of the leaflets. There are differences, however – principally the left/right reversal and the simplification of the Vienna codex’s drawing. This might be partly explained as an adaptation to the available space. The page in Thott 190 provides a vertically oriented rectangle, while the format of the Vienna codex is closer to a square. As a consequence, the right-hand elements of the plant in Thott 190 are aligned with the inner margin of the folio, while those on the left have room to expand toward the outer edge of the page. In addition, the seven fronds in the Greek codex have historique de la botanique: les identifications de plantes médicinales citées dans les traités anciens, après l’adoption du système de classification botanique de Linné (1707–1778),”  Lettre d’information–Centr d’information–Centree Jean-Palerne 30 (1997–8): 2–22, and 31 (1998): 2–65. Identifications proposed in previously published works have been recorded in a computerized database and are currently being analyzed on the basis of available textual and iconic material by a trans-disciplinary research group in the Botany Department of the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC).

 

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been reduced to six in Thott 190 and modified further. Thus, on the right side of  the Thott 190 page (corresponding to the left in the Greek source), the lowest compound leaf has been drastically shortened, the second has been folded down – reproducing, however, the movement that the first has in the source – while the third has kept almost the same shape and proportions. On the left in Thott 190 (that is, the right in the source), the lowest and uppermost leaves are similar in both shape and size; but the two fronds between them in the Greek source have been replaced by leafless shoots. Where the Byzantine manuscript had a single leafless stalk rising from the top of the stem, Thott 190 has three. Cauda vulpina (horsetail) – as represented in Thott 190, fol. 20 recto, and Vienna, MS med. gr. 1, fol. 144 verso – provides a second example (Figs 2.3 and 2.4).26 Both the general structure and the elements of the plant are quite similar in these two images, even though the execution is less l ess refined in Thott 190. Although Thott 190 omits one element (that is, the first branch on the left in the Greek source), the resemblance is stronger here than in the case of adiantos. The drawing has not been reversed, and the structure of the plant is identical, with the intertwining of the two main central branches and the parallel droop of the two branches on the left and the right. The plant’s verticality has been reduced in Thott 190, however, transforming the tall, rectangular shape of the horsetail in the Greek manuscript into a roughly square figure in Thott 190. The image in Thott 190 compensates for the imbalance created by this transformation by omitting the lowest branch on the left, by introducing a stronger symmetry between the remaining lower side branches, and by slightly moving the third left branch of the Greek codex toward the center in Thott 190, so as to create a vertical axis. This also permits a symmetrical arrangement of the French text. For a third example, consider the illustration for feves (beans) in Thott 190, fol. 40 recto, with its counterpart in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 652, fol. 75 verso (Figs 2.5 and 2.6). 27 The Thott 190 picture of feves is one of a number of illustrations that show a strong resemblance to those in the Pierpont Morgan codex. In this instance, the number of elements has been reduced in Thott 190. Globally,, however, the shape of the plant and its Globally i ts leaves; the number, position, and shape the pods; the left number, andif color of the flowers; and the cutofbranch on the aboveposition, the root structure, are similar, not identical, in the two manuscripts. It is particularly noteworthy that the Greek manuscript’s play of  virtuosity in rendering the slightly curled leaves has been reproduced in Thott 190. A systematic comparison of Thott Thott 190 and the two Greek manuscripts confirms the relationship demonstrated by these three sets of examples. It must be noted that, for many plants, the two Byzantine manuscripts have very similar images, making it difficult to determine which one of the two was the source. In some cases, however, Thott 190’s illustrations are clearly more similar to one or the 26  Equisetum arvense L., 27 Vicia faba L., bean.

horsetail.

 

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other of the two (or have an equivalent in only one of the two). Overall, the pictures bear a stronger similarity to the Vienna codex; 135 illustrations have equivalents, compared to 52 in the New York manuscript. Further evidence of a stronger relationship between Thott 190 and the Vienna manuscript comes from the framed representations of birds in the outer columns of Thott 190 (fols 40 recto–67 recto; see Fig. 2.5). 2.5). These strongly resemble the birds shown framed in a table illustrating illustr ating the anonymous paraphrase of Dionysios’ book on birds, Ornithiaka, in the Vienna codex (fol. 483 verso). 28 The New York codex has no illustrations of birds at all.

Two Byzantine Copies of Dioscorides

The history and content of the two Greek manuscripts throw some light on the genesis of the source for Thott 190 and the manuscript Thott 190 itself. The two codices are copies of the pharmacological treatise by Dioscorides (first century AD), which was entitled Peri ule s iatrike s in the Greek original and is better known by the Latin translation of that title,  De materia medica.29 To understand the composition of Thott 190, it is important to review the textual tradition of  De materia medica and the illustrations that came to accompany it. In its original form,  De materia medica was a comprehensive encyclopedia in five books of the substances from all three kingdoms of nature (plants, minerals, animals) used in Dioscorides’ time – and known to him – to prepare prepare medicines. Each chapter is devoted to a single substance and usually includes its description, ways to prepare it for medical use, and its therapeutic properties and uses. Although De materia medica aims at completeness, its range is essentially limited to substances from the eastern Mediterranean biota. Over time, the work underwent several modifications to enhance its usefulness in medical practice. One version extracted the most useful chapters dealing with plant substances and arranged those selected chapters according to the alphabetical order of the plant names. That abridged alphabetical text is what is traditionally called Dioscorides’ Dioscorides’ herbal. The most famous manuscript manuscript of Dioscorides’ herbal is 28

See Christoph Selzer’s recent article on this Dionysius (whose dates are unknown) in  Brill’ss New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World  (Leiden: Brill, 2004), vol. 4, col.  Brill’ 487. For the Greek text of the work, see Antonio Garzya, Dionysii Ixeuticon seu de aucupio libri tres, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1963). 29 On Dioscorides, see, for example, John Marion Riddle,  Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine, History of science series 3 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985); and Alain Touwaide, “La botanique entre science et culture au Ier siècle de notre ère,” in Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike , ed. Georg Wöhrle, Band 1: Biologie (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999), 219–52. For the standard edition of the work, see Max Wellmann, ed., Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei, De materia medica libri quinque, 3 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1906–14). 1906–14).

 

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2.3

Cauda vulpina (horsetail). Illustrated herbal written in French and Latin. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Thott 190 2º, fol. 20 recto. Late thirteenth/early fourteenth century. Photo courtesy of the Royal Library, Copenhagen

 

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2.4

Cauda vulpina (horsetail). Dioscorides, De materia medica. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS med. gr. 1, fol. 144 verso. Ca. 513. Photo courtesy of the Bildarchiv d. ÖNB, Wien

 

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2.5

Feves (beans). Illustrated herbal written in French and Latin. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Thott 190 2º, fol. 40 recto. Late thirteenth/early fourteenth century. Photo courtesy of the Royal Library, Copenhagen

 

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2.6

Feves (beans). Dioscorides, De materia medica. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 652, fol. 75 verso. Tenth century. Photo courtesy of  the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York MS M. 652, f. 75

 

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the earlier of the two Greek sources for Thott 190 (and the source of the greater

number of its pictures): that is, the manuscript medicus graecus 1, now among the treasures of the Österreichisc Österreichische he Nationalbibliothek (National Library of Austria) in Vienna and often called the Dioscorides Vindobonen Vindobonensis sis or the Vienna Dioscorides. The Vienna Dioscorides dates to ca. 513. This deluxe copy (360–370 x 300 mm) was produced in Constantinople as a gift to the princess Anicia Juliana and it was probably originally kept at the imperial palace. It is believed to have been taken out of the palace by the Crusaders and recovered by the Byzantines when they reconquered their capital in 1261. It then belonged to the monastery of St John Prodromos in the so-called Petra neighborhood in Constantinople. Large, colored paintings of plants depicted in a realistic style fill the pages of this manuscript.30 The second Greek Dioscorides manuscript, New York, York, Pierpont Morgan MS M 652, was produced in the tenth century, most likely in Constantinople. The large, oblong codex (390 x 300 mm) is very close – in both text and iconography – to Vienna med. gr. 1 even though it was compiled four centuries later and used a different recension of the text. The New York manuscript’s plant illustrations, while very similar to those in the Vienna codex, are usually more elongated and not always so realistic. The Pierpont Morgan manuscript also contains images that are not present in the  Dioscorides Vindobonensis.31 Like the Vienna codex, it appeared on the shelves of the Constantinopolitan monastery of St John Prodromos in the fourteenth century, but its earlier history is unknown. 32 30

The bibliography on the Vienna Dioscorides is extensive. Major works include: Herbert Hunger and Otto Kresten, Katalog der griechischen Handschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Teil 2: Codices Juridici, Codices Medici, Museion, Veröffentlichungen der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Neue Folge, Vierter Reihe, Erster Band, Teil 2 (Vienna: Georg Prachner, 1969), 37–41; Otto Mazal, Mazal , Pflanzen, Wurzeln, Säfte, Samen: Antike Heilkunst in Miniaturen des Wiener Dioskurides (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1981). Hans Gerstinger has edited the full facsimile of the manuscript: Dioscorides Pedanius of Anazarbos, Codex Vindobonensis med. gr. 1 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek , 2 vols, Codices Selecti Phototypice Impressi, 12 (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Verlagsanstalt, 1965–70). For a reduced-size facsimile, see:  Der Wiener Dios Dioskuri kurides: des: Code Codexx medi medicus cus grae graecus cus 1 der Öst Österrei erreichi chisch schen en  Nationalbibliothek , comm. Otto Mazal, 2 vols, Glanzlichter der Buchkunst, 8/1 and 2 (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Verlagsanstalt, 1998–9). 31 No published study of this manuscript is currently available. The most complete and recent analysis (with bibliography) so far is Alain Touwaide, “Les deux traités de toxicologie attribués à Dioscoride. La tradition manuscrite grecque, édition critique du texte grec et traduction,” 5 vols (Ph.D. thesis, Louvain, 1981), 1:57–68. See also Alessia Adriana Aletta, “Studi e ricerche sul Dioscoride della Pierpont Morgan Library M. 652” (B.A. thesis, University of Rome “La Sapienza,” 1997–8). 1997–8). A facsimile edition appeared in 1935: Pedanii  Dioscuridis Anazarbei, De Materia Medica Libri VII. Accedunt Nicandri et Eutecnii, Opuscula Medica. Codex Constantinopolitanus saeculo X exaratus et picturis illustratus, olim Manuelis Eugenici, Caroli Rinuccini Florentini, Thomae Philipps Angli, nunc inter Thesauros Pierpont Morgan Bibliothecae asservatus, 2 vols (Paris: n. pub., 1935). 32 On the history of the two manuscripts, see, in addition to the bibliography related to each one above, Alain Touwaide, “Un recueil de pharmacologie du Xe siècle illustré au XIVe siècle: le Vaticanus graecus 284,” Scriptorium 39 (1985): 13–56.

 

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Although these two manuscripts contain different recensions of  De materia

medica, they are closely related, for they both present an alphabetical rearrangement of the original text. In the Vienna codex, the rearrangement is the so-called alphabetical herbal of Dioscorides.33 In the New York manuscript, that alphabetical herbal corresponds to Book 1 of Dioscorides. It is followed by four other books in which the chapters of the  De materia medica that had been excluded from the herbal are regrouped according to the nature of the substances they deal with (trees, animals, oils and wines, minerals); each group has then been

reorganized according to the alphabetical order of the substance names.34 The important point is that the text and plant illustrations illust rations in the Vienna Vienna manuscript and the first book of the New York codex are fundamentally identical. However, despite these strong similarities – and contrary to what is often asserted – the New York manuscript does not necessarily depend directly on the Vienna Vienna Dioscorides.35 A Two-Part Album of Plant Pictures

A close analysis suggests that the illustrations of Thott 190 constitute two sets of  plant pictures: fols 12 verso–62 verso comprise an alphabetical herbal with 114 illustrations, while fols 63 recto–130 verso contain a series of 142 plant drawings added to theprinciple. alphabetical herbal without any recognizable criterion of selection or organizing The alphabetical nature of the first set of illustrations in Thott 190 is not immediately perceptible because the sequence of the plants does not always follow the order of the Latin alphabet precisely. To cite just a few examples, agrimonia de jardin (fol. 18 verso)36 is followed by ceterac (fol. 19 recto);37 cauda marina (fol. 25 recto)38 by gallitcum (fol. 25 verso)39 and embellaria (fol. 26 recto);40 and scolopendria (fol. 61 verso)41 by the sequence virga pastoris (fol. 61 verso),42 brancha lupina (fol. 62 recto),43 and violette (fol. 62 verso).44 33

On this recensio recensionn of Dioscorid Dioscorides’ es’ text, see Wellmann ellmann,, Pedanii Dioscuridis  Anazarbei, vol. 1, V–VI and XVI–XVIII. 34 For this new recension, see Wellmann, Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei, vol. 1, XVIII–XIX, and, more completely, Alain Touwaide, “Les deux traités de toxicologie attribués à Dioscoride. Tradition manuscrite, établissement du texte et critique d’authenticité,” in Tradizione e ecdotica dei testi medici tardoantichi e bizantini. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Anacrapri, 29–31 ottobre 1990 , ed. Antonio Garzya, Collectanea, 5 (Naples: M. D’Auria, 1992), 291–335. 35 See, for example, Wellmann, Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei, vol. 2, XIX and XXIV. 36 = ?  Anemone hortensis L., garden anemone. 37  Adiantum capillus-veneris L., maidenhair ma idenhair.. 38 A spe species cies of Ornithopus (bird’s foot) or Astragalus (astragalus). 39 Unidentified. 40 Cotyledon umbilicus L., navelwort. 41  Asplenium scolopendrium L., hart’s-tongue fern. 42 Capsella bursa-pastoris Medik., shepherd’s purse. 43 Stachys officinalis (L.) Trev., betony. 44

Viola odorata L., violet.

 

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These and other inconsistencies can be explained in large part if the Greek

names of the plants are substituted for their Latin or French counterparts. For example, the sequence gallitcum (fol. 25 verso),45 cimbalaria (fol. 26 recto),46 and comin (fol. 26 verso)47 seems random in Thott 190. However, it corresponds to the Greek alphabetical sequence: kallitrichon, kotule-do-n, and kuminon. Each of these Greek names was adapted in a different way. Thus, kallitrichon was roughly transliterated as gallit[ri]cum. Kotule-do-n might have been correctly translated into Latin as umbilicum Veneris,48 then further altered: first, as the index shows, into embellicum Veneris,49 and then, more drastically, into cimbalaria on the basis of cymbalium in Latin.50 Kuminon was adapted into Latin as cuminum and into medieval French as comin. The original Greek alphabetical nature of the sequence of plants is further obscured by other linguistic phenomena. The letters “b-” and “v-,” for example, were often interchanged. The clearest case is brancha lupina (fol. 62 recto),51 which appears between virga pastoris (fol. 61 verso)52 and violette (fol. 62 verso).53 Another case: vesche de machomet  (fol. 31 verso)54 shows up between berbena femelle (fol. 31 recto)55 and bleton (fol. 32 recto).56 Other peculiarities result from the orthography of plant names in medieval Latin: iris was written  yreos (fol. 47 verso),57 and listed accordingly among the plants whose names start with “ y-.” Some further anomalies in the alphabetical order might be accounted for by the interference of other languages. The presence of  pomes granades (fol. 42 verso)58 between milium (fol. 42 recto)59 and mente (fol. 43 recto)60 could reflect the Italian form melograno appearing in the earlier alphabetical sequence milium, melograno, mente. Even though the Italian name was later translated into French ( pomes  pomes granades), the plant picture was not moved to respect the alphabetical sequence. Aside from such linguistic phenomena, another factor might have interrupted 45 46 47 48

Unidentified. Cotyledon umbilicus L., navelwort. Cuminum cyminum L., cumin. Jacques André,  Les noms de plantes dans la Rome antique, Collection d’études

anciennes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), 77, entry for cotyledon. 49 See fol. 6 recto, col. 1, line 31:  Bellicum veneris. 50 André,  Les noms de plantes, 83, entry for cymbalaris; Iohannes Stirling,  Lexicon nominum herbarum, arborum, fructuumque linguae latinae ex fontibus Latinitatis ante saeculum XVII scriptis (Budapest: Encyclopedia, 1997), vol. 2, 180, entry for cymbalion. 51 Stachys officinalis (L.) Trev., betony. 52 Capsella bursa-pastoris Medik., shepherd’s purse. 53 Viola odorata L., violet. 54  Narcissus poeticus L., pheasant’s eye. 55 Verbena officinalis L., vervain. 56  Amaranthus blitum L., blite. 57  Iris germanica L., iris. 58 Punica granatum L., pomegranate. 59 Panicum miliaceum L., millet. 60  Mentha spp., mint.

 

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the alphabetical organization of the herbal: the displacement of folios or entire

quires in the manuscript between the immediate copy of the two Byzantine codices and Thott 190 (or in a more remote ancestor). The group of plant names starting with “b-” (fols 27 recto–32 verso) falls between comin (fol. 26 verso)61 and serpentaria mayor (fol. 33 recto).62 As a consequence, agrimonia de jardin (fol. 18 verso),63 the last plant name starting with “a-,” is directly followed by ceterac (fol. 19 recto),64 the first plant name starting with “c-.” This could have resulted from the movement of an entire quire, or at least of several folios, that is, those containing all the plants starting with “b-.” This is all the more plausible because the group of plants whose names begin with “b-” covers exactly six folios (fols 27–32), that is, three bifolia. A similar alteration could explain the apparently aberrant sequence of chapters in the groups of fols 40–55. 65 The correct alphabetical sequence in Greek would require the following order of folios: 40 / 49 / 47 / 48 / 53 / 54 / 50 / 41–46 / 51–52 / 55. 66 However, the two groups of folios  – fols 41–46 and 47–52 – amount to six folios each, that is, three bifolia, just like the group of fols 27–32. This number of folios and bifolia corresponds to the usual western structure of quires and method of assembling manuscripts. The alphabetical herbal underlying the first section of Thott 190 – that is, the Thott Album  – contained 114 different kinds of plants (according to the names in the manuscript and not to modern scientific taxonomy). These were selected out of the 383 plants represented in the Vienna Dioscorides and 498 in the New York codex. These 114 species are common Mediterranean plants, vegetables, and flowers such as asphodel (fol. 13 recto), wormwood (fol. 13 verso), centaury (fols 29 verso and 21 recto), betony (fol. 27 recto), briony (fol. 27 verso and 28 recto), verbena (fol. 31 recto), ivy (fol. 35 verso), hellebore (fol. 36 recto), beans (fol. 40 recto), mint (fol. 43 recto), mandrake (fols 44 verso and 45 recto), oregano (fol. 47 recto), iris (fol. 47 verso), hyssop (fol. 48 recto), lily (fol. 49 recto), nymphaea (fol. 51 recto and verso), peony (fols 52 verso and 55 recto), St John’s wort (fol. 53 recto), henbane (fol. 53 verso), leek (fol. 56 verso), rose (fol. 57 verso), poppy (fol. 58 recto and verso), and violet (fol. 62 verso). These plants would usually be found in orchards, woods, gardens, and fields, that is, in ordinary human environments. Such a selection of slightly more than one hundred useful, easily 61 Cuminum cyminum L., cumin. 62  Dracunculus vulgaris L., dragon arum. 63 = ?  Anemone hortensis L., garden anemone. 64  Adiantum capillus-veneris L., maidenhair ma idenhair.. 65 Fols 41–6 contain the plant representations

of malve to malum terre; fols 47–50  yriganum (wrongly for  yringe, itself wrong for iringe) to lansolata (fol. 50 recto) and an unidentified plant (fol. 50 verso); fols 51–2 nenofar maior to peonia. 66 As a result, the sequence would be as follows: (fol. 40)  fomes and ferle; (fol. 49) flor de lis and flor de lis de mer; (fols 47–8) yriganum (for iringe) to ypoqustidos (wrongly for ipo- in a phonetic transliteration of the Greek plant name upokustidos); (fols 53–4) ypericon (though correct, it has been listed as if it were ipericon) to crysta[…] (?) (listed as if it started with “k -”); -”); (fol. 50) lansolata and an unidentified plant; (fols 41–6) malve to malum terre; (fols 51–2) nenofar maior to peonia; (fol. 55) pionia and pentefullon.

 

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found plants contrasts sharply with the thousand-plus substances and plants listed

in the complete text of Dioscorides  De materia medica. The Thott Album was a coherent, alphabetically arranged set of plant illustrations. However, this  Album was further expanded by gradual accretion to produce a much more confused set of illustrations I call the Thott Addition. These later additions did not result from a clear procedure for selecting the material, but proceeded in an uncoordinated way, without taking into consideration the contents of the Thott Album or other illustrations already included in the  Addition. In the second part of Thott 190 (fols 63 recto–130 verso), the plant names reflect the same mechanisms of error and alteration seen in the first section, especially confusion of letters and the persistence of Latin names. But unlike the Thott Album in the first section of Thott 190, the second section reveals no clear process of selection and arrangement of plants, and hence makes it hard to detect the loss or rearrangement of folios during its transmission. The Thott Addition section of Thott 190 in fact duplicates some plants shown in the opening Thott Album section: semprevivum (fol. 65 verso)67 was already present on fol. 56 verso as sempre viva; lingua bovina shows up both on fol. 83 recto in the second part and fol. 30 recto in the first; 68 ebrionia (fol. 87 recto) corresponds to brionia nigra and brionia blanca of the first part (fol. 27 verso and 28 recto respectively);69 and both the white and black  papaver appear in the two parts (fol. 101 recto/verso in the second part, fol. 58 recto/verso in the first).70 Some plants are even repeated within the Thott Addition: for example, camomille, which appears first on fol. 65 verso, is repeated twice in the second part of the manuscript, on fols 105 recto and 115 verso.71 Similarly, orticha appears on fols 78 verso and 88 recto;72 and ronce appears on fols 88 verso and 110 recto.73 It is important to note that, even though the second part of Thott 190 includes much material that appears to have been based upon the Vienna and the New York York codices, it might also draw on other sources. The compiler(s) of Thott 190 might have even produced original material: from fol. 100 recto to the end, the Thott 190 illustrations have notably fewer equivalents in the two Byzantine codices. In both parts, representing plants seems to have been the primary object of the collection. The evidence of both codicology and content suggests that texts were not present in the original project, that is, the Thott Archetype. The Thott 190 folios were not prepared at the outset with a ruling system designed to accommodate the texts. Moreover, as we will see, these texts do not come from the same sources as the illustrations, and they lack important data that traditionally 67 Sempervivum tectorum L., houseleek. 68  Borago officinalis L., borage. 69 Tamus communis L., black bryony, and  Bryonia dioica Jacq., white bryony bryony.. 70 While the first is most probably Papaver somniferum L., poppy, poppy, the second se cond might be

the same or P. rhoeas L., red poppy. 71 Chamaemelum nobile (L.) All., chamomile. 72 Urtica spp., nettle. 73  Rubus spp., bramble.

 

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accompanied plant pictures in medieval herbals, that is, the description of the

plants.

The Archetype for Thott 190 and its its History

It is very unlikely that Thott 190 was the manuscript in which these two series of  plant illustrations were first created. Judging from Hand 1, Thott 190 may have been produced in southern Europe (France or Spain) sometime around the beginning of the fourteenth century. At that time, however, the Greek manuscripts that were the sources for its archetype were in Constantinople – and the Latins no longer occupied the city (although they could have visited there). Therefore, Thott 190 must have been preceded by at least one manuscript – the Thott Archetype. The displacement of some groups of plant representations in Thott 190 suggests that a manuscript pre-dating Thott 190 underwent a major accident that shuffled bifolia within quires and moved an entire quire out of its original alphabetical sequence. Fols 30–42 correspond to six folios; so does the block, fols 41–6, within the disturbed series of fols 40–55 – that is, a standard western quire of three bifolia. While granting that such an accident could have happened to Thott 190 itself, the fact that the aberrant sequence of entries is reflected in the index in the front-matter makes it much more likely that the accident happened earlier – in the Thott Archetype or in some other manuscript in the lineage leading up to Thott 190. At some moment of its history, that ancestor of Thott 190 was unbound (totally or partially, we do not know) and incorrectly rebound later. Although the archetype has either been lost or not yet identified, its appearance, the circumstances of its creation, and its history can be partially reconstructed. The Thott Archetype was probably a manuscript of a smaller dimensions than its Byzantine models. Thott 190 measures 283 x 192 mm, the Vindobonensis 360–370 x 300 mm, and the New York codex 390 x 300 mm. The modifications in the plant images suggest that drawings were adapted to a reduced page size, more rectangular than square. Though smaller, this manuscript looked more like the Vienna manuscript than the New York codex: in the Vienna codex, plant pictures covered most of the folios’ surface while, in the New York model, the plant drawings were inserted between blocks of text (Fig. (Fig. 2.6). 2.6). It is highly probable that the Thott Archetype was made during the period of the Latin empire of Constantinople (that is, between 1204 and 1261) by or on behalf  of someone in the city who did not speak Greek. In the course of the destruction by the Latin soldiers when Constantinople fell, the two lavishly illustrated copies of De materia medica were taken away from the collections they had belonged to earlier, one of which was almost certainly the library of the imperial palace. Probably thanks to their deluxe appearance, these manuscripts were not destroyed or harmed, but kept in relatively good condition, and seemingly used as pharmaceutical reference books.

 

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It could not have been an easy task for a non-Greek-speaker to use these

Dioscorides manuscripts. The Greek language presented one obstacle; others stemmed from the encyclopedic character of  De materia medica, its bulk, and its accounts of eastern Mediterranean natural substances that westerners would not necessarily know. To make the work convenient to consult, it had to be reshaped into a handy manual; the number of substances needed to be dramatically reduced, and the items preserved in this new work had to be known to the user(s) of the volume. The result was the Thott Album, which bears witness not only to an interest in Byzantine books and medicine, but also to the willingness to save the classical material, to adapt it to make it easier to use, and perhaps also to integrate it into the everyday practice of medicine. The Thott Addition  – the less coordinated expansion of that first nucleus of plant pictures and names – could have been the result of a need for more substances to use as medicines or of  gradual progress in the study of plants as users of the Thott Album assimilated and built upon the limited material in the Thott Album. Together, the Thott Album and  Addition provided the Archetype for Thott 190. Even though we know the two models for most of the illustrations in this ancestor to Thott 190 were kept in the monastery of St John Prodromos after the Byzantine restoration of 1261, we do not know where they were during the Latin empire and, thus, where the archetype for Thott 190 was produced. Whatever its origin, this manuscript, or a copy of it, was taken to western Europe at a moment that cannot be determined. There is a temptation to reconstruct the transfer of Thott 190 from Constantinople to the West on the basis of plant names in the manuscript. The names are heterogeneous, showing as they do traces of the original Greek alphabetical order in Greek, Latin names, indirect evidence for an Italian plant name (melograno), phonetic confusions (particularly initial “b” and “v”) typical of  Spanish, and much use of French. However, this diversity should not be taken as proof that a predecessor to Thott 190 passed through the hands of Italians and Spaniards as it moved west before fetching up in the collection of a French apothecary. The troops of the Latin Crusaders and the Westerners in Constantinople were not homogeneous either linguistically or ethnically. Instead, they formed amalgams of different origins and idioms. The linguistic variety evident in the Thott 190 plant lexicon may simply reflect the diversity of the occupation forces and the people of Constantinople. Two points invite the speculation that the Galenic material in the texts in Thott 190 reflects some kind of continuing influence of Byzantine medicine on Thott 190’s early readers/annotators, Hands 1 and 2, after the Latin occupation of  Constantinople ended. ended. First, there seems to have been a rebirth of interest among fourteenth-century Byzantine scholars in adding Galenic texts to Dioscorides’ text and illustrations. Second, although the Westerners no longer controlled Constantinople, they continued to visit and trade in the city and to bring home new knowledge from Byzantine sources. It is particularly noteworthy that the

 

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Italian physician Pietro d’Abano (d. ca. 1315) travelled to Constantinople, probably saw the Vienna Dioscorides (that is, one of the sources for the

illustrations in the Thott Archetype) there, and and commented commented on Dioscorides’ Dioscorides’ text after he returned to Padua.74 The Galenic texts about the plants’ properties and degrees added to Thott 190 by Hands 1 and 2 imply a deliberate process of collating the illustrations that comprised the original form of Thott 190 with some form of the Galenic treatise. At this point, it is not possible to tell whether that book was a Greek manuscript of Galen’s De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus (On the  Mixtures and Properties Properties of Simple Medicines), a Latin translation of that work, or another treatise that included passages of this kind. A similar collating collating endeavor endeavor is attested attested in some some mid- and and late-Byzantine late-Byzantine manuscripts of Dioscorides. One is the tenth-century Vaticanus graecus 284 (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS gr. 284). 75 Its plant pictures, reproducing those of the New York Dioscorides, were added in the midfourteenth century.76 In another, illustrated  De mat materia eria medi medica ca manuscript in Greek, the Parisinus graecus 2183 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS gr. 2183) dating to the second quarter of the fourteenth century, passages from Galen’s treatise have been added in the margins next to Dioscorides’ text.77 The integration of Dioscorides and Galen seen in the Vaticanus and the Parisinus manuscripts was not an entirely new idea. It was already present in the early-Byzantine encyclopedias of Oribasius (fourth century AD),78 Aetius of Amida 74

See Loris Premuda, “Abano, Pietro d’-,” in  Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Gillespie, vol. 1, 4–5. Pietro d’Abano’s translation was printed in 1478 in Colle, by Johannes de Medemblick. 75 On this manuscript, see the catalogue by Giovanni Mercati and Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Codices Vaticani Greci (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1926), vol. 1, 393–5. 76 For the illustrations, see Touwaide, “Un recueil de pharmacologie du Xe siècle,” 13–56. The topic has been further discussed by Marco D’Agostino in Vedere i classici.  L’illustrazione libraria dei testi antichi dall’età romana al tardo medioevo, ed. Marco Buonocore (Rome: Fratelli Palombi Editori, 1996) 199–200, and Collins,  Medieval  Herbals , 70–71. 77 On this manuscript, see the brief notice by Henri Omont,  Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothèque nationale et des autres bibliothèques de Paris et des départements (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1888), 2: 211. 211. A full codicological analysis can be found in Touwaide, Touwaide, “Les deux traités de toxicologie,” (1981), 75–8. Its illustrations have been recently discussed by Alain Touwaide, “The Salamanca Dioscorides (Salamanca, University Library, 2659),”  Erytheia 24 (2003): 125–58. On these Galenic additions, see John Marion Riddle, “Byzantine commentaries on Dioscorides,” in Symposium on  Byzant  Byz antine ine medi medicin cinee, ed. John Scarborough, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38, 1984 (Washington, (W ashington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985), 95–102. 78 On Oribasius, see Alain Touwaide, “Oreibasios,” in  Der neue Pauly, ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999), vol. 9, cols 15–16. For the Greek text of his medical encyclopedia, see: Johannes Raeder, Oribasii collectionum medicarum reliquiae, 5 vols, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, 6.1–2 (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1928–33).

 

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(sixth century)79 and Paul of Aegina (seventh century).80 A similar associ association ation can be found in the medical encyclopedias of Arabic scientists who knew of the Greek

scientific and medical literature thanks to translations made from Syriac or Greek into Arabic from the ninth century AD onward.81 The Byzantines Byzantines’’ own fourteenth fourteenth-centu -century ry revival revival of the earlier earlier Byzantine Byzantine melding of pharmacological data from Dioscorides and Galen most probably took place in the school or the library adjacent to the monastery of St John Prodromos, that is, in the center where the sources used to create most of the plant representations of Thott 190 were preserved.82 In working with the illustrations in the Vienna and New York York sources, the original compiler(s) of the Thott Album and  Addition might well have consulted the library that after 1261 belonged to complex of St John Prodromos and learned about the way Galen and Dioscorides had been combined by earlier Byzantine encyclopedias. Knowledge of that approach to pharmacological texts might have been part of the background information passed along with Thott 190’s forerunners and – coupled with sources from Arabic medical traditions – encouraged Hand 1 and Hand 2 to add their own collation to the plant illustrations in Thott 190.83 79

On Aetius, see Vivian Nutton, “Aetius [3] of Amida,” in  Brill’  Brill’ss New Pauly Pauly..

 Encyclopaedia A ncient Ancient World  , ed. Hubert and Helmuth Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2002), vol.of1,the col. 276. For a critical editionCancik of books I–VIII in Greek, see Alexander Olivieri,  Aetii Amideni libri medicinales I–IV , Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, 8.1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1935), and Olivieri,  Aetii Amideni libri medicinales V–VIII , Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, 8.2 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, Verlag, 1950). For books IX–XVI, a critical edition is currently under preparation for Corpus Medicorum Graecorum by a team of  scholars at Federico II University, Naples, under the direction of Antonio Garzya. See Antonio Garzya. “Problèmes relatifs à l’édition des livres IX–XVI du Tétrabiblon d’Aétios d’Amida,”  Revue des Etudes Anciennes 86 (1984): 245–57. No English translation is currently available. 80 On Paul of Aegina, see Alain Touwaide, “Paul von Aigina,” in  Der neue Pauly, ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999), vol. 9, cols 431–2. For the Greek text of his work, see Johannes Heiberg, Paulus Aegineta, 2 vols, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, 9.1–2 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1921 and 1924). English translation by Francis Adams, The Medical Works of Paulus Aegineta, the Greek Physician, Translated  into EnglishPossessed with a Copious Commentary Containing a Comprehensive of the Knowledge by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians on All SubjectsView Connected  with Medicine and Surgery (London: J. Welsh, Treuttel, Würtz, and Co., 1834). 81 For the translation of Greek science into Arabic, see Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought,  Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early c Abbâsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th centuries) (London: Routledge, 1998). 82 On this center, see Alice-Mary Talbot, “Petra monastery,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan, Alice-Mary Talbot, Anthony Cutler, Timothy E. Gregory, and Nancy P.  ˇSevˇcenko, cenko, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), vol. 2, 1643. 83 The western interest in the Byzantine juxtaposition of Galen and Dioscorides could also have been encouraged by their acquaintance with the model of Arabic medical literature, which was known and diffused in the West thanks to the translations into Latin made from the eleventh e leventh century onward in Southern Italy Ita ly.. The translating endeavor is i s most closely associated with Constantine called the African (d. after AD 1085), although – despite

 

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Latin Occupiers of Constantinople, Byzantine Books, and Greek Medicine

The illustrated album at the heart of Thott 190 suggests that at least some Western occupiers of Constantinople had both access to and interest in Byzantine manuscripts, including one (the Vienna codex) that was part of the imperial collection before 1204. Contrary to the opinion widespread in contemporary historiography, they did not necessarily destroy such books, but collected them and, in the present case, even brought together two copies of the same work, Dioscorides’  De materia medica. Moreover, they actively consulted these two books, collated their text and illustrations, and picked out a limited set of plants that would normally be easily available. The illustrated herbal they first created, the Thott Album, was not limited to the mere reproduction of illustrations, but implied the translation of Greek plant names into Latin and eventually a partial effort to organize and index the selected material according to the Latin alphabet. Later that  Album was further augmented (though not so carefully or selectively) from the same sources as well as others and perhaps also by direct and personal observations of nature. The illustrations of plants were complemented by texts ultimately derived from Galen’s pharmacological treatise. That required not only access to one or more Galenic manuscripts or texts derived from them, but also linguistic and botanical expertise. The compiler had to compare the Galenic material to the  De materia medica text, extract the passages that matched the names and illustrations from the Dioscorides manuscripts, and correctly associate these text and illustrations. Such a task may have been done with the model of Byzantine medical practice in mind; it resembles the collating done by Byzantine physicians after the reconquest of  Constantinople toward the mid-fourteenth century – in the same place where the two manuscripts used to constitute Thott Archetype were kept at the time. A manuscript antedating Thott 190 arrived in the West, probably sometime before the turn of the thirteenth/fourteenth century. From a model based on that forerunner (and possibly other intermediaries and sources), the manuscript of  Thott 190 was then copied at a time and place still unknown. It later acquired its front-matter. By the mid-sixteenth century, Thott 190 was in France and it was owned in 1559 at the latest by the apothecary Anthoine Urban. However new and stimulating these conclusions might be, they also raise a host of new questions. For example: who created the Thott Archetype and Thott Model, when and where exactly, under what circumstances, and with whose help? Although such questions are of crucial importance, they should not overshadow what is often claimed in the literature – not initiated by him. See the synthesis by Danielle Jacquart, “The Influence of Arabic Medicine in i n the Medieval West,” in the Encyclopedia of  the History of Arabic Science, ed. Roshed Rashed and Régis Morelon (London: Routledge, 1996), vol. 2, 963–84. See Michael McV McVaugh, augh, “Constantine the t he African,” in Dictionary of  Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillespie, 18 vols (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), vol. 3, 393–5.

 

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the key results of this enquiry. In a remarkable, unexpected inversion of the usual course of manuscript transmission studies, the Franco-Latin herbal of Thott 190

helps illuminate the history of its Constantinopolitan sources in ways that neither Byzantine documentation nor the analysis of the manuscripts themselves do. Although scholars have known that during the Fourth Crusade, both the Vienna and the New York Dioscorides probably were removed from their pre-1204 homes, and that, following the Byzantine reconquest of their capital, they appeared on the shelves of the library in the monastery of St John Prodromos, we had no idea until now that they had been in Latin hands and had been used to create a new herbal during the period of the Latin empire of Constantinople.84

84

An essay that deals with Thott 190 appeared while this volume was in press, see: Iolanda Ventura, “The Curae ex animalibus in the Medical Literature of the Middle Ages: The Example of the Illustrated Herbals,” in  Bestiares médiévaux.  Nouvelles perspectives sur les manuscrits et les traditions textuelles, Baudouin Van den Abeele, ed. (Louvain-laNeuve: Institut d’études médiévales, 2005), 213–48.

 

Chapter 3

The Illuminated Tacuinum sanitatis Manuscripts from Northern Italy ca. 1380–1400: Sources, Patrons, and the Creation of a New Pictorial Genre Cathleen Hoeniger

The Latin translation of an Arabic treatise on curing disease and achieving health through diet, regimen, and lifestyle was the inspiration for a sequence of lavishly illuminated manuscripts produced initially for the Visconti court in Pavia in the last decades of the fourteenth century. The manuscripts are known by the Latin title of the treatise, Tacuinum sanitatis, meaning “table of health.” There are four copiously illustrated Tacuinum sanitatis manuscripts extant from northern Italy, now housed in libraries in Paris, Vienna, Rome, and Liège.1 Most likely, these are all that remain of a larger number, commissioned by wealthy bibliophiles following the lead of the Visconti. 2 In these versions of the Tacuinum sanitatis treatise, paintings dominate the text, embedding health-related subjects within an iconographic framework that the Lombard audience would have found tasteful and somewhat familiar (Fig. ( Fig. 3.1). 3.1). Vegetables and herbs are shown growing in the market gardens of a perfectly run estate, and people in stylish fashions engage in healthy exercises such as horseback riding and dancing. These illustrations help to present health information for the elite, by localizing each topic within an idealized version of  court society, by toning down the medical content, and by spicing up, here and there, the secular flavor of the text. How did such unique works of art and science 1

A fif fifth th illumin illuminated ated Tacuinum sanitatis (Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, MS Leber 1088 and formerly, Liechtenstein), will not be considered here since it is a later version related to the Vienna Vienna and Rome manuscripts and produced in the Veneto Veneto in the t he 1450s. Alixe Bovey, Tacuinum Sanitatis: An Early Renaissance Guide to Health (London: Paul Holberton, 2005). 2 An excellent essay on the Tacuinum manuscripts by Vera Segre Rutz is included in  Historia Plantarum. Pl antarum. Erbe, oro e medicina nei codici medievali. Volume di commento, ed. V. Segre Rutz (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2002). Segre Rutz (128) believes numerous Tacuinum manuscripts originally existed – a tradition “molto vasta e largamen largamente te corrotta.” See also Emma Pirani and Adalberto Pazzini,  Herbarium: Natural Remedies from a  Medieval Manuscript  (New York: Rizzoli, 1980), 3rd page. 51

 

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arise, and why did their first owners desire them? An investigation of the textual and pictorial traditions brought together in the manuscripts will provide a sense of 

what motivated the Visconti to lavish so much expense on these projects. 3

The Original Treatise

In its original eleventh-century Arabic version and as initially initi ally received in the West West in the thirteenth century and translated into Latin, the Tacuinum sanitatis was a guidebook for healthy living that presented information in the form of tables. This “table of health” summarized the medicinal qualities and uses of foods of all kinds, including culinary herbs. The Tacuinum also encompassed other elements of hygiene, such as human emotions and activities, as well as the seasons, the four ages of life, geographical locations, and the weather. Even though the treatise included information on botanical medicine in the sections about herbs, fruit, and vegetables, it was not a herbal. The Tacuinum describes a wider range of materia medica than herbals, and its primary emphasis is healthy living in a broader sense. This treatise, known as the Taqwı-m as-S  . ih. h. a in Arabic, was compiled by the physician Ibn But.la-n (Abu- al-H. asan al-Mukhta- r Ibn al-H. asan Ibn ‘Abdun Ibn - n Ibn Butla- n), a Christian who lived in Baghdad in the mid-eleventh century Sa‘du .

(doc’t 1049, d. 1068).4 Its approach to health and hygiene was ultimately based on the Hippocratic belief that health is a balance, or harmony, of the body, achieved through a lifestyle of careful eating and exercise. The Taqwı-m  – in common with medicine in the medieval Arabic world generally – follows Hippocratic theory in the interpretation given by Galen by specifying how four humors or bodily fluids could be kept in balance for good health.

In the introductory treatise, Techne- iatrike-, which was translated in the West as  Ars medica, Galen had enumerated six external factors that could affect the equilibrium of the humors, known as the non-natural causes, or simply as the “non-naturals.”5 The tables of Ibn But.la- n concentrate especially on the action of  these external causes of health, which comprise: compris e: the air and the environment, food and drink, exercise and rest, sleep and wakefulness, excretion and secretion, and the movements of the soul.6 The treatise begins with edible plants and foods made 3

The most recent and enlightening study of these manuscripts is Agnes A. Bertiz, “Picturing Health: The Garden and Courtiers at Play in the Late Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Tacuinum Sanitatis” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 2003). Bertiz focuses particularly on the ideology propagated by the elite patrons through the Tacuinum pictures; see esp. 2, 204, 231–49 and 250–4. 4 On Ibn Butla- n, see  Le Taqwı-m al-S ih h a (Tacuini Sanitatis) d’Ibn Butla- n: un traité  . . .. . médical du XIe siècle, trans. and ed. Hosam Elkhadem (Louvain: Peeters, 1990), 9–13. 5 C. G. Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera omnia, 20 vols (1821–33; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olm, 1965). 6 Bertiz, “Picturing Health,” ch. 2. 2. Also: José M. López Piñero, “Medicine as a Principle of Human Life in Galenism and the ‘Tables ‘Tables of Health’ by Ibn But.la- n,” in Theatrum sanitatis.

 

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from plants (including cereals and breads), followed by edible animals, animal products, sweets and perfumes, and wines. It then discusses the remaining non-

naturals: music and emotional states, secretions and excretions including vomiting, aspects of climate including the winds and the seasons, and other subjects that include: human activities, water and bathing, oils and massage, clothing, syrups and drinks, and places and their orientation. Each non-natural cause is listed in tabulated form together with abbreviated references to its medicinal qualities and uses. Each substance is classified according to its elemental quality or “complexion” – namely, whether the food or drink is hot or cold, wet or dry in effect, and to what degree. Lettuce, for example, is described as cold and humid in the third degree, but anger is said to consist of the boiling of  the blood in the heart. It is important to understand the original purpose of the Taqwı-m before investigating how the words and their presentation on the page were transformed in the manuscripts produced for the Visconti Visconti in a very different time and place. Ibn But.la- n explained at the outset that his aim was to enable “all men” to understand and to try to maintain the balance required to preserve health, by providing the essential medical information in an easy-to-use format.7 As another Christian physician from Baghdad, Budahyliha Byngezla (d. about 1100), explained in his general definition of the Taqwı-m genre: The Tacuinum is the art of presenting knowledge in a concise and ready form, drawn from experience and related to purposeful ends. It was invented to suit men of our age, especially the rich and noble who ask only for the results of knowledge and are little interested in the probability and theory t heory of a cure. This book is therefore of use to Kings and Magnates in whose rooms it should never fail to find a place. 8

According to this interpretation, the Taqwı-m was intended especially for wealthy aristocrats and leaders who desired knowledge to be given in a succinct form with an emphasis on practice rather than theory. In his preface, Ibn But.la- n states that he presented the information in tabular form, and the 16 surviving manuscript copies in Arabic of the Taqwı-m as-S  . ih. h. a all present the information in columns.9 Two hundred and eighty subjects are listed in a column (on the far right edge of the manuscript opening, of course). Other columns detail the “nature” or elemental complexion, the “optimum” kinds, the “usefulness,” the “dangers” and how these could be “neutralized,” the medicinal effect and “temperament” of each subject along with information concerning who Codice 4182 della R. Biblioteca Casanatense, ed. J. M. López Piñero and F. Jerez Moliner, 2 vols (Barcelona: Moleiro, 1999), commentary vol., 233–54; and Oswei Temkin, Galenism: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), 101–3. 7 Elkhadem, Le Taqwı-m, 146–8. 8 Pirani and Pazzini,  Herbarium, 1st page. Elkhadem,  Le Taqwı-m, 19–20, however, stresses Ibn But.la- n’s concern to reach “all men.” 9 Elkhadem, Le Taqwı-m; Bertiz, “Picturing Health,” 320–21.

 

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should eat the substance or perform the exercise, and when and where it should be grown and harvested. On the facing (left-hand) page, a substantial paragraph

further elaborates on the medical aspects of the substance. Several of the surviving Arabic manuscripts were enhanced with geometric patterns; none have pictorial illustrations. Judging by an inscription in i n a fifteenth-century Latin copy – Venice, Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. Z. 315 (coll. 1645) – the treatise seems to have been in the West by the mid-thirteenth century. That inscription notes that the translation commissioned King of Sicily (1232–66).10was Even though thisoriginally inscriptionbyisManfred, not in the same hand in as Palermo the text proper, the connection of an early translation of the Taqwı-m as-S  . ih. h. a with the Hohenstaufen court is plausible since many Arabic scientific treatises were studied and translated there. Under the Hohenstaufen, diet was considered an essential part of medical care following both Greco-Roman and Arabic tradition. Master Theodore, the personal physician to Manfred’s father, Frederick II of  Sicily, composed a treatise on hygiene and diet sheets for his patron, recommending the combination of foodstuffs with their “complexions” best suited to the physical and psychological nature of the King. 11 In the context of the Sicilian court, the tabulated information in the Tacuinum sanitatis was likely intended to lightly educate members of the royal family who took an interest in the regimes stipulated by their physicians. The manuscript in Venice Venice that mentions King Manfred adopts the tabulated form of the Arabic treatises and does not include pictures.

The Appearance Appearance of the

Tacuinum

in Sicily and Northern Italy

With one exception, all the early Latin versions of the Tacuinum sanitatis take the form of simple tables, unaccompanied by pictures. That exception is an earlyfourteenth-century manuscript now in Florence (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS plut. 18.7), which has illuminated il luminated borders and a frontispiece that depicts figures engaged in learned discussion.12 Such conventional decoration hardly prepares us, however, for the appearance of the group of lavishly illustrated manuscripts of the Tacuinum sanitatis produced in northern Italy and probably commissioned by Giangaleazzo Visconti (1351–1402), Count of Milan, or by nobility closely associated with his court in the decades 1380–1400. 10

Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 125; Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health  Handbook: Tacuinum Tacuinum Sanitatis (New York: George Braziller, 1976), 111. 11 A. G. Dickens, “Monarchy and Cultural Revival: Courts in the Middle Ages,” in The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty 1400–1800 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), 14–15. 12 Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum , 126–7. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS plut. 18.7.

 

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Apparently the Latin version of the treatise, which, as the Florence copy testifies, had been available in northern Italy since the early fourteenth century, 13

caught the Count s interest. A copy is document documented ed in the oldest oldest surviv surviving ing inventory of the Visconti Library in Pavia, dating from 1426.14 In both appearance and text, however, the lavishly illuminated copies produced for the Count and his circle differed markedly from the original Arabic and early Latin versions. In these manuscripts, the text for each item was drastically reduced. Information from the categories tabulated in the earlier versions was selectively extracted andaccompany presented the as asubject. short paragraph. Above theinformation text, a largewas picture was designed to For the short texts, selected from only about half of the categories tabulated in the Arabic and early Latin editions.15 For example, the text for “Asparagus” in the Lombard Tacuinum now in Paris describes the “nature” or complexion of asparagus according to the writings of an author identified as “Johannes” (perhaps “Johannitius,” author of  the Isagoge), but it omits the citations ci tations to Galen and Rufus of Ephesus in the Arabic original (Fig. (Fig. 3.1). 3.1).16 The text incorporates information from Ibn But.la- n’s first six columns, but it ignores the final five columns. The Paris manuscript also leaves out Ibn But.la- n’s additional paragraph elaborating on asparagus as a medical and dietary substance.17 In the northern Italian versions, the number of items found in the earlier Arabic a

and Latin texts is reduced. Where Ibn But.l n’s Taqwı-m discussed 280 healthrelated substances and activities, in the Lombard manuscripts the number ranges from 169(+) for the Liège Tacuinum to 208 for the manuscript in Vienna.18 Moreover, familiar foods have replaced many Near Eastern foodstuffs, presumably to make the work more engaging and potentially useful for a northern Italian audience. These Italian foods include cherries, sage, ricotta cheese, white wine, and meats obtained from hunting. Pictures that fill more than half of the page have been added – one for each topic. The reduction of text and the extraordinary size of the pictures have led both 13

The explicit of a Latin Tacuinum sanitatis dated 1309 – Venice, Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale

Marciana, in MSNorthern lat. Z. 316 – recordsPlantarum the patron, 125–6. as a citizen of Angleria in Mediolani Italy.(coll. Segre1646) Rutz,  Historia 14 Elizabeth Pellegrin, La Bibliothèque des Visconti Visconti et des Sforza ducs de Milan au au XVe XVe siècle (Paris: CNRS, 1955), Inventory 1426, no. 482, p.180. This copy was not, as some have suggested, the Latin version translated by Ferragut in Naples and now in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 6977A (which came from the Colbert collection). 15 Some scholars, including Cogliato Arano ( Medieval Health Handbook , 10), have

described these short paragraphs as summaries of the information presented by Ibn But.la- n, but they are, instead, a sequence of extracts. 16

Johannitius was the supposed author of the  Isagoge, an Arabic introduction to Galenic medicine. 17 Elkhadem, Le Taqwı-m, 170–71, for asparagus. Il Tacuinum Tacuinum Sanitatis della Biblioteca  Nazionale di Parigi, ed. Elena Berti Toesca (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1937), 34. 18 The Liège Tacuinum is missing one gathering.

 

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3.1

Sparagus (asparagus). Tacuinum sanitatis. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 26 recto. Ca. 1380–90. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

 

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historians of medicine and art historians to regard the words as of marginal importance for Giangaleazzo’s luxury manuscripts.19 It is clear that the Visconti and their contemporaries did not commission these manuscripts in order to be

educated in medical science; for that, they would have turned to the numerous writings by classical, Islamic, and medieval physicians housed in the Visconti Library.20 Instead, the newly illustrated Tacuinum manuscripts seem to have been intended for display as works of art for the delectation of readers who paged through them slowly, admiring each illustration.

Patronage, Attribution, and Dating of the Northern Italian Manuscripts

Three of the four northern Italian Tacuinum sanitatis manuscripts – the manuscripts now in Paris, Vienna, and Rome – can be associated with the patronage of Giangaleazzo Visconti and his circle. These copies were illuminated in the workshop of Giovannino dei Grassi, the Count’s most treasured artist and architect, and they seem to have belonged to family members or close acquaintances. The Liège Tacuinum, however, has been separated on linguistic grounds from the other three. Whereas those three are definitely of Lombard origin, the variant spelling of several words in the Liège manuscript indicates an origin in the western part of the Veneto. 21 In addition, Vera Segre Rutz has shown that the line drawings in the Liège Tacuinum , formerly attributed to Giovannino himself, more closely resemble the style of artists active in the Veneto or the Trentino, particularly Guariento and Altichiero, than they do the work of Lombard illuminators.22 As a consequence, this study focuses primarily on the three Lombard manuscripts that can be associated with the Visconti court, and it largely ignores the Liège copy. Giangaleazzo Visconti Visconti was an avid collector of scientific scientif ic treatises and under his

19

See, for instance, Brucia Witthoft, “The Tacuinum Tacuinum Sanitatis: A Lombard Panorama,”

20 The Gesta 17 (1978): 49–60. of the Visconti Library (Pellegrin, La Bibliothèque des Visconti, 1426 inventory 75–289), includes medical treatises by Galen (no. 425, p. 169; no. 435, p. 170; no. 488, p. 181); Rhazes (no. 185, p. 114; nos 427 and 429, p. 169; no. 490, pp. 181-2; no. 763, p. 241; no. 826, p. 256); Averroes (no. 436, pp. 170–71; no. 484, p. 180); Albucasis (nos 450 and 451, p. 173); Mesue of Bagdad (no. 452, p. 173); Avicenna’s Canon (no. 481, p. 180; nos 487 and 489, p. 181; no. 491, p. 182; nos 801–2, p. 251); Serapion (no. 483, p. 180; no. 793, p. 250); Constantine the African and Johannitius (nos 431 and 434, p. 170; no. 438, p. 171; no. 443, p. 172; no. 486, p. 181); Arnold of Villanova Villanova (no. 430, p. 169); Aldobrandino Aldobrandino of Siena (no. 306, p. 140); the Circa instans (no. 458, p. 175; no. 768, p. 242); and the herbals of Dioscorides (no. 780, p. 246) and Macer (ps. Macer Floridus, no. 445, p. 172). 21 Among the variants characteristic of the western part of the Veneto in the Liège manuscript, the linguist Angelo Stella noted the form cisergia (fol. 25 verso) for cicerchia (chickpea); Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 128. 22 Segre Rutz, Historia Plantarum, 128–30.

 

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patronage the Visconti Library experienced substantial growth. The 1426 inventory of the library records many scientific and medical manuscripts, and a substantial proportion of these were probably acquired under Giangaleazzo.23 As

is well known, the Count also was fond of richly illuminated manuscripts.24 The talented and famous illuminator, Giovannino dei Grassi, worked under Giangaleazzo’s patronage as master of a large workshop in Pavia from as early as 1370 until his death in 1398. Giovannino’s son, Salomone, worked with him, and he seems to have led the workshop following his father’s death. 25 Because portrayals of their of combined focus on fashionable, courtly figures and naturalistic animals, Giovannino’s paintings traditionally have been seen as a high point of the “international gothic” or “court” style, a late-gothic manner favored by the French, Bohemian, and northern Italian courts between approximately 1365 and 1415.26 The exact circumstances under which the three luxury manuscripts of the Tacuinum sanitatis issued from the workshop of  Giovannino dei Grassi, however, can only be partially pieced together. Precisely when and in what sequence the manuscripts were created is not fully understood. Nevertheless, similarities among the three pictorial cycles have enabled scholars to locate the manuscripts in relation to one another, and some evidence about the original patrons has survived. The Tacuinum sanitatis in Paris (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673) is held to be the earliest of the three, commissioned in the period ca. 1380–90 from Giovannino dei Grassi and his workshop. 27 In the Paris 23

When Giangaleazzo conquered Verona Verona in 1387 and Padua in i n 1388, he helped himself  to numerous manuscripts previously owned, respectively, by the Veronese court and by Francesco Carrara of Padua; Pellegrin,  La Bibliothèque des Visconti, 109; and Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 135–6. A luxur luxuryy copy of Pliny’s Pliny’s  Natural History (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS E. 24. inf.) was illuminated in Pavia for Giangaleazzo’s chancellor, Pasquino dei Capelli, by the artist Pietro da Pavia in 1389. See Edith W. Kirsch, Five  Illuminated Manuscripts of Giangaleazzo Visconti Visconti (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1991), 55. 24 Giangaleazzo Visconti commissioned lavish and sometimes carefully personalized works of art, most notably illuminated manuscripts; see Kirsch, Five Illuminated   Manuscripts; and Kay Sutton, “Giangaleazzo Visconti as Patron: a Prayerbook Illuminated by Pietro da Pavia,” Apollo 137 (1993): 89–96. 25 On Giovannino dei Grassi, see most recently: rece ntly: Vera Vera Segre Rutz, “L “L’Historia ’Historia plantarum e la bottega di Giovannino e Salomone de Grassi,” in Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 69–122, with full bibliographic references. By the time his hand appeared in a manuscript painted for the Count – Giangaleazzo Visconti’s personal prayerbook, the famous Visconti  Hours (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS BR [Banco Rari] 397 and MS LF [LandauFinaly] 22; probably begun in about 1388) – Giovannino was already a mature artist in control of a major commission and working with lesser assistants. See Kirsch, Five  Illuminated Manuscripts, 45; and Cogliato Arano,  Medieval Health Handbook , 16–19. On Salomone dei Grassi, see Milvia Bollati, “Giovannino e Salomone de Grassi,”  Arte Cristiana, 721 (1987): 221–4. 26 Piero Toesca,  La pittura e la l a miniatura nella Lombardia dai più antichi monumenti alla metà del Quattrocento (Milan: Hoepli, 1912), 294–337. 27 The Paris manuscript includes 103 folios, measuring 325 x 245 mm. The 206 pictures

 

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Tacuinum , the presence of Giovannino dei Grassi can be seen in the naturalistic depiction of animals and the detailed rendition of landscape environments. Fantastic, castellated settings, such as the turreted building on fol. 59 recto for

“Ricotta,” are characteristic of Giovannino and Salomone dei Grassi’s work. 28 An inscription in German on the flyleaf of the Paris Tacuinum reveals that this manuscript’s first documented owner was Giangaleazzo’s cousin and sister-inlaw, Verde Visconti. The wife of Leopold of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and Count of the Tyrol, Verde Verde was the older sister of Caterina di Bernabò, who became Giangaleazzo’s second wife inand 1380. In thiscourts instance, relationship was a troubled one. The Habsburg Visconti had the beenfamily on hostile terms since 1386 when Verde and Caterina’s father was murdered at the behest of  Giangaleazzo (to eliminate a rival to his exclusive power over Milan). Even so, the manuscript may have been presented as a gift from Giangaleazzo and Caterina to Verde on the occasion of a fence-mending visit by Verde’s sons, Ernesto and Federico of Habsburg, to the Milan court in May 1400. 29 Stylistic analysis suggests that the Paris manuscript is the earliest of the group. All of the large and copiously illustrated manuscripts of the Tacuinum must have been produced under the supervision of a master with the participation of many assistants, but even so, the Paris Tacuinum is strikingly less cohesive than the manuscripts in Vienna and Rome. Art historians have distinguished as many as ten 30

hands in the Paris cycle. The lack of cohesiveness may indicate that the master was not strongly present to ensure conformity of style among his assistants. The absence of homogeneity also might be due to the experimental nature of the cycle. As we will see, the pictures in all of the Lombard Tacuinum sanitatis manuscripts draw upon a wide variety of prototypes. The Paris manuscript, moreover, incorporates a sequence of costumed figure studies into the imagery associated with each foodstuff (presumably to appeal to a female reader), and this addition might have further complicated the process of production (Figs 3.1 and 3.2). measure 250 x 190 mm. A black-and-white facsimile edition was published published but it is rare: Berti Toesca, Il Tacuinum Tacuinum Sanitatis. Cogliati Arano ( Medieval  Medieval Health Handbook , 27), and Segre Rutz ( Historia  Historia Plantarum, 135) date the Paris manuscript earlier than those t hose in Vienna Vienna and Rome. 28 Segre Rutz, Historia Plantarum, 132–4. 29 Another possibility is that the manuscript belonged to her parents, Bernabò Visconti and Beatrice Regina della Scala Sc ala of Verona. Verona. That said, most likely Verde Verde was the first owner in light of the fact that her mother was dead by 1384 and her father’s murder occurred in 1386. As for Verde’s status as a potential patron, she married Leopold of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and Count of the Tyrol in 1365, and left soon afterwards for Vienna. François Avril,  Dix siècles d’enluminur d’enluminuree italienne (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1984), 100–101; D. M. Bueno de Mesquita, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941), 262–3; F. Moly Mariotti, “Contribution à la connaissance des ‘T ‘Tacuina acuina sanitatis’ Lombards,”  Arte Lombar Lombarda da 104 (1993): 32–9; Segre Rutz, Historia Plantarum, 131–2; Vera Segre, “Il Tacuinum sanitatis di Verde Visconti e la miniatura Milanese di fine Trecento,” Arte Cristiana 88 (2000): 375–90. 30 Berti Toesca, Il Tacuinum Tacuinum Sanitatis, 23–8.

 

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3.2  Roxe (rose). Tacuinum sanitatis. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 83 recto. Ca. 1380–90. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

 

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Because the manuscripts in Vienna and Rome have pictorial cycles that are more homogeneous in style, these versions may represent a slightly later stage in the development of the genre. By the time the Vienna and Rome manuscripts were

being produced, around 1390–1400, a nucleus of pictorial models had been established, and less innovation and experimentation were required. Strong stylistic affinities continue to connect the illustrations to Giovannino dei Grassi’s workshop. Two early owners of the Tacuinum sanitatis manuscript in Vienna (Vienna, Österreichische MS series nova 2644) left Schlosser their markinin1895 the form of coats of Nationalbibliothek, arms.31 One of the crests was identified by von as belonging to the Cerruti family of Verona, but more recently, Barbieri has corrected this identification and connected the crest with a Paduan family – the Speroni. Alvarotto Speroni was a public figure in Padua under Francesco Carrara. After the Visconti occupation of Verona in 1387, he was part of an embassy sent to Giangaleazzo, and Speroni is documented on this occasion as having received gifts.32 His son, Pietro Speroni, was a lecturer at the University of Padua and is recorded as having been invited to Giangaleazzo’s court on several occasions. Perhaps the manuscript was given to Alvarotto or Pietro Speroni as a gift from Giangaleazzo. No matter who first received the Vienna Tacuinum, the manuscript became the property of George of Liechtenstein, Bishop Prince of Trent from 33

1390 to 1419, whose coat of arms on fol. 1 verso was w as identified by Kurth in 1911. 1911. George of Liechtenstein was from a wealthy German aristocratic family with large territorial holdings. Arriving in Trent from Vienna in 1390, the bishop made efforts to establish his court as a cultural center with international connections.34 The third member of this group, the Rome manuscript (Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 4182), known as the Theatrum sanitatis, is characterized by its very close relation to the Vienna Tacuinum , as Fogolari noted already in 1905.35 31

The Vienna manuscript contains 108 folios measuring 240 x 250 mm. The leaf  between nos 101 and 102, which included “Coitus,” is lost. The 208 pictures measure 200 x 180 mm. This manuscript is published in facsimile as Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina: Codex Vindobonensis Vindobonensis s.n. 2644 des Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek , with commentary by Franz Unterkircher, preface by Josef Stummvoll, and introduction by Gino Barbieri, 2 vols (Rome: Salerno editrice, 1986). 32 Julius von Schlosser, “Ein veronesisches Bilderbuch und die höfische Kunst des XIV XIV.. Jahrhunderts,”  Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerh. Kaiserhauses 16 (1895): 144–230; G. Barbieri, Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina , vol. 2, 14–15. 33 Betty Kurth, “Ein Freskenzyklus im Adlerturm zu Trient,”  Jahr  Jahrbuch buch des Kunsthistorischen Institutes der k. k. Zentralkommission für Denkmalpflege , 5 (1911): 9–104. The Bishop of Trent is generally thought to have acquired the Vienna Tacuinum by 1407 at the latest, late st, the date of completion of the “Torre dell’Aquila” murals. The manuscript is listed in the 1410 inventory of his goods. Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 138. 34 Segre Rutz, Historia Plantarum, 138–9. 35 The Rome manuscript contains 108 folios measuring 328 x 220 mm, with 208 pictures measuring 190 x 173 mm. For a facsimile edition see: Theatrum sanitatis. Codice 4182 della R. Biblioteca Casanatense, ed. J. M. López Piñero and F. Jerez Moliner, 2 vols (Barcelona: Moleiro, 1999). Gino Fogolari, “Il ciclo dei mesi nella Torre dell’Aquila a

 

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The sequence of chapters in the two manuscripts is almost identical, and many of  the paintings in the Rome Theatrum sanitatis seem to be simplified versions of  those in the Vienna manuscript. Typically, in the Rome version, the number of 

figures is reduced and more attention is given to the depiction of a garden or field of plants. Thus, for example, for “Wheat” (fol. 42 verso), the field of grain is the subject. In the Rome manuscript, the close relationship is revealed also by the presence in several illuminations of preliminary silver-point outline drawings for figures found fully finished in the Vienna scenes but ultimately left uncolored in 36

theYet Rome version. because the manuscript in Rome is the most homogeneous and carefully composed of the three, with illuminations that are less complex but more fully finished than the other two, it is unlikely to be a simplified copy of the Vienna manuscript. Instead, the similarities and divergences between the Vienna and Rome manuscripts suggest that they probably derive from a common model, now lost. Although nothing is known of the commissioning or early ownership of the Rome Theatrum sanitatis, the artistic style of many of the illuminations closely corresponds to the Paris Tacuinum and to another botanical manuscript attributed to Giovannino dei Grassi’s workshop – the Historia plantarum (Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 459). Based on this internal evidence, the Rome Theatrum sanitatis is thought to have been produced by this same shop in the late 1390s, a 37

little later than the Vienna Tacuinum manuscript. Given the ties to Visconti ownership, Visconti court circles, and the artists employed by Giangaleazzo, these three, deluxe editions of the Tacuinum sanitatis may well register the patronage of the Count and perhaps also that of his second wife, Caterina. Caterina. A hypoth hypothetical etical reconstruct reconstruction ion of the relatio relationships nships among among these manuscripts would run like this: Giangaleazzo had a lavish Tacuinum sanitatis created in the first place for his own personal enjoyment and that of his wife, but this version has not survived. Soon afterwards, he commissioned the Paris and Vienna manuscripts as beautiful gifts to be bestowed on family and friends on highly politicized occasions. As the manuscripts came to be admired at courts in northern Italy and in Vienna where Verde Visconti resided, other rich nobles desired their own copies. Finally, the manuscript now in Liège that was apparently produced in the Veneto ca. 1400 testifies to the enduring appeal of the Tacuinum to this sort of elite audience. Although its earliest owners are unknown, Carmélia Opsomer was able to trace its ownership through generations of European monarchs, as far back as Bianca Maria Sforza (1472–1510), sister of  Giangaleazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan from 1476 to 1494.38 Trento e la pittura di costume veronese del principio del quattrocento,” Tridentum 8 (1905): 173–86, at 177. 36 See fols 36 verso and 82 verso. Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 143, n. 76. 37 See Toesca, “La pittura,” 339ff., on links with the  Historia plantarum, and Cogliato Arano,  Medieval Health Handbook , 37–43. Most recently, Segre Rutz has carried out a detailed study of the Historia plantarum in connection with the new facsimile edition. 38 The Liège manuscript contains 86 folios measuring 245 x 180 mm; one gathering is

 

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In addition to influencing illuminators well beyond the confines of the dei Grassi workshop, the imagery developed for the Tacuinum sanitatis influenced other pictorial media. The Museo del Castelvecchio in Verona houses three,

detached fresco fragments from the Palazzo del Tribunale dated to around 1400 that appear to be copies of pages from no longer extant illustrated Tacuinum manuscripts. These fragments feature “Dill,” “Starch,” and “Aged Wine.”39 Because the exact combination of text and image on each fragment cannot be found in any of the surviving Tacuinum manuscripts, the frescoes strongly suggest that more manuscript originally the fragment entitled “Dill” includesversions the medical adviceexisted. found inFor theinstance, Paris manuscript, but instead of depicting figures in a herb garden, a completely different image is featured that shows a couple intent upon hurting one another.40 The impact of the Tacuinum sanitatis imagery also can be admired on a much grander scale in the frescoed “Cycle of the Months” that was executed for Bishop George of Liechtenstein in his “Torre “Torre dell’ Aquila” in Trent around 1400–1407.41 The cycle unfolds continuously around the four walls of the great hall to display an idyllic landscape that changes from season to season. The style of the frescoes is Bohemian, and indeed, George of Liechtenstein brought a Bohemian painter named “Wenceslas” with him when he came to establish his court in Trent. Because of their grand scale, the frescoes allowed for particularly detailed landscapes, depicted as if they were vistas outside the castle at the edge of the Alps. Because the bishop owned the Vienna Tacuinum, it is easy to suppose that this manuscript’s rich font of imagery, imagery, including many pictures of laborers working the fields and of ladies tending to their gardens, furnished material for the frescoes (Fig. 3.3). 3.3). However, several vignettes in the Trent frescoes that feature aristocratic subjects seem to derive instead from the Paris manuscript. One example is the scene in the month of January of noble men and women throwing snowballs. The lost. The pictures measure 178 x 138 mm. Carmélia Opsomer,  L’art de vivre en santé.  Images et recettes du moyen âge. Le Tacuinum sanitatis (manuscrit 1041) de la  Bibliothèque de l’Université de Liège (Liège: Editions du Perron, 1991). Also, see: Opsomer, “Le scribe, l’enlumineur et le commanditaire: à propos des Tacuina sanitatis illustrés,” in  La Collaboration dans la production de l’écrit médiéval médiév al, ed. Herrad Spilling (Paris: Ecole des Chartes, 2003), 184–92. Also Segre Rutz, Historia Plantarum, 163, n. 21. Bianca’s mother was Bona of Savoy, and a connection to the House of Savoy includes the ship bearing the Savoy family insignia on fol. 76 verso, “Sea Water.” 39 These frescoes were first discussed and also connected to the Tacuinum pages by Fogolari, “Torre dell’Aquila,” 173–86, at 177–8. See: Donata Samadelli, in Gli Scaligeri 1277–1387 , ed. G. M. Varanni (Verona: Mondadori, 1988), 388–90. 40  Anetum (Dill) – Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv nouv.. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 40 verso. 41 Fogolari, “Torre “Torre dell’ Aquila,” esp. 175–81; 175–81; E. Castelnuovo,  I mesi di Tr Trento. ento. Gli affreschi di Torre Aquila e il gotico internazionale (Trent: Temi, 1986); G. Sebesta,  Il lavoro dell’uomo nel ciclo dei mesi di Torre Aquila (Trent: Edizioni P.A.T., Castello del Buonconsiglio, 1996).

 

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3.3  Autumpnus (autumn). Tacuinum sanitatis. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS series nova 2644, fol. 54 verso. Ca. 1390–1400. Photo courtesy of the Bildarchiv d. ÖNB, Wien

 

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only surviving Tacuinum picture that corresponds appears for “Snow and Ice” (fol. 96 verso) in the Paris version where an elegant lady tosses snowballs at a gentleman. The courtly activities featured for the months of May and June in the 42

frescoes also recall pictures in the Paris manuscript. One explanation is that George of Liechtenstein had access to Verde Visconti’s Tacuinum sanitatis (the Paris manuscript) at some point when he associated with the Archduchess of  Austria and Countess of the Tyrol. Another possibility is that both the later Tacuinum sanitatis manuscripts and the fresco cycles were based on a model book 43 or a portfolio of drawings that circulated among artists independently of the deluxe manuscripts.

Pictorial Precedents and the Creation of a New Genre

Producing a fully illustrated Tacuinum sanitatis would have provided Giovannino dei Grassi with a very real challenge since the treatise apparently had never been illustrated before. Late-medieval painters typically worked from pre-existing repertoires of imagery rather than inventing anew in response to the specific content of a written text. Paintings accompanied the textual content and enhanced the experience of leafing through the manuscript, but direct and literal illustration of the words was rarely expected in what constituted a luxurious However, for the Tacuinum sanitatis commission, Giovannino dei Grassi art-book. probably worked together with a learned advisor who drew his attention to the subject of  each chapter, and perhaps also explained details in the text. t ext. Faced with the task of  creating a sequence of about 200 images, the artists drew upon pre-existing models from a range of sources. The Tacuinum paintings were then created by adapting the models to suit the needs of the treatise and the taste of the patron. When appropriate precedents were lacking, new scenes were drawn. Ideally the long cycles generated for each Tacuinum would be held together aesthetically by ensuring a consistency of style for fundamental compositional elements.44 The result was the creation of a new pictorial genre which became popular among the wealthy of northern Italy and the t he Tyrol, Tyrol, and also influenced i nfluenced the painted 42 43

Segre Rutz, Historia Plantarum, 141. On modelbooks, see J. von Schlosser, “Zur Kenntniss der künstlerischen Überlieferung im Späten Mittelalter,”  Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des  Alterhöchsten Kaiserhauses 23 (1902): 279–86, 318–26; F. Ames-Lewis, “Modelbook Drawings and the Florentine Quattrocento Artist,”  Art History 10 (1987): 1–11. For Giovannino dei Grassi’s sketchbook in facsimile see: Taccuino di disegni: Codice della  Biblioteca Civica di Bergamo (Bergamo: Banco Piccolo Credito Bergamasco, 1961). 44 Annette Dixon interprets the Lombard sketchbook in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (MS Acc. No. II, 2–25), as a workbook in the development of the Tacuinum pictorial cycles. She sees the Morgan drawings as part of the process of collecting imagery for the Visconti treatises: “The Morgan Model Drawings and the Genesis of the ‘T ‘Tacuinum acuinum Sanitatis’ Sanitat is’ Illus Illustration trations,” s,” Arte Lombarda 92–3 (1990): 9–20.

 

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decoration of secular palaces. If one looks at the manuscripts from a late-medieval perspective of reading words and pictures both separately and together, the illuminations form pictorial narratives of people working or enjoying leisure in gardens, fields, and other spaces associated with the feudal estate. It is important

gardens, fields, and other spaces associated with the feudal estate. It is important to examine the sources of the imagery that generated these narratives, for they bear not only on the artists’ working methods but also on the needs served by such expensive commissions. This investigation will be pursued from two angles. Initially, with a view to workshop practices, the emphasis will be on the different genres of imagery that were adapted to create the illuminated Tacuinum as well as on the subjects that had to be drawn afresh because precedents were lacking. The discussion then will move to the question of the audience and the choice of subjects and images; as we will see, these choices reveal some of the more subtle, underlying reasons these manuscripts appealed to wealthy Italian nobles.

The Herbal as a Source of Prototypes

When Giovannino dei Grassi was searching for models, it would have been natural for him to gravitate towards painted books of a similar genre. Although the Tacuinumherbs, sanitatis  perhave se, its was and not grains an herbal fruit, vegetables, culinary flowers, would ledcoverage an artist of to consider the rich tradition of the illustrated herbal. He could have found animal images there as well, since some herbals described the full range of natural substances (animal, vegetable, and mineral) that the ancient authority Dioscorides had called materia medica. Even so, Giovannino’s use of the herbal tradition was not a matter of  straightforward copying of plants and animals into the Tacuinum. One major herbal from the mid-fourteenth century was very likely available to Giovannino from the Count’s library; a second must have served as the basis for an enormous herbal produced in his workshop ca. 1390. The 1426 inventory of the Visconti library recorded “a large manuscript … compiled by Manfredus,” which has been identified as the  Manfredus Herbal (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de 45

France, MS lat. 6823). This important example of the type of herbal known as the Tractatus de herbis probably was written and richly illustrated in Naples around 1330–40 by one Manfredus de Monte Imperiale – a medical scholar in the tradition of the School of Salerno.46 Given the inventory date, the odds are good that the Visconti owned this herbal during Giovannino’s lifetime. 45

Pellegrin, La Bibliothèque des Visconti Visconti, Inventory 1426, no. 929, 278: “ Liber unus in  papiro magne forme et magni voluminis de naturis auri argenti et herbarum historiatus et  compilatus per Manfredum de Monte Imperiali in actis [sic] spiciarie doctrine … .” 46 Minta Collins,  Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Tra Traditions ditions (London: British Library, 2000), 268–73; Felix Andreas Baumann,  Das Erbario Carrarese und die  Bildtradition des Tractatus de Herbis (Berne: Berteli Verlag, 1974), 99–125.

 

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As important, Giovannino dei Grassi’s workshop was responsible for producing the work known as the  Historia plantarum in the same years in which the shop was putting together the Vienna and Rome Tacuinum manuscripts. This compendious volume is decorated with about 650 illustrations of plants and

animals.47 In the mid-1390s, Giangaleazzo presented the manuscript as a ceremonial gift to the German Emperor and King of Bohemia, Wenceslas IV. A frontispiece showing the Emperor on a throne (painted by a separate Milanese illuminator) was added to mark the occasion, and the volume was bound in green velvet and enclosed in a wooden box embossed with the eagle of the German emperors. Once again, a luxury manuscript played a role in Giangaleazzo’s political maneuvers; in this instance, Giangaleazzo expected to receive from Wenceslas the promotion from Count to Duke of Milan, a title he had purchased for 10,000 florins.48 The plants illustrated in the Tacuinum have the same general appearance as those in the  Manfredus Herbal and the  Historia plantarum. The similarity between the Historia plantarum and the Paris and Rome Tacuinum manuscripts is particularly clear for images of the cherry and pine trees, squash, melons, marjoram, and turnips. In all three manuscripts, the plant is shown as a flattened silhouette.49 Little attention is paid to the correct proportional and spatial relationships among the parts, and leaves are not precisely shaped or naturalistically instance, in the illustration for and “Pine Cones” in the Paris manuscriptcolored. (fol. 14 For recto), larger-than-life pine needles cones are grafted onto a diminutive tree. It is interesting to note that the contemporary Carrara  Herbal (London, British Library, Egerton MS 2020, fol. 46 recto), produced in the Veneto around 1390–1404, also employs this same formula for showing the overall shape of the tree and its most significant parts even though this is a work in which the illustrations routinely are rendered with an extraordinary degree of  naturalism quite unlike any other herbal of the period.50 Giovannino dei Grassi’s decision to show plants in the midst of landscapes in the Tacuinum paintings, however, meant that he had to depart from the herbal tradition in significant ways. The configuration of the botanical subjects on the pages of the  Historia plantarum also produced by Giovannino’s workshop was dependent on the ancient convention of the illustrated herbal: each plant was 47

Toesca was the first to recognize that animal studies in Giovannino’s Bergamo Sketchbook served as prototypes for the Historia plantarum, situating the production of the herbal in the dei Grassi workshop. Toesca,  La pittura, 294–337. 48 The  Historia plantarum contains 295 folios, each measuring 435 x 295 mm. Segre Rutz, Historia Plantarum, 49–58. 49 Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 43, 48, 158, suggests that a herbal similar in derivation to Masson 116 (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Beaux Arts, MS Masson 116) provided the dei Grassi workshop with the models for the plants in the  Historia plantarum and the Tacuinum versions. 50 The so-called Carrara Herbal was made for Francesco Carrara the Younger Younger,, the last Lord of Padua, in the years 1390 to 1404. Baumann,  Erbario Carrarese, 11–14.

 

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represented by a single archetypal specimen, extracted from the earth, either with a cut stem or with roots included. In the Tacuinum paintings, by contrast, the individual herbal “portrait” was repeated many times; the massed plants grow out of the soil to create a garden or field, and gardeners pluck leaves or fruit and fill

baskets to overflowing. In the Paris and Vienna manuscripts, and on some pages of  the Rome Theatrum sanitatis, human figures compete with the plants for attention. Although it would have been easy to repeat the illustrated herbal format for the botanical chapters of the Tacuinum, the Lombard manuscripts instead feature a distinctive repertoire of gardening and agricultural imagery. The inspiration to locate plants in landscapes and to incorporate human figures, thereby creating genre scenes, could have come from several sources. First of all, the emphasis in Ibn But.la-n’s text on the best ways and times to cultivate and harvest the plants may have occasioned the imagery of vegetables and herbs growing or being picked. Second, the existence of genre scenes alongside isolated plant portraits in the Tractatis de herbis manuscripts perhaps influenced the Tacuinum imagery. One of the earliest illustrated herbals of the Tractatis de herbis type was produced in Salerno or Naples around 1280–1315 (London, British Library, Egerton MS 747), and this manuscript includes a few simply drawn scenes with human figures.51 The previously mentioned Manfredus Herbal Herbal, most likely owned by the Visconti in the late fourteenth century, followed in the tradition of Egerton 747, but in herbals, this casethe the Historia picturesplantarum are more naturalistic. Distantly related these two earlier likewise featured a few genretoscenes that show humans engaged in rustic work within landscape settings in a manner strikingly similar to those being created simultaneously for Ibn But.la-n’s treatise. Thus the idea of illustrating the Tacuinum largely with figural scenes of work and play on the feudal estate may have resulted in part from a process of crossfertilization involving the Tractatis de herbis manuscripts.

The “Labors of the Months” and the Courtly Love Tradition Tradition

As a third possibility possibili ty,, one must also consider the impact of other genre scenes that acted as models for the Tacuinum cycle, particularly the “labors of the months” and pictures from courtly love stories. It may be that the inclusion of powerful and familiar prototypes spurred on the belief that the cycle as a whole should feature human figures engaged in activities associated with each subject. 51

Otto Pächt drew attention to the genre scenes in his important article, “Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape,”  Journal of the Warburg Warburg and and Courtauld   Institutes 13 (1950): 13–47, at 28. See the recently published facsimile A Medieval Herbal:  A Facsimile of British Library Egerton MS 747 , intro. Minta Collins, list of plants by Sandra Raphael (London: British Library, 2003); Collins,  Medieval Herbals , 239–83; and the article by Jean A. Givens in this volume: “Reading and Writing the Illustrated Tractatus de herbis, 1280–1526,” Chapter 5. 5.

 

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Among the non-naturals of Galen discussed by Ibn But.la-n were aspects of  climate and weather, signified by the four seasons. Giovannino dei Grassi found models for chapters devoted to spring, summer, autumn, and winter in the traditional imagery of the “labors of the months.” The regular cycles of the months

and seasons that made up the calendar year were specially marked in many ways during the Middle Ages, including the representation of human activities particular to each time of year. The iconography of these “labors” was familiar, appearing in relief carvings on churches, as on the twelfth-century porch of San 52 Verona, and decorating the calendar pages of illuminated Books of  Zeno Hours.in Apparently, Giovannino dei Grassi and his patron found these scenes of rustic life so sympathetic to the spirit of the treatise that the “labors” were used for subjects other than the seasons. For “Acorns” in the Vienna Tacuinum (fol. 15 recto), the labor for October – fattening wild boars on acorns – supplied the basic imagery. Wine-making, the traditional labor for September, furnished the Vienna scenes for “Autumn” (fol. 54 verso), and for “Grapes” (fol. 5 recto), where a woman picks purple grapes (even though the text recommends white ones) (Fig. ( Fig. 3.3). 3.3 ). Whereas the contemporary Carrara Herbal of around 1390–1404 features a double-page portrait of a grape plant, the vines in the Tacuinum pictures for “Autumn” and “Grapes” are shown in a generalized manner, and the emphasis is

placed instead on the human activity of the grape harvest (Fig. (Fig. 3.4). 3.4). Similarly, for the season of “Winter” in the Vienna manuscript (fol. 55 recto), the scene is drawn from the labors associated with January and February (Fig. ( Fig. 3.5). 3.5 ). An elderly man, shown very heavily dressed, shelters by a warm fire in a palace interior. Where the “Snow and Ice” painting in the Rome Theatrum sanitatis (fol. 90 verso) depicts the impact of severe cold on a northern landscape without human figures, “Winter” in both the Rome and the Vienna manuscripts (both fol. 55 recto)–under the influence of models from the “labors of the months”–focuses instead on the human response to cold weather. An analogous approach can be found in the famous calendar scenes of the Très Riches Heures (today in the Musée de Condé at Chantilly), a manuscript made around 1415 for a similarly wealthy bibliophile, Jean de Berry. In “January” of the Très Riches  Heures, the patron is shown feasting at a banquet, seated close to a fire for warmth, and on the calendar page for “February,” laborers find the best shelter available to them in a simple hut by a fire. 53 In the Vienna Tacuinum, however, the text for “Winter” seems to have provided further direction by emphasizing the danger of cold winter weather particularly for those suffering from phlegm, and 52

The classic study is James Jame s Carson Webster, Webster, The Labors of the Months in Antique and   Medieval Art  (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1938), 59. 53 “January “January,” ,” fol. 2 recto; rect o; “February,” “February,” fol. 2 verso. For a facsimile edition see: The Très  Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (Musée Condé, Chantilly), ed. and intro. Jean Longnon and Raymond Cazelles, preface by Millard Meiss (New York: George Braziller, 1969), no page numbers.

 

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3.4  La vigna (grape vine). Carrara Herbal. London, British Library, Egerton MS 2020, fol. 28 recto. Ca. 1390–1404. Photo by permission of the British Library

 

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3.5  Hyemps (winter). Tacuinum sanitatis. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS series nova 2644, fol. 55 recto. Ca. 1390–1400. Photo courtesy of the Bildarchiv d. ÖNB, Wien

 

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recommending a “fire and heavy clothing” as the antidote. 54 In Galenic medicine, phlegm was believed to predominate in winter, and the elderly were considered especially at risk.55 In addition, the season of winter had been associated since antiquity with old age or the winter time of life.56 The artist’s response is an image

for “Winter” that focuses on the warmly dressed old man and the fire. Courtly love literature provided another highly appealing source of imagery featuring noble men and women at work and play, often with erotic, and sometimes comic, overtones. Indeed, the adoption of iconography from knightly romances in the Tacuinum manuscripts provides evidence of the enthusiasm for French chivalric culture at the Visconti court.57 In the most widely read romantic poem of the late Middle Ages, the  Roman de la Rose, the garden of love is described as full of fruit and nut trees and perfumed with the scent of spices.58 In all three Tacuinum manuscripts, the season of “Spring” is accompanied by a picture of a “garden of love” full of rose bushes. In the Vienna Tacuinum illustration for spring (fol. 55 verso), courtly ladies and gentlemen pick roses in the garden, and bird song fills the air. The painting for “Rose” in the Paris manuscript (fol. 83 recto) provides more comic, sexual imagery inspired by popular romance literature (Fig. (Fig. 3.2). 3.2). In this instance, a fashionable lady offers roses from her lap to a gentleman. This is an invitation since the rose was symbolic of marriage but also of sexual availability. Evidently, the man has been ensnared: he has a leather halter around his necksexuality, of the kind to rein in oxen. The Arabic text frequently addresses human andused in illustrating these sections the artists also sometimes drew on the imagery of courtly love. For instance, asparagus is described in the Tacuinum as “hot and moist in the first degree,” and it is said to have “the power of stimulating and improving amorous union” (as well as the capacity to alleviate constipation).59 An eastern root, 54

“Winter [ Hyemps  Hyemps]: Cold in the third degree, humid in the second; … It is harmful to phlegmatic diseases and increases phlegm; … Neutralization of the t he dangers – With fire and heavy clothing. It is good for warm and dry temperaments, for the young, in Southern regions and in those close to the sea” (fol. 55 recto). 55 The humor phlegm was regarded as cold and damp, and thus an excess could be countered by a warm and dry room. 56 See Elizabeth Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), ch. 1: 1: “The Seasons of Life,” 9–37 for classical and medieval traditions of associating associati ng the human life cycle with four-fold systems that include the seasons. 57 The strong French influence seen in many Visconti manuscripts was certainly encouraged by Giangaleazzo’s first wife, Isabelle (daughter of King John of France) and by her entourage at court. Their daughter, Valentina, Valentina, married Louis d’Orleans and thus helped to continue strong cultural links between Milan and the French courts. See also Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 146–8; and Kay Sutton, “Milanese Luxury Books: the patronage of  Bernabò Visconti,” Apollo, 134 (1991): 322–6. 58 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, trans. H. W. Robbins, ed. and intro. C. W. Dunn (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1962), 26–9 (lines 1279–1438). 59 “Increases sexual performance and alleviates constipation, constipation,”” Elkhadem, Le Taqwı-m, 170.

 

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galenga, similarly “enhances sexual desire.”60 The Visconti Visconti artists evidently evidentl y strove to match the earthy spirit of the health advice with amorous imagery from the Western romantic tradition. The subject of “Coitus” gave rise in the Paris and Rome manuscripts to unforgettable word-picture ensembles (Fig. ( Fig. 3.6). 3.6).61 In the

Paris version, fol. 100 verso, the text unromantically explains that coitus … is the union of two for the purpose of introducing the sperm”; and that the “optimum: … [is] that which lasts until the sperm has been completely emitted.”62 Above these words, the Italian artist, drawing on models from knightly romances, painted a nude couple embracing in a canopied bed.63 The love bed seems to expand magically to encompass an entire room and even a miniature castle, perhaps the “castle of love” featured in allegorical literature.64 By evoking the poetic tradition of imagining a love union as a whole world, the practical medical subject of coitus is effectively transformed within the Western realm of poetic and pictorial thought.

Images of a Feudal Estate, Real and Ideal

Several of the Tacuinum pictures singled out here illustrate how models had to be adapted to the text and the patron’s wishes. Prototypes were reworked to accord with the cycle as a whole. Sometimes they were rendered more specific to fit closely with details in To thegenerate text, andthe often pleasure of the patron the most important motivation. verythe lengthy painted cycles i n was in the Tacuinum manuscripts, models may have been drawn from many other sources. Illustrated Bibles and biblical commentaries may have supplied some of the prototypes for images of peasants working the fields, the butchering of animals, cooking foods and tailoring.65 Medieval treatises on the hunt include depictions of game. 66 In “Usefulness: … for sciatica and for sexual potency,” Elkhadem, Le Taqwı-m, 166. Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 4182, fol. 101 verso. The page for this subject has been torn out of the Vienna manuscript. 62 Interestingly, in the Arabic text (as translated by Elkhadem,  Le Taqwı-m, 214–15), though not the later Paris version, mention is made of the ideal partner involved: “Nature: the union of a couple to inject sperm; Optimum: when the receiving partner is the one of  choice.” 63 Similar examples from chivalric literature that show a nude couple in a canopied bed include images from: Le Roman de la rose (London, British Library, Egerton MS 881, fol. 126 recto), a French manuscript dated to the fourteenth century; and “Lancelot and Guinevere” in Le Chevalier de la charrette (London, British Library Library,, Additional MS 10293, fol. 312 verso), also French and dated to ca. 1320. For illustrations see: Pamela Porter, Courtly Love in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2003), 32, 55. 64 See, for example, the ivories picturing the Castle of Love discussed in  Images in  Ivory, ed. Peter Barnet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 72–4, and cat. 57. 65 Nicolas de Lyra’s Lyra’s biblical commentary was copiously illustrated ill ustrated during the Trecento, and one edition was produced for Giangaleazzo (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 364). Régine Pernoud and J. Vigne,  La plume et le parchemin (Paris: Denoël, 1983); Avril, Dix siècles , 106–7; Segre Rutz, Historia Plantarum, 148. 66 French hunting treatises may have been consulted for the illustrated Tacuinum 60 61

 

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3.6

Coytus (coitus). Tacuinum sanitatis. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 100 verso. Ca. 1380–90. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

 

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other instances, the artists may have drawn on a measure of firsthand knowledge, for example, the chapter of the Tacuinum concerning perfumes, sugar, and other dry goods. The accompanying pictures feature the specialized shops where these ingredients could be purchased and vendors wearing exotic costumes – the sort of 

details known to inhabitants of trade centers such as Milan. Vegetables and fruits that were either new arrivals to northern Italian gardens or for which no models existed in the herbal repertoire also may have been drawn from firsthand knowledge. The images of melon and cucumbers, for example, have a botanical realism that reflects careful scrutiny. 67 And although it had been thought that eggplant was not grown in Italy until after the discovery of America, melanzane is precisely rendered before that date in the Rome Tacuinum (fol. 24 recto) and also in the so-called  Roccabonella Herbal produced in the Veneto around 1420 (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI.59, coll. 2548, fol. 386 recto).68 Ibn But.la-n discussed eggplant in the Taqwı-m, and the vegetable seems to have been imported to Italy from the Middle East by way of Andalusian Spain.69 The artists of the Tacuinum , lacking models from the herbal tradition for plants outside the Western materia medica, consequently were inspired to draw the remarkable structural features of these kitchen vegetables. Thus a cycle of pictures was developed for the Tacuinum that placed emphasis on the cultivation and harvesting of foodstuffs and other aspects of the work and leisure connected to the feudal estate and its surroundings. The preoccupation in the pictures with the relationship between betw een human subjects and the foods they need for nourishment may be accounted for in part by the Tacuinum text, with its stress on the impact of the Galenic non-naturals on the human body and psyche. In addition, the decision to strongly feature the “labors of the months” seems to have led to the adoption of a “genre scene” format for most of the paintings. The Tacuinum scenes of these rustic labors are an early example of a subject that was manuscripts. See Le Livre du Roy Modus, Henri de Ferrières, 1354–74 (for example Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12399, dated 1379). Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 149; G. Tilander, Les Livres du Roy Modus et de la Royne Ratio , 2 vols (Paris: Société des anciens textes français, 1932). 67 For instance, cucumeres (cucumbers), Paris, fol. 38 verso; melones dulces (sweet melons), Vienna, fol. 21 recto; and cucurbite (squash), Vienna, fol. 22 verso. Physician Peter of Abano said that Padua was noted for its fine melons. Nancy G. Siraisi,  Arts and  Sciences at Padua: The Studium of Padua before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of  Mediaeval Studies, 1973), 129. 68 On the exquisitely painted manuscript known as the  Roccabonella Herbal or, formerly, as the  Rinio Herbal, see F. Paganelli and E. M. Cappelletti, “Il codice erbario Roccabonella (sec. XV) e suo contributo alla storia della Farmacia,”  Atti e memorie,  Accademia italiana di storia della farmacia 13 (1996): 111–16. 111–16. On eggplant and the other botanical images in the Roccabonella Herbal, see Ettore De Toni, “Il Libro dei semplici di Benedetto Rinio,”  Memorie della Pontificia Accademia delle Scienze Nuovi Lincei, Rome 1919–25, vol. 5: 171–278; vol. 7: 275–398; vol. 8: 123–264, at vol. 8, 127. In the Paris Tacuinum (fol. 25 verso), however, eggplants are shown as if they were fruit growing on trees. 69 De Toni, “Il Libro,” vol. 8, 127.

 

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popular among the elite, as deluxe Books of Hours, particularly the Très Riches  Heures, demonstrate. Late-medieval patrons and landowners took pleasure and perhaps comfort from these painted visions of a utopian rural world in which men and women of each class were happily busy at activities appropriate to their stations.

The Pleasures of the

Tacuinum

Manuscripts

The different genres that were recontextualized for the illustrated Tacuinum give clues to the pleasures these manuscripts provided their readers. It is clear that the stories told by the pictures do not mesh in a straightforward way with the purpose of Ibn But.la-n’s original treatise: achieving health through diet and regimen. Instead, the use of evocative prototypes and their transformation transformat ion into genre scenes suggest quite a different emphasis in the Visconti manuscripts. The subjects and themes that surface there include: the pleasures of courtly love, costumes and fashion, mild eroticism and comedy, the hunt, gardening and agriculture, managing the estate, shopping for food and cooking, new foods and exotic ingredients from the East, and everyday life in a familiar but idealized environment. Each of the Tacuinum manuscripts emphasized some subjects particularly strongly, a valuable indication that each was individually tailored for a specific audience. Verde Visconti’s Tacuinum in Paris features courtly love themes and fashionable dress (Figs 3.1, 3.2 and 3.6). Many of the models used in this manuscript were taken from chivalric romances. Some of the artists who worked on the illuminations in the Paris Tacuinum also seem to have been responsible for two famous, chivalric books produced for the Visconti – Guiron le Courtois (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv nouv.. acq. fr. 5243) and Lancelot du  Lac (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 343).70 In contrast, the Vienna manuscript, perhaps presented to one of the Speroni family in a political gesture by Giangaleazzo, places more emphasis on the operations of a rural estate in a way a wealthy male reader may have found enjoyable (Fig. ( Fig. 3.3). 3.3). Finally, the Rome Theatrum sanitatis less complex representations of plants in gardens and fields, provides often without human activities to detract from growing them. The identity of the original patron remains a mystery, but he seems to have been a scholarly gentleman more concerned with words than the picture-book appearance of the treatise might otherwise suggest. In the Rome manuscript, additions and corrections have been made to the text by an early reader, perhaps the original patron. For example, on fol. 14 recto for the nut “Jujube,” two lines of additional notes in Latin refer to Avicenna’s 70

Berti Toesca,  Il Tacuinum Sanitatis, 21; Avril,  Dix siècles, 98; Sutton, “Milanese Luxury Books,” 325; and Segre Rutz,  Historia Plantarum, 146–8.

 

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comments on jujube in his encyclopedic Canon medicinae. These annotations go beyond both the Tacuinum, and Ibn But.la-n’s original tables, which do not cite Avicenna.71 The illuminations in the Rome manuscript also manifest more effort to communicate the botanical and medical import of the text. 72 For instance, the representations of “Fennel” (fol. 41 verso) and “Anise” (fol. 41 recto) illustrate the

chief visible difference between these two species of the Umbelliferae family: the shape of their leaves. Whereas the leaves of fennel are dissected into numerous, linear filiform leaflets, anise has coarsely toothed leaflets. Furthermore, the gentleman in the “Anise” picture draws attention to the fact that the seeds are the part of the plant with which the text is concerned. Although each of the three Lombard manuscripts registers separate concerns, taken together, they reflect the interests of the original patron, Giangaleazzo Visconti. Of these, the emphasis on agriculture and the management of the feudal estate, the idealization of the landscape and its inhabitants and the interest in erotic themes are particularly telling.73 The pronounced preoccupation with agriculture in the Tacuinum manuscripts ultimately stems from Ibn But.la-n’s large section on grains and foods made from them. From the fourteenth century on, innovations in agriculture and gardening reached the West from the Middle East and Andalusian Spain, one facet of the dissemination of Arabic science and technology.74 However, the Latin text used for the Visconti Tacuinum manuscripts does not follow Ibn Butla-n’s list of grains and . related foodstuffs; instead, it features an impressive list of grains of importance in Italy: barley, millet, oats, rice, rye, sorghum, spelt, and wheat. Giovannino’s workshop responded by adapting images from the “labors” for the summer months and pictures from biblical commentaries to create a number of genre scenes showing male and female workers, dressed in very simple and often scanty clothes, threshing and bundling up grain. These images, which record farming practices in northern Italy at the time, provide important documentation of innovations in agriculture. For example, the earliest reliable accounts of the cultivation of rice in the region date from the mid to the late fifteenth century century.. Rice is an Asian plant and its cultivation was diffused Elkhadem, Le Taqwı-m, 156–7. Pirani, Herbarium, 4th page. Another theme that should be investigated is the incorporation of subjects involving hunting and game that were not included in the earlier Latin Tacuinum treatises. Several of  the illuminations, likewise, feature scenes of courtly men and women hunting, or the butchering of wild game, and some include knightly men with falcons perched on their wrists. This new emphasis can be directly related to Giangaleazzo’s passion for hunting. See Carlo Magenta,  I Visconti e gli Sforza nel Castello di Pavia, e loro attinenze con la Certosa e la storia cittadina, 2 vols (Milan: U. Hoepli, 1883), vol. 1, part 1, 119 ff. 74 Plants introduced from Asia and the Middle East into Europe via Andalusia include rice, roses, eggplant, dates, and sugar beet. See Luigi Messedaglia, “Le piante alimentari del Tacuinum sanitatis, manoscritto miniato della Bib. Naz. di Parigi. Contributo alla storia st oria dell’agricoltura e dell’alimentazione,”  Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed   Arti (Venice: Arlo Ferrari, 1937), vol. 96, no. 2 (1936–7), 571–681. 71 72 73

 

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by the Arabs into Egypt, and into East and West Africa during the Middle Ages. By the 1320s rice was imported by Italian pharmacists who used it as a medicinal ingredient, and both the Rome and Vienna manuscripts show the purchase of rice in a shop (both fols 46 recto). Significantly, however, the Paris Tacuinum depicts a rice field with some accuracy (fol. 48 recto) suggesting that rice was being

grown near Milan and Verona as early as 1390 (Fig. ( Fig. 3.7). 3.7).75 The effort taken to create scenes of labourers in fields with specific grains surely reflects the economic importance to the Visconti duchy of its agricultural lands. The value of agricultural land was a concern Giangaleazzo, of course, shared with other landowning aristocrats of the day. It is, however, interesting to see that preoccupation with land reflected in illuminated manuscripts commissioned for royalty and other wealthy noblemen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For instance, a distant comparison can be drawn between the Tacuinum manuscripts and the  Lutt  Luttrell rell Psalt Psalter er (London, British Library, Additional MS 42130), a work that was illuminated in England in the midfourteenth century. The Psalter’s decorated margins feature detailed scenes of  farm work which have been connected to the patron, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, and to his interest in his large manorial estate.76 Giangaleazzo Visconti’s preoccupations as political and military ruler of the lands of Lombardy and beyond are reflected not only in the emphasis on agriculture in the Tacuinum cycles, but also in the idealized way the feudal domain is depicted in the illuminations more generally. Once again, this marked tendency towards idealization of the landscape and its inhabitants finds parallels in other late-medieval works of art. Half a century before the Visconti Tacuinum, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s allegorical wall paintings, Good Government in the City and the Country (Siena, Palazzo Pubblico, ca. 1338–9), projected a similarly strong sense of well-being in scenes of a justly governed town and the neighboring countryside.77 Later on, the Très Riches Heures made for Jean de Berry in the early fifteenth century also includes depictions of the harmonious world of a wellmanaged feudal estate where men and women of all ages do the tasks appropriate to their stations of life, following the predictable rhythm of the seasons. The patrons and viewers of these works would have understood the basic underlying theme. When fromwould ruler and estate manager to plowman, their 78work well, the fruitseveryone, of their labor insure their well-being and gooddidhealth. 75 76

Messedaglia, “Le piante alimentari,” 643–56. Janet Backhouse,  Medieval Rural Life in the Luttrell Psalter (London: British Library, 2000). 77 Nicolai Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art: The Frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico,”  Journal of the Warburg and  Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958): 179–207. 78 Jonathan Alexander offers an ideological reading of the imagery of rural peasant labor in the Très Riches Heures in “ Labeur and Paresse: Ideological Representations of  Medieval Peasant Labor,”  Art Bulletin 72 (1990): 443–52. Also: Michael Camille, “Labouring for the Lord: The Ploughman and the Social Order in the Luttrell Psalter,”  Art

 

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3.7  Rizon (rice). Tacuinum sanitatis. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673, fol. 48 recto. Ca. 1380–90. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

 

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Under the patronage of Giangaleazzo Visconti or a member of his close circle, the cycles of utopian scenes considered in this essay were generated apparently in response to the list of foods valued for their medicinal properties in the original Tacuinum. However, the most powerful impetus behind the painted scenes seems to have been the desire to flatter and please the Visconti. In assembling the

prototypes for the Tacuinum illuminations, Giovannino dei Grassi strove to capture a world of fertile fields, orchards, and gardens on a perfectly run feudal estate intended to echo the Visconti’s own. Just as the famous prayerbook, the Visconti Hours, initiated by Giovannino dei Grassi’s workshop, showed the Count as devout, chivalric, and a worthy successor to the Roman emperors, so, too, the Tacuinum illustrations portrayed the peaceful, orderly, bountiful world such a ruler would enjoy.79

Postscript

The reality was, however, something quite different. The period 1340 to 1400 was one of famine, disease, and warfare in northern Italy. Excessive rainfall resulted in ruined crops and famine. In turn, famine led to disease. The most devastating epidemic was the Black Death of 1348, in which as many as two-thirds of the population of many centers died. The plague returned, though less violently, in 1362–3, 1371, 1373–4, and 1382–3, leaving the population decimated and afraid.80 In addition, much of northern Italy was ravaged by warfare. Giangaleazzo Visconti was the most successful of the military dictators, or signori, who came to power in the second half of the fourteenth century. From 1385 to 1402, Giangaleazzo aggressively expanded Visconti territory to include all of Lombardy and Emilia and parts of Tuscany and Umbria.81 Yet as the Count and his captains waged war, Milanese subjects from the lower and middle classes who worked on the Lombard plain or depended on its harvests were experiencing acute shortages of food.  History 10 (1987): 423–54; and Vito Fumagalli, Uomini contro la storia (Turin: CLUEB, 1995). Bertiz instead focuses on the elite courtier and the depiction of recreation as a

marker of class. Bertiz, “Picturing 231–49, 251. at the facing image of the 79 Giangaleazzo is shown in aHealth,” votive 59, portrait, gazing Annunciation in the Visconti Hours, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale MS BR 397, fol. 105 recto (Psalm 109); and on fol. 115 recto of MS BR 397 (Psalm 118:81), Giangaleazzo is represented in profile – an image type that inevitably alludes to the ancient tradition of  rulers’ portraits on coins. On fol. 115 115 recto, the presence of hunting dogs dogs and stags refers to the Count’s knightly leisure pursuits. For a facsimile edition see: The Visconti Hours (National Library, Florence), intro. and ed. Millard Meiss Mei ss and Edith W. Kirsch (New York: York: George Braziller, 1972), no page numbers. 80 John Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216–1380 1216–1380 (London: Longman, 1983), 256–66. 81 Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante Dante and Petrarch, 128–50; E. R. Chamberlin, The Count  of Virtue: Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965), 201–23.

 

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At a time when so many were starving, the wealthy and powerful class gained the popular title “il popolo grasso,” the fat people. Knowing this context, it is hard to take the utopian landscapes of the Tacuinum paintings, with their bountiful harvests and cheerful laborers, at face value. Ultimately, the celebration of an abundance of food in the Tacuinum sanitatis manuscripts must be interpreted in

part as an assertion of power and class by the Visconti rulers.82 Eating well and healthily was their privilege.

82

Larner, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch Petrarch, 211–13, includes the eighteen-course menu from a Visconti wedding feast of June 1368, held at a time when most of the population was suffering from an acute shortage of food. As Larner explains: “The very prominence of food makes of this state occasion a sort of secular communion feast. Gluttony as a work of art was a demonstration of the power of the governing class and a symbol too of the supreme importance of food in the thought of governments” (213).

 

Chapter 4

Erudition on Displa Erudition Display: y: The “Scie “Scientifi ntific” c” Illustrations in Pico della Mirandola’s

Illustrations in Pico della Mirandola s Manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History Sarah Blake McHam* McHam*

For medieval and Renaissance readers, the  Natural History, the immense encyclopedia compiled by Pliny the Elder in the first century AD, was an invaluable source of information about the universe, the earth, man, plants, animals, minerals, medicine, and art.1 Fourteen centuries after Pliny’s death, a rich * I would like to thank several organizations for their generous support of my research on the influence of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History on Italian Renaissance art. The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation underwrote my research in Venice Venice at the Biblioteca Marciana, the American Philosophical Society my research in Paris at the Bibliothèque nationale, and in London at the British Library and Victoria and Albert Museum. The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, provided me with a residential fellowship. Glyn Davis of the Victoria and Albert Museum kindly provided a photograph of the Piccolomini manuscript. I am also very grateful to Lilian Armstrong for reading this essay and for her expert counsel on all my questions about manuscript and incunable illumination. Her generosity extended even to loans and gifts of books and photographs. Finally, Finally, I would like to acknowledge the perceptive comments and editing suggestions made by the editors, especially Karen Reeds. 1 The Collection des Universités de France, Association Guillaume Budé, Les Belles Lettres, has almost completed a highly regarded edition of the  Natural History (Books Four, Five–part 2; Six–part 1; and 25 have not yet appeared). Each book is published in a separate volume with an extensive commentary and notes compiled by specialists. Another recent scholarly edition, in German, in the Tusculum-Bücherei series edited by Gerhard Winkler and Roderich König, began publication in 1973, and is complete. Published in Munich by Heimeran-Verlag until 1980, and after 1981 by Artemis-Verlag, it is useful for its lengthy commentaries. They complement those appearing in the French edition in that they focus on historical and geographical issues, whereas the notes in the former are more philological. I quote the standard edition in English: Pliny,  Natural History, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, D. E. Eichholz, and W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library, 10 vols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938–63; reprinted 1989–99). The standard analysis of Pliny’ Pliny’ss life ( AD 23/4–79) and writing is by Konrat Ziegler et al. in Paulys Real-Enzyklopädie der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft , rev. edn, Georg Wissowa et al., 21, part 1 (Stuttgart: Alfred Druckenmüller, 1951), 271–439. Little new Pauly. Enzyklopädie der information is provided in the entry by Klaus Sallman in Der Neue Pauly.  Antike, ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, vol. 9 (Stuttgart and Weimar: J. B. 83

 

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student, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), prized the work so highly that he commissioned a deluxe manuscript copy – Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976). This manuscript’s unique set of images departs from the repertory first established by the fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury illuminators who borrowed their ideas from medical and scientific texts

such as the Tacuina sanitatis. Instead, illuminations in Pico s manuscript often depict the anecdotes about the natural world and Greek and Roman historical figures with which Pliny animated his long litany of facts. This deliberate selection reveals that the manuscript’s designer had read the text carefully: Pliny had scattered these non-scientific asides throughout the encyclopedia and omitted them from his lengthy index. It also indicates that the designer valued Pliny’s comments about ancient beliefs and practices. The decisions are unlikely to have been made independently by the Pico Master, the anonymous artist whose sobriquet is derived from this manuscript, as these innovative images are not repeated in any other copy of Pliny’s  Natural History he illuminated. Rather, it seems that Pico della Mirandola, who even at age 18 was renowned for his classical learning, personally supervised the choice of  illustrations in this manuscript. The possibility that a learned patron played a role in the actual design of the book is unusual and interesting in its own right.2 Equally important, the manuscript demonstrates the ways the traditions of illustration in Metzler, 2000), 1135–44. 1135–44. Its bibliography is the most up to date, but less complete than the comprehensive, annotated bibliographies on Pliny the Elder’s career compiled earlier: Klaus Sallman, “Plinius der Ältere 1938–70,”  Lustrum, 18 (1975): 1–355; Franz Römer, “Plinius der Ältere, III. Bericht,”  Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft  31 (1978): 129–206; and Guy Serbat, “Pline l’Ancien. Etat présent des études sur sa vie, son oeuvre et u nd Kultur Roms Ro ms son influence,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Geschichte und im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, II, vol. 32, part 4, ed. H. Temporini: Principät. Sprache und Literatur. Literatur der Julisch–Claudischen und der Flavischen Zeit (Forts.) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986), 2069–200. 2 Manuscripts and incunables often were personalized by the addition of the patron’s coat of arms or stemmata in the border decorations of the title-page. Occasionally portraits further personalized the opening page, for example, Filippo Strozzi’s copy of the vernacular edition of Pliny’s encyclopedia printed by Jenson in 1476. Strozzi had underwritten Cristoforo Landino’s the printing costs. The border of the dedication page to King Ferdinand of translation Naples (fol.and 1 recto) includes a portrait of Landino; and portraits of  Strozzi, his eldest son, and the King appear in the border surrounding Pliny’s prefatory letter to Titus (fol. 5 recto) (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch G. b. 6; previously MS Douce 310). I thank Joyce Kubiski for this information. More rarely, patrons and illuminators devised illustrations of the actual text that reflected the personal interests of the patrons. In an example coeval with Pico’s Pico’s manuscript, in 1458 the Venetian nobleman Leonardo Sanudo copied in his own hand Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid , as the manuscript’s colophon records (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7939A). The paintings dealing with the Aeneid  picture castles in the Po Valley and transplant Aeneas and his companions to northern Italy. See Jonathan J. G. Alexander, ed., The Painted Page. Italian Renaissance Book Illumination, 1450–1550 (London: Prestel, 1994), 108, cat. 42. I thank my former student Emma Guest, whose dissertation involved the illustration tradition of Virgil’s bucolic poetry, for this reference.

 

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earlier scientific manuscripts were adapted, or deliberately rejected, in Pico’s sumptuous version of Pliny’s vast encyclopedia.

Pliny’s  Natural History in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Pico’s decision to have the  Natural History copied and elaborately illustrated in the 1480s reflects the high status of Pliny’s text. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance the  Natural History was known in some complete and many partial manuscript copies and indirectly through derivative texts.3 The huge, multifarious text was cumbersome to use, so collections of extracts proliferated; and it became a major source for writers of specialized encyclopedias, starting with Solinus’s Collectanea rerum memorabilium, ca. AD 200.4 Other writers excerpted the books on the medicinal uses of plants and animals. 5 Pliny’s works were known throughout the Middle Ages thanks to these collections. 6 The epitome compiled by Solinus may have included pictures, as a thirteenth-century version of the text accompanied by miniatures survives.7 Even so, there is no evidence that any copy of the complete Natural History was illustrated in antiquity or during most of the Middle Ages. The first references to an illustrated Pliny come in a famous episode in earlyfifteenth-century book collecting when a thirteenth-century copy of the  Natural 3

For Pliny’s influence during the medieval period see Marjorie Chibnall, “Pliny’s  Natural History and the Middle Ages,”  Empire and Aftermath. Silver Latin II , ed. T. A. Dorey (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), 57–78, and Charles G. Nauert, Jr, “Caius Plinius Secundus,” Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. Mediaeval and   Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries Commenta ries (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 302–4. For the reception of the  Natural History by Christian figures such as Jerome, Augustine, Augustine, Cassiodorus, and Albertus Magnus, see Arno Borst, Das  Buch der Natu Naturgeschi rgeschichte chte.. Plin Plinius ius und sein seinee Leser im Zeita Zeitalter lter des Pergame Pergaments nts

(Heidelberg: Winter, 1994), 57–299. For additional bibliography, see Serbat, “Pline l’Ancien,” 2174–81. 4 Soli Solinus’ nus’ encycl encyclopedi opedia, a, an epitome epitome of the  Natural History’s books on geography, derives its information from Pliny and Pliny’s Pliny’s own sources, but adds a dds a fascination with the The Excellent and Pleasant Worke, Collectanea rerum marvelous. C. of Julius memorabilium CaiusSolinus, Julius Solinus , trans. Arthur Golding (1587; reprint, Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1955); 1955); Chibnall, “Pliny’s “Pliny’s Natural History,” 58–9; and Rudolf Wittkower Wittkower,, “Marvels of the East. A Study in the History of Monsters,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 159–97. For bibliography on Pliny’s and Solinus’ texts, see Serbat, “Pline “Pline l’Ancien,” 2174. 2174. 5 A late-third- or or early-fourth-century early-fourth-century compendium compendium of plant remedies known as the  Medicina Plinii Plini i also spread Pliny’s reputation. In the next centuries, several other versions of Pliny’s Pliny’s information about herbal cures circulated and contributed to his growing fame as a specialist on botany and its medical applications. Serbat, “Pline l’Ancien,” 2172–3. 6 Borst, Das Buch , 44–6. 7 Wittkower, “Marvels,” 171, used the example of the surviving illustrated Solinus epitome to make the case that there must have been a pre-existing tradition of miniatures accompanying copies of Solinus’ text.

 

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 History was lent by the Dominicans Dominicans of Lubeck to Cosimo de’ Medici Medici.. The wily

Florentines never returned it, and it remains in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence where it is MS plut. 82.1.8 Cosimo’s purloined Pliny, apparently the earliest illustrated manuscript of the  Natural History to survive, contains a single full-page illumination of Pliny presenting the Natural History to the Emperor Titus, non-figurative decorations in the initials beginning many of the

individual books of the encyclopedia, and several unrelated Christian subjects in the incipit initials of others. others.9 Most other manuscripts of the  Natural History had decorative rubrications but otherwise lacked illustrations; others sometimes include elaborately embellished title-pages. The rare narrative frontispieces invariably represented Pliny in the act of  writing, or Pliny offering his book to the Emperor Titus – the patron Pliny addressed in the  Natural History’s prefatory letter. Such author portraits are common in Renaissance manuscripts of ancient and contemporary writers. 10 The Christian scenes in Cosimo’s manuscript probably reflect the absence of  illustrated copies of the Natural History. Lacking a relevant tradition of narrative images, substitutes were appropriated from the Christian tradition. Thus, in Book 16 discussion of fruit-trees opens with the word Pomiferae, and its opening letter “P” pictures the Nativity, the formula for illustrating the words, “Puer natus est .” .”11 In the few instances when manuscripts of the Natural History contained images specifically correlated to the text, they follow a distinct pattern of an emblematic narrative in and around the initial that begins each book. These incipit illustrations are especially important for the history of medicine and science, and this essay focuses on examples in Pico’s manuscript as well as others that underscore both the unusual and typical features of this work.12 One copy is particularly useful for our purposes: London, Victoria and Albert Museum, MS L. 1504–1896 was 8

Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordon, Two Renaissance Book Hunters, 2nd edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 284. 9 The full-page presentation miniature on fol. 2 verso is reproduced in color in Giovanni Morello, ed., Kostbarkeiten der Buchkunst. Illuminationen klassischer Werke von  Archimedes bis Vergil Vergil (Stuttgart: Belser, Belser, 1996), 91, and a nd in Marco Buonocore, ed., Vedere i classici. L’Illustrazione libraria dei testi antichi dall’età romana al tardo medievo (Rome: Fratelli Palombi 1996), 230, fig. 146.: The Revival of the Author Portrait in 10 Joyce Illustri M. Editori, Kubiski, “Uomini Renaissance Florence” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1993), traces the medieval and Renaissance history of Christian and pagan author portraits, and of the varying positions of these author portraits in the manuscripts of their writings, and provides a catalog of author portraits in Italian manuscripts and incunables of the fifteenth century. Most of these portraits are small in scale and placed in the border of the title-page or in the opening initial of the book’s text. 11 Book 15, which begins with Oleam and a discussion of the olive-tree, has its opening initial “O” decorated with an image of the seated blessing Christ. See the catalog entry by Giovanna Lazzi concerning the manuscript (and others with transplanted Christian subjects) in Vedere i classici, ed. Buonocore, 229–32, cat. 32. 12 Susy Marcon describes all the initials in her catalog entry on the manuscript in Vedere i classici, ed. Buonocore, 422–5, cat. 115.

 

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commissioned by Gregorio Lolli Piccolomini, the cousin and secretary of Pope Pius II, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini.13 Like Pico’s manuscript, the Piccolomini copy is large and it contains miniatures; it is usually attributed to the Florentine Giuliano Amadei and dated in the 1460s.14 Lilian Armstrong’s Armstrong’s publication of three previously previ ously unknown manuscripts of the  Natural History, all with illustrations related to the text, is the point of departure

for all discussion on Renaissance illustrations of Pliny.15 The earliest of this type was illuminated in Bologna ca. 1300 and is now in the Escorial. 16 Unlike Cosimo’s manuscript with its Christian subjects and presentation portrait, the manuscript was decorated with an incomplete cycle of painted initials with schematic renditions of animals, plants, physicians, and herbalists. Armstrong’s stemma of these Pliny manuscripts with narrative paintings specific to the text establishes that for this group the illustrations were always situated in the initials beginning the separate books; that the imagery i magery derived from precedents in herbals, bestiaries, health handbooks, and other types of scientific texts; and that a standardized visual repertory for the  Natural History quickly developed. She argues that this repertory of images was greatly enriched later in two earlyfifteenth-century manuscript copies of Pliny’s text illuminated for the Visconti court in Milan, and for Jean de Berry, a relative by marriage of the Visconti 13

Bu ch, 320–21, for another manuscript of Pliny’s  Natural History owned Borst, Das Buch by Pius II Piccolomini. 14 The Victoria and Albert manuscript measures ca. 406 x 292 mm. and contains more than 500 vellum pages. See Joyce Irene Whalley, Pliny the Elder Historia Naturalis (London: Oregon Press for the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1982), 8–9, for more information about the manuscript and for color facsimiles of all its illustrations. 15 Lilian Armstrong, “The Illustration of Pliny’ Pliny’ss Historia Naturalis: Manuscripts before 1430,”  Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983): 19–39; reprinted in Lilian Armstrong, Studies of Renaissance Miniaturists in Venice, 2 vols (London: Pindar, 2003), vol. 1, 89–140. 16 El Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, MS R. I. 5 is on parchment and measures 405 x 280 mm. It contains 218 folios of double-columned text. P. Guillermo Antolín, Catálogo de los Códices Latinos de la Real Biblioteca del  Escorial, 5 vols (Madrid: Imprenta Helénica, 1910–23), vol. 3, 451–2, and vol. 4, 584. 17 The manuscript of the  Natural History illuminated for Pasquino Capelli at the

Visconti court in Milan 392 in 1389 is now Biblioteca MS E.text. 24 inf. parchment, it measures x 280 mm Milan, with 361 folios ofAmbrosiana, double-columned At On the beginning of Book 35 (fol. 332 recto), Pietro da Pavia portrayed himself as the painter identifying himself in the inscription in the surrounding initial: “Frater Petrus de Papa me  fecit 1389.” The manuscript, first studied by Pietro Toesca, “Di alcuni miniatori lombardi della fine del Trecento,”  L’Arte 10 (1907): 185–90, is carefully re-examined by Marco Rossi, “Pietro da Pavia e il Plinio dell’Ambrosiano: Miniatura tardogotica e cultura scientifica del mondo classico,”  Rivista di storia della miniatura 1–2 (1996–7): 231–8. Pietro da Pavia’s portrait on fol. 332 recto is reproduced in fig. 1. The manuscript illuminated for Jean de Berry in about 1410 is now Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MSS I. I. 24–I. I. 25. Damaged in the fire at the library in 1904, it has been rebound. MS I. I. 24 measures 360 x 225 mm and is composed of 219 folios. MS I. I. 25 is composed of 216 folios and measures 360 x 240 mm. Armstrong, “Pliny Manuscripts,” 29–35, attributes the illuminations to an artist in the circle of the Boucicaut Master.

 

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family.17 Although the latter manuscript survives today only in fragmentary form, enough remains to show that both manuscripts added depictions of landscapes, agricultural activities, and artisans at work, derived principally from the fourteenth-century health handbooks known as Tacuina sanitatis.18 By the 1420s these two traditions conjoined to form a definitive series of miniatures for all the beginning initials of the  Natural History’s books, as proved by Armstrong’s

discovery of an intact manuscript (today in Parma) that had been illuminated in that decade by the Venetian, Cristoforo Cortese.19 Armstrong contends that this canon of narrative initial images was repeated for a century in hand-written and incunable copies of Pliny. In general, these illuminations in the incipit initials illustratee the books’ scientif illustrat scientific ic content content only only in the most most limited limited sense. sense. Recognizable emblems of plants, trees, and animals visually supplement the titles and rubrication as indications of the book’s subject matter.

Pico della Mirandola and his Pliny Manuscript

The manuscript commissioned about sixty years after the Cortese manuscript by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola should fall squarely into this tradition, but it is anomalous. It replicates aspects of the earlier visual repertory but it also reveals a much more sophisticated relation between text and images. The colophon records Pico’s commissioning of the scribe Niccolò Mascarino of Ferrara to copy Pliny’s text in 1481. 1481.20 Following customary practice, the scribe left spaces blank for the illuminated initials and border decorations to be added later. The anonymous illuminator is called the Pico Master after this manuscript.21 Its 458 parchment 18

Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook. Tacuinum Sanitatis (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976); Florence Moly Mariotti, “Contribution à la connaissance des Tacuina sanitatis san itatis lombards,” Arte lombarda 104 (1993): 32–9 (with bibliography); and the essay by Cathleen Hoeniger in this volume, “The Illuminated Tacuinum sanitatis Manuscripts from Northern Italy ca. 1380–1400: Sources, Patrons, and the Creation of a New Pictorial Genre,” Chapter 3. 3. For the relation of the miniatures in the manuscripts of  the Natural History to the Tacuinum tradition, see Armstrong, “Pliny Manuscripts,” 21–35. Rossi, “Pietroand dathe Pavia,” 232–7, adduces further parallels between the manuscript in the Ambrosiana Tacuinum tradition. 19 The manuscript is Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1278. See Armstrong, “Pliny Manuscripts,” 19, n. 4 and 35–9. On Cortese’s career, see Giordana Mariani Canova, “Miniatura e pittura in età tardogotica (1400–1440),” in  La Pittura nel Veneto. Il Quattrocento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2 vols (Milan: Electa, 1989), vol. 1, 193–222. 20 The colophon on fol. 458 recto reads: “ Hoc opus scripsit Nicolaus de Mascharinis de Ferrara, ad instantiam magnifici comitis Ioannis de la Mirandula, anno incarnationis dom nostri Iesu Christi MCCCCLXXXI die 17 augusti.” 21 Lilian Armstrong, “The Illustration of Pliny’s  Historia Naturalis in Venetian Manuscripts and Early Printed Books,”  Manuscripts in the Fifty Years after the Invention of Printing, ed. J. Trapp (London: Warburg Institute, 1983), 97–105; reprinted in Armstrong, Studies, vol. 1, 141–55. See her “Il Maestro di Pico: un miniature veneziano del tardo quattrocento,” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte 17 (1990): 7–39; trans. and

 

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pages (415 x 280 mm) include a small author portrait above the biography of Pliny on the opening page, a full-page frontispiece to the combined prefatory letter and Book One, and an illuminated initial at the beginning of each subsequent book – 38 historiated illuminations in all. The size of the manuscript, its materials, beautiful script, and lavish painting make clear that Pico’s manuscript was a luxurious and prestigious possession.

Pico, a member of the noble family of the counts of Mirandola, is known as one of the most eminent philosophers and scholars in the Renaissance and the author of the treatise called On the Dignity of Man. A child prodig prodigyy intended intended by by his mother for a career in the church, he was named an apostolic protonotary at age ten; at 14, he began studying canon law at the University of Bologna. After his mother’s death in 1478, Pico redirected his career, thereafter devoting himself and his fortune to learning. In Ferrara, he studied for a year with Guarino da Verona and launched his investigations into philosophy. Pico moved on to the Studium at Padua, where between 1480 and 1482 he continued his pursuit of the humanities, and entered into correspondence with Ermolao Barbaro, Poliziano, and Ficino, the period’ss other great intellectuals.22 Proficient in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew, period’ Hebrew, Pico avidly collected books in these languages. When he died at the age of 31 in 1494, his library included more than 1,000 books. 23 By 1481, when he commissioned this luxury manuscript of the  Natural  History, Pico had already begun collecting manuscripts and printed books. His coat of arms appears in two incunables attributed to the Pico Master that can be tentatively dated before 1481. An extensively decorated copy of Macrobius,  In somnium Scipionis, printed by Nicholas Jenson in 1472, was probably given to, or collected by, Pico after he was named a protonotary at age ten in 1473: the frontispiece displays the appropriate black ecclesiastical hat atop his coat of arms. A copy of Plutarch, Plutarch, Vitae virorum illustrium, printed by Jenson in 1478, shows the same hat above the coat of arms, but painted over in red. 24 Presumably the hat indicates the books were illuminated before Pico abandoned his ecclesiastical career. Pico probably hired the Pico Master to provide the miniatures for the Pliny

Studies reprinted Armstrong,and , vol. 1, 233–338, forArmstrong’s the definitive Renaissance account of thisMiniature master ’s master’ career ininmanuscript incunable decoration. Painters and Classical Imagery. The Master of the Putti and his Venetian Workshop

(London: H. Miller, 1981) traces the use of antiquarian motifs in manuscripts and incunables by a workshop close to the Pico Master. 22 Eugenio Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Vita e dottrina (Florence: F. Le Monnier, 1937), 1–15. 23 Pearl Kibre, The Library of Pico della Mirandola (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), provides an annotated inventory of Pico’s collection. Pico’s manuscript of  Pliny is not listed in the inventory and cannot be traced before Apostolo Apostolo Zeno purchased it in the eighteenth century ce ntury.. The manuscript subsequently passed from Zeno’s collection into the library of the Gesuati, and from there into the Marciana (Marcon, in Vedere i classici, ed. Buonocore, 425). 24 Alexander Alexander,, ed., Painted Page, 205–6, cat. 102 by Lilian Armstrong.

 

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manuscript because he liked the painter’s earlier work in the Jenson imprints. It was an exceptional commission for the young bibliophile; no other elaborately decorated manuscript seems to have survived that can be connected to his patronage. Pico likely ordered the luxury manuscript for his own delectation, as he probably already owned a more utilitarian, printed edition of Pliny’s  Natural  History, perhaps that issued by Nicolas Jenson in 1472. 25 The Pico Master had

already illuminated many copies of the edition of Pliny printed by Jenson in 1472, but none has illuminations like those in the manuscript he painted for Pico.26 Pico’ss manuscript begins with a page that transcribes Suetonius’ fragmentary Pico’ biography of Pliny the Elder from his  De viris illustribus. The few lines that survive of Suetonius’s account were often inserted at the beginning of manuscripts and early printed editions edit ions (starting with the first, Johannes de Spira, Venice, Venice, 1469) because it is one of only two surviving contemporary sources about Pliny the Elder. However, I believe the small illumination above the biography is unique to this manuscript (Fig. (Fig. 4.1). 4.1). A seated male male figure actively actively writes writes in a book on the table before him.27 Anothe Anotherr book rests on a nearby stand. A large window window allows a wide view of a landscape outside the study and suggests the cosmic scope of the  Natural History. The typology of the writing figure and its position on the manuscript’s first page would usually clinch its identity as an author portrait of  Pliny the Elder. Elder. A clever interrelation between the text and and miniature seems to corroborate that assumption: a large, gilded initial “P” intercepts our view of the study. In this exceptional case, however, the writing figure most likely represents Pliny the Elder’s nephew and adopted son. 28 The youthful figure of Pliny the Younger, rather than his uncle, is placed above the quotation from Suetonius because Renaissance intellectuals such as Pico owed him almost all their knowledge about his uncle’s literary production. Pliny the Younger’s letters, 25

Kibre, Library, 52 and 242 reconstructs Pico’s library from inventories including the list made in 1498, four years after Pico’s death, when Cardinal Domenico Grimani purchased the books. In 1523 the Cardinal bequeathed his library to the Brothers of San Antonio di Castello in Venice, where most of the books burned in a fire in 1687 (20). The inventory of 1498 rarely permits identification of specific manuscripts or incunables. It doesKibre not provide thethat datesPico when itemsthe entered collection. speculates owned editionPico’s of Pliny’s Pliny’ s encyclopedia printed by Jenson in Venice Venice in 1472 (242). If it was in his possession by 1481, this may have been the edition that he asked Niccolò Mascarino to copy. For textual problems in the early editions of  Pliny, see Martin Davies, “Making Sense of Pliny in the Quattrocento,”  Renaissance Studies 9 (1995): 240–57. I have not compared the manuscript commissioned by Pico to each of them to determine which version Pico asked Niccolò Mascarino to copy. 26 Armstrong, “Il Maestro,” 31–6. The Pico Master decorated a copy of Johannes de Spira’ss 1469 edition of Pliny Spira’ Pliny,, nine copies of the Jenson edition of 1472, and two copies of  the translation of Pliny into Italian by Cristoforo Landino printed by Jenson in 1476. One of the latter has an architectural frontispiece similar in format to the one he provided for Pico’ss manuscript (33). Pico’ 27 The author portrait is on fol. 1 recto. 28 Marcon, in Vedere i classici, ed. Buonocore, 424.

 

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4.1

Attributed to the Pico Master. Portrait of Pliny the Younger? Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 1 recto. Ca. 1480s. Photo courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

 

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which he published sometime after AD 100 (about two decades after his uncle’s death), were the most important surviving source about Pliny the Elder’s life. 29 Furthermore, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius were close friends and colleagues. Suetonius is mentioned or addressed in a number of the letters, and Pliny the Younger played a crucial role in furthering Suetonius’ public career. career.30 No doubt he was a major source for Suetonius’ biography biography.. Through several versions of Pliny

the Younger s letters in manuscript, Pico and his contemporaries were well aware of the connections with Suetonius.31 Several fifteenth-century editions of the  Natural History began with the Suetonius fragment and the younger Pliny’s two letters describing his uncle – still another justification for juxtaposing the portrait of Pliny the Younger and the text from Suetonius.32 The Suetonius fragment does include information not found in Pliny the Younger’s letters or anywhere else. Suetonius identifies Como as the birthplace of  Pliny the Elder, and his words supply another justification for Pliny the Younger’s Younger’s portrait. In 1481, Como was engaged in a vociferous dispute with Verona over which city was the birthplace of Pliny the Elder. Local intellectuals vigorously debated each site’s title to the Plinys, and both sites staked their claims with prominent monuments to the uncle and nephew. Como commissioned sculptures of the pair – larger than life – to frame the main cathedral portal in 1480. Shortly thereafter, Pliny the Elder was installed amid the cohort of Verona’s native sons atop the roofline of the city’s Loggia del Consiglio, while a relief of Pliny the Younger was carved to decorate a lower portion of the building’s façade. 33 The 29

Pliny,  Letters and Panegyricus, ed. and trans. Betty Radice, 2 vols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). See the “Letter to Cornelius Tacitus,” no.VI.xvi (I, pp. 428–33) and that to Baebius Macer, no. III.v (I, pp. 172–5). 30 Pliny addressed four letters to Suetonius and discussed him in three others. Pliny’s letters to Suetonius are numbers I.xviii (Pliny,  Letters, I, pp. 53–5); III.viii (I, pp. 186–9); V.x (I, pp. 366–7); and IX.xxxiv (II, pp. 150–51). He refers to a military tribunate he procured for Suetonius in III.viii, consults with him about writing in V.x, and about his skills in reading poetry in IX.xxxiv. The three letters about Suetonius include one to a friend requesting that he help Suetonius in buying property (I.xxiv; I, p. 75) and an appeal to the Emperor Trajan on behalf of Suetonius (X.xciv; II, pp. 282–5). The wording of the appeal has convinced some scholars that Suetonius was a member of Pliny the Younger’s staff in Bithynia. this correspondence, see Stanley E. Hoffer, The Anxieties of Pliny the Younger (Atlanta:For Scholars Press, 1999), 211–25. 31

For three different compilations in which Pliny’s Letters were known, see L. D. Transmissions: A Survey of the Latin Classics, (Oxford: Clarendon Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmissions: Press, 1983), 316–22. All were available throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Both Guarino da Verona, with whom Pico studied in Ferrara, and Coluccio Salutati acquired versions for their personal libraries. 32 The practice began with the second edition of the  Natural History published by Sweynheym and Pannartz in Rome in 1470. They followed a precedent established by Guarino da Verona in his unpublished edition of the  Natural History; see Remigio Sabbadini, “Le Edizioni quattrocentesche della S. N. di Plinio,” Studi italiani di filologia classica 8 (1900): 446–7. 33 My essay, “Renaissance Monuments to Favourite Sons,” Rena  Renaissa issance nce Stud Studies ies, 19 (2005): 458-86, deals with the statues erected to Roman authors like Virgil, Pliny the Elder, Pliny

 

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confusion regarding their birthplaces resulted from the scanty biographical information as well as the medieval melding of the two Plinys’ identities. Even though a fourteenth-century Veronese scholar succeeded in distinguishing them, the elder and younger Pliny remained closely linked in the minds of fifteenthcentury Italians.34 The actual text of the Pico manuscript conventionally begins with an elaborate

full-page frontispiece containing a portrait of Pliny himself and Pico s coat of  arms (Fig. (Fig. 4.2). 4.2).35 However, the architectural format of the page adopts an innovation of late-fifteenth-century northeastern Italian miniature painters that creates the illusion of text hanging from a Roman triumphal arch. 36 An exuberant troop of nearly nude young boys cavorts with cornucopias and trophies; musicmaking satyrs lounge against the arch’s base or support Pico’s coat of arms. 37 Accurately rendered features of Roman architecture – veined marble columns, sculpted plinths, inset roundels with low relief narratives, and inscribed architrave  – are incongruously crowded together in an overloaded antiquarian illusion that signals the distinctive erudition about the ancient world that runs through all the illustrations in Pico’s manuscript. The text suspended from the architecture is the elder Pliny’s prefatory letter to his patron, the Emperor Titus, which begins every complete copy of the Natural History. The frontispiece’s classicizing decoration accords with the changes in the reception of Pliny’s text initiated at the end of the thirteenth century. Italian humanists then began to seek complete manuscript copies of the Natural History in France to make copies for Italian university libraries, convents, and the Younger, Ovid, and Livy, as civic monuments in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 34 Rino Avesani and Bernard M. Peebles, “Studies in Pietro Donato Avogaro of  Verona,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 5 (1962): 1–84, part II: Rino Avesani, “Il ‘De viris illustribus antiquissimis qui ex Verona claruere,’” 49. 35 The full-page frontispiece to Pliny’s prefatory letter to Emperor Titus is on fol. 3 recto. 36 See Lilian Armstrong, “The Hand-Illuminatio Hand-Illuminationn of Printed Books,” in Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 42, for current bibliography on the architectural frontispiece. See also Otto Pächt, “Notes and Observations on the Origin of Humanistic Book-Decoration,” in D. J. Fritz Saxl 1890–1948: A Volume of Memorial Essays from from Friends in England  Gordon, ed., T. Nelson, 1957), 192; M. Corbett, “The Architectural Title Page,”  Motif  12 (New York:

(1964): 49–62; Lilian Armstrong, “The Impact of Printing on Miniaturists in Venice after 1469,” in Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450–1520 , ed. Sandra Hindman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 174–202; reprint, Studies, vol. 1, 406–34. Giordana Mariani Canova, “The Italian Renaissance Miniature,” in Alexander, Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 25, names a manuscript of Solinus’ epitome of Pliny, Pliny, copied in 1457, as the earliest example of a manuscript page laid out as architectural frontispiece. Although the development of this new type of frontispiece coincided with the publication in northeastern Italy of newly translated, edited, or discovered classical texts; the architectural frontispiece was also used for modern texts. 37 For the argument that these figures represent spiritelli , or airy geniuses that nourish  Inventing g the the body and provoke involuntary reactions, see Charles Dempsey,  Inventin  Renaissance Putto Pu tto (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

 

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4.2

Attributed to the Pico Master. Frontispiece of Letter to Titus with Pico della Mirandola’s coat of arms and portrait of Pliny the Elder. Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 3 recto. Ca. 1480s. Photo courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

 

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courts.38 Increased knowledge of the text in Italy reached an early high point in the fourteenth century with Petrarch, the first scholar to study the Natural History for its information about the ancient world.39 The great scholar’s passion for understanding and recovering the Latin language, and with it, knowledge of  Roman civilization, spurred him to annotate his manuscript of Pliny and to share it with his friend, Boccaccio.40 Petrarch’ Petrarch’ss careful marginal comments focus on the

books that yielded the most information about the t he Roman world and its absorption of Greek art and culture.41 About a century and a half later, the illuminations in Pico’s manuscript constitute a kind of visual equivalent of Petrarch’s antiquarian interests and learning. The frontispiece portrait of Pliny follows a tradition that had recently been reestablished in Italian Renaissance manuscript illumination. The placement of an author portrait at the beginning of the text had its roots in the classical tradition and survived into the Middle Ages, where it was used exclusively to honor the evangelists and major theologians and their connection to God. Typically, these Christian authorities are shown writing at their desks, often responding to divine inspiration..42 During the late-medieval period, the production of numerous inspiration summaries, translations, and commentaries of classical literature occasioned the revival of portraits of their authors, but now in the back pages of the text. The images of medieval commentators responsible for the scholarly apparatus appeared in the incipit initials where their guise and setting inevitably recalled the 38 39

Borst, Das Buch , 293. Borst,  Das Buch, 304–5, and Charles G. Nauert, Jr, “Humanists, Scientists, and Pliny: Changing Approaches to a Classical Author,”  American Historical Review 84 (1974): 72–85. 40 Petrarch’s manuscript of Pliny’s  Natural History (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 6802) contains 554 double-columned parchment pages, measuring 328 x 225 mm. The text was copied in the thirteenth century. On fol. 277 verso, Petrarch noted that he had acquired it in Mantua on 6 July 1350. The manuscript includes all 37 books of  the  Natural History, although some are very abridged. Boccaccio contributed a few annotations in his own hand to Petrarch’s manuscript; see Giuseppe Billanovich, “Autografi del Boccaccio nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Parigi (Parigini lat. 4939 e 6802),”  Rendiconti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei d ei Lincei ser. 8, 7 (1952): 378–88. 41 My examination of the manuscript reveals that Petrarch’s annotations are concentrated on the Prefatory letter, Books Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, the books describing the cosmos, the geography of the world, and its peoples; Book 20, about medicines derived from plants; and Books 33–37, about metals, ores, and minerals, and the art forms that utilize them, and gems. On what Petrarch learned from his manuscript of  Pliny, see Maurizio Bettini, “Tra Plinio e Sant’Agostino: Francesco Petrarca sulle arti figurative,” Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, ed. Salvatore de Settis, 3 vols (Turin: G. Einaudi, 1984–86), vol. 1:  L’Uso dei classici, 1984, 221–67; on his annotations in the manuscript, see Armando Petrucci,  La scrittura di Francesco Petrarca (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1967). 42 See Kurt Weitzmann,  Ancient Book Illustration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), and A. M. Friend, Jr, “The Portraits of the Evangelists in Greek and Latin Studi es 5 (1927): 115–47, and  Art Studies Studi es 7 (1929): 3–29. See Kubiski, Manuscripts,” Art Studies “Uomini Illustri,” 14–48, for a recent review of the tradition.

 

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reverent earlier placement of church fathers in first place. 43 In Italy during the 1450s, however, portraits of pagan Greek and Roman authors usurped the primary position from the scholastics.44 The new practice seems to reflect book patrons’ growing preference for the direct study of ancient texts and the increased esteem in which those texts were held. The author portrait of Pliny the Elder in the upper story of the frontispiece triumphal arch is notable in several other ways. He is seated outdoors, not in a

study. A balding and bearded figure, he is not writing, but instead, concentrating study. on reading – moving his hand to follow the lines in a large codex balanced in his lap and propped up against a round table. His other hand holds a compass, and an armillary sphere rests on the desk beside him. Pliny is seated outdoors on a large stone slab that simultaneously creates the floor of the columns surrounding him, and the letter “L” of the word  Libros. The column supports a wide architrave whose inscription stretches out over Pliny’s head and records the title of Pliny’s letter to the Emperor Titus. The unusual outdoor setting connotes Pliny’s authority in natural philosophy, as in the case of Aristotle, whose author portraits customarily showed him outside.45 More specifically, Pliny is pictured as an astronomer, accompanied by the tools emblematic of ancient astronomers and cosmologists. The compass and the armillary sphere thus link this image to formulas used in author portraits of Ptolemy in other cosmological texts. Pliny’s marked old age conflates his identity as an astronomer with that of the wise man or magus: two types who showed a special understanding of the workings of the 46 cosmos. Finally, Pliny wears the robes and head-covering trailing over the shoulder favored by fifteenth-century university professors; these serve to identify him as a scholar.47 Thus the position of the portrait of Pliny the Younger Younger above his 43 44 45

Kubiski, “Uomini Illustri,” 48–51. Kubiski, “Uomini Illustri,” 144–206. John E. Murdoch,  Album of Science. Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984), 177, illustrates Aristotle in a translation by Theodore of  Gaza of Aristotle’s  Historia animalium, a codex produced between 1471 and 1484 and presented to Sixtus IV. The page is reproduced and discussed in Alexander, ed., Painted  Page, 101–4, cat. 38. See also the author portrait of Aristotle on fol. 1 recto in the 1483 printed edition of his work illuminated by Pietro Ugelheimer in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (Inc. ML 21193), reproduced in Giordana Mariani Canova, La miniatura veneta del Rinascimento (Venice: Alfieri, 1969), cat. 72, fig. 22. Another example is found Livre des problèmes problèmes, produced in the frontispiece to a manuscript of the Pseudo-Aristotle, Le Livre in the southern Netherlands, ca. 1450–75: The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS KB, 133A3I, fol. 1 recto. I thank Karen Reeds for bringing it to my attention. 46 Murdoch, Album of Science Sc ience, 178–9. Borst, Das Buch, 314, n. 50, lists about a dozen illustrations of Pliny in the guise of Ptolemy. In rare cases, the Magi are depicted with an armillary sphere, as in the fresco of the Adoration of the Magi painted by Fra Angelico for Cosimo de’ Medici’ Medici’ss cell in the Dominican Dominican convent of San Marco ca. 1445. The Pico Master had already represented Pliny with an armillary sphere, but within an interior, in editions of the  Natural History printed by Jenson in 1472 and 1476. See Armstrong, “Il Maestro,” figs 2 and 18. 47 Jill Emilee Carrington, “Sculpted Tombs of the Professors of the University of Padua,

 

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uncle’s biography relates to the nephew’s role in recording his uncle’s life for posterity, whereas the portrait of Pliny the Elder in the manuscript frontispiece connects him with the letter with which he dedicated his encyclopedia to the Emperor Titus. The nephew is clearly distinguished from his uncle by his youth and characterization as a scribe. In contrast, the portrait of Pliny the Elder establishes him as a learned, wise man of venerable age, and associates him with astronomy and science, the fields encompassed by the  Natural History’s broad

scope. Unlike the dual author portraits in Pico’s manuscript, the Piccolomini copy of  the  Natural History follows standard practice: it illustrates only Pliny the Elder, and it describes him in more generic terms.48 The placement of the portrait within the loop of the gilded initial “P” that begins his name underscores the author’s identity. Pliny the Elder is seated holding a book. The praise due him is conveyed by the laurel wreath encircling his head, his scientific standing, by his location outdoors on a small stone floor fl oor atop a grassy plateau overlooking a vast landscape. The initial is surrounded by white vine-stems, or bianchi girari, a decorative convention that emerged in the early fifteenth century to suggest Roman acanthus ornamentation and a desire to emulate a pagan visual imagery – highly suitable for ancient authors such as Pliny.49 In Pico’s manuscript, Book Two, the beginning of the Natural History’s actual text, is ornamented with an elaborate depiction of the cosmos quite unlike those found in other illustrated manuscripts of Pliny. The group of fourteenth- and earlyfifteenth-century illuminated manuscripts of Pliny illuminated with historiated initials represented the cosmos either by a schematic view of stars above a section of the earth or by the “T–O” map – an abstract diagram of the earth divided into three continents. Such views of the cosmos symbolized God’s creation of the world and his ongoing relation with it, and only the barest sort of scientific information.50 The illustrator of the Piccolomini manuscript simply avoided a ca. 1358–ca. 1557” (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, University, 1996), 117. The robes and cappuccio, a type of hood that trails on the shoulders in a piece known as the becchetto , were typically worn by professors. 48 See the color illustration in Whalley, Pliny, 11. 49 Despite its aptness for ancient texts, bianchi girari border decoration was used in the manuscripts and incunables of modern writers as well. 50 The cosmos is represented by a T-shaped map of the earth surrounded by wide concentric rings in the incipit initial to Book Two of the  Natural History in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1278, fol. 10 verso; reproduced in Armstrong, “Pliny Manuscripts,” pl. 11a. It is represented by a partial view of the curved surface of the earth with a few plants and a star-filled sky above in the  Natural History in Turin (Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MSS I. I. 24–I. I. 25, fol. 20 verso); reproduced in Armstrong, “Pliny Manuscripts,” pl. 8a. Lilian Armstrong brought related illustrations in other copies of Pliny to my attention. They include: (1) a Lombard mid-fifteenth-century manuscript (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Lat. 1950); (2) a Neapolitan, late-fifteenth-century manuscript for Card. Oliverio Carafa (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat 3533); and (3) a copy of the edition printed by Jenson in

 

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representation for Book Two altogether, substituting instead an initial “M” ( Mundus  Mundus) entirely covered by ornamental interlacing.51 The illumination in Pico’s manuscript stands directly above the text’s description of the universe and matches Pliny’s description point by point (Fig. 4. 3). 3). Both word and image present the Greco-Roman conception of an earthcentered universe. Within the opening initial, earth is represented by a verdant landscape with evidence of human habitation, very unlike the T–O ideograms

representing the cosmos in earlier Pliny manuscripts. Concentric rings track the trajectories of elements and planets around the earth. The outermost circle holds the signs of the zodiac; beyond it are the sun and stars. The only divergence from Pliny’s description acknowledges Pico della Mirandola’s religious beliefs: the Christian symbol of God the Father implicitly rules the cosmos from the top of the page.52 Indeed, the closest parallel I have found to the illustration in Pico’s manuscript is a panel painting by Giovanni di Paolo of the  Expulsion from Paradise, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.53 Book Five of the  Natu  Natural ral History History moves us from cosmology to geography and ethnography. The text describes the topography and peoples of Africa and the Near East. The illuminated initial in i n Pico’s manuscript departs from the landscape or map images typically used as its incipit (Fig. (Fig. 4.4). 4.4).54 Instead, the illuminator depicts a lion and a leopard within a grassy setting with trees. In the distance, buildings include what seems to be a church and attached structures, perhaps a monastic complex. A marginal field created by a dead tree trunk that metamorphoses into a biting, finned monster contains a solitary bearded figure with long hair standing in a barren landscape of rocks and water. His bare chest and arms protrude from the gray cloth 1472, illuminated by the Negi Master (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Inc. Rés. 415). For the medieval system of cosmological/theological maps like the T–O map, see John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 37–58; and a nd David Woodward, Woodward, “Medieval Mappaemundi ,” in J. B. Harley and David Woodward, eds,  History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric,  Ancient, and an d Medieval Europe and the th e Mediterranean Mediterranea n, The History of Cartography, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 286–370. I thank Lilian Armstrong for the reference. 51 For the decorated initial beginning Book Two in the manuscript owned by Gregorio Lolli Piccolomini, see the color illustration in Whalley, Whalley, Pliny, 11. 52 Pietro da Pavia had illustrated the beginning initial of Book Two of the manuscript of the  Natural History in the Ambrosiana with an image of God the Father in a mandorla supported by two angels, and no cosmological symbol; see Rossi, “Pietro da Pavia,” 233–4. 53 The painting is in the Robert Lehman Collection (1975.1.31) of the museum. Laurinda S. Dixon, “Giovanni di Paolo’s Cosmology,”  Art Bulletin 76 (1985): 604–13, illustrates it (figs 1 and 6) and traces the type of image of a geocentric universe to a biblical/Aristotelian synthesis as documented by Johannes Sacrobosco’s Sphera Mundi. She argues that the mappamundi in the center combines biblical tradition with Ptolemaic geography. 54 See Armstrong, “Pliny Manuscripts,” 33. The Piccolomini manuscript’s opening initial to Book Five is composed of a gilded letter “A” surrounded by bianchi girari; see the color illustration in Whalley, Pliny, 15.

 

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4.3

Attributed to the Pico Master. Incipit to Book Two. Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 27 recto. Ca. 1480s. Photo courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

 

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4.4

Attributed to the Pico Master. Incipit to Book Five. Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 68 verso. Ca. 1480s. Photo courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

 

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loosely wrapped around his torso and shoulders as he cranes forward with an intense look on his face and holds aloft a stake with an animal skull atop it, as though to frighten the lion. This figure evokes John the Baptist in his desert isolation, long hair, and scant clothing. The skull recalls depictions of saints Jerome and Mary Magdalene, who often hold skulls and muse on the transitory nature of earthly existence. The figure is a total innovation in Pliny manuscripts. 55 In my opinion, the illuminator invented him to represent an Essene, a member of the isolated celibate

tribe that Pliny described as living west of the Dead Sea and renouncing all earthly pleasure (5.73). John the Baptist is often associated with this sect because of his asceticism and prayerful the desert, though 5656 contemporary historians   such as Flavius Josephusretreat do notinto identify him aseven an Essene. The illustration of this anecdote required great familiarity with the text. Pliny’s account of the Essenes comes nowhere near the beginning of Book Five. While Pliny itemized scientific topics in his lengthy table of contents that constitutes the whole of Book One, its detailed topical sub-headings and sources for each of the following 36 books do not list the anecdotes that enliven the Natural History.

Erudition on Display

Pico’s manuscript of the  Natural History is not unique in its illustration of  anecdotes. The manuscript owned by Piccolomini illustrates one recounted at the beginning of Book 17 in that book’s incipit initial, and the incipit initials of several manuscripts depict a famous story told by Pliny in the opening lines of Book 34. 57 55 56

I thank Karen Reeds for suggesting the figure’s resemblance to John the Baptist. Neither the New Testament nor Flavius Josephus in his contemporary histories of the Jews,  Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War, calls John the Baptist an Essene. Nevertheless, he came to be associated with that sect in later Christian interpretation. See Otto Betz, “Was John the Baptist an Essene?,” Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls. A  Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review, ed. Herschel Shanks (New York: Random House, 1992), 205–16, Heinz Schreckenberg,  Die Flavius-Josephus-Tradition in Antike und Mittelalter (Leiden: Brill, 1972), and Schreckenberg,  Rezeptionsgeschicht  Rezeptionsgeschichtliche liche und  textkritische Untersuchungen zu Flavius Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 1977). 57 For an anecdote uniquely illustrated in the Piccolomini manuscript, see Whalley, Pliny, 26.7. Book 17’s subject is cultivated trees, but the incipit initial depicts an armored figure, wearing a laurel wreath and holding an orb; he stands before a grove of trees in a walled garden and looks out at a city in flames. This figure must represent Nero, watching Rome burn. The connection between Nero, the burning city, and trees arises from Pliny’s opening anecdote about the selfish nature of humans who, unlike animals, compete for personal ownership of natural resources. Decrying Roman extravagance, Pliny told the story of two famous Romans who vied for exclusive possession of a certain species of  desirable shade tree-a rivalry that lasted until the time of the fire in Rome (17.1–6.) Another anecdote, this one concerning the hunchback Clesippus, was repeatedly illustrated as the incipit to Book 34 (see Armstrong, “Pliny Manuscripts,” 28–9), in the process cementing an association between the hunchback and Corinthian bronze lamp stands (34.5–6). See Pliny, Natural History (Books 33–35) 3 3–35), ed. and trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 134–5.

 

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But Pico’s manuscript systematically decorates the opening initials of many books with images that invoke anecdotes often buried deep in the text. The pictorial sophistication inspired by these stories is far higher than in any other Pliny manuscript. The choice bespeaks the erudite interests and thorough familiarity with Pliny’s text that the manuscript’s patron, Pico della Mirandola, possessed. It strongly suggests he devised the enhancement of Book Five’s standard geographical geograp hical emblems. emblems. The The Essenes’ Essenes’ presume presumedd role in Christianity Christianity’’s early

development made them much more interesting to Pico and his contemporaries than they had been to Pliny. BookofSeven in This Pico’sbook’s manuscript focusestradition closely in ondepicting the physiology biology humans. initial follows some of and the fantastic peoples Pliny catalogued in remote areas of the world (Fig. ( Fig. 4.5). 4.5).58 So, too, does the miniature in the initial opening of the same book in the Piccolomini manuscript, which shows representatives of many of these races crowded around Romans who record their peculiarities and keep order. order.59 The remarkable tribes include an Indian Sciopod who shields himself from the sun with his sole umbrella foot, an Ethiopian whose black skin Pliny ascribed to sunburn, a tiny African pygmy, and one of the headless  Blemmyae from Libya, whose eyes and mouths are attached to their chests.60 The Piccolomini manuscript adopts the imagery of  late-medieval travel literature, such as Marco Polo’s  Milione, which created illustrations from Pliny’s accounts of fantastic tribes, often in juxtaposition to their 61

civilized visitors. This contrast between the uncivilized and civilized worlds is true to Pliny’s own text, which stresses the central position of the Roman empire and its triumphant establishment of peace and civilization in conquered lands.62 In contrast, the illumination opening Book Seven in Pico’s Pliny omits westerners, and thereby avoids the contrast between their normative humanity and the tribes’ lack of it. Fewer representatives of different different tribes are shown, and they look more human. Two members of the forest-dwelling  Abarimons of Scythia, 58

Friedman, Monstrous Races, 5–36 and 131–62, and Rudolf Wittkower, “Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East,” Oriente Poliano (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio e Estremo Oriente, 1957), 155–72. The influence of Pliny’s descriptions is so dominant that Friedman, The Monstrous Races, 5, terms the various tribes “the Plinian races.” Solinus’ epitome focused on the ethnographical sections of Pliny’s Pliny’s text and enhanced their influence. Wittkower, Wittkower, “Marvels,” 171–6, pointed out that the existence of an illustrated thirteenth-century thirteenth-century version of Solinus’ epitome suggests that earlier versions must have been accompanied by imagery. He also argued that the tradition of late-medieval books about the “marvels of the east” has its source in late antiquity, and that as the later examples are illustrated, they likely reflect the imagery of their lost forebears. 59 For a color illustration, see Whalley, Pliny, 17. 60 Pliny’s description of Sciopods is found in 7.23; of Ethiopians in 7.31; of Pygmies, 7.26–27; of Blemmyae, 7.24. 61 Friedman, The Monstrous Races, 154–62, emphasizes the constant presence of the traveling westerners in this literature. 62 Valérie Naas,  Le Projet encyclopédique de Pline l’Ancien, Collection de l’Ecole Française de Rome, no. 303 (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2002), 449–72.

 

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4.5

Attributed to the Pico Master. Incipit to Book Seven. Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 96 recto. Ca. 1480s. Photo courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

 

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famed for running extremely fast even though their feet are turned behind their legs, seem to communicate recognizable emotions. Cannibals drink out of human skulls, although the Pico Master minimizes their alterity by representing the skulls as conch shells and omitting the scalps around their necks that Pliny says substituted for napkins. To the left reclines an  Androgen, an African tribe whose combination of male and female sexual functions Pliny repeatedly described.63 The painter underscores the  Androge  Androgen n’s human capacities through its gesture to

the others. These illustrations seem to convey effectively the fantastic peoples humanity and suggest a viewpoint on an issue that had puzzled theologians. In their attempts to understand of creation, Christians ardently debated whether theGod’s tribes scheme of fantastic peopleslearned were human and had had souls. An important issue was at stake: could they be converted to Christianity and redeemed?64 The illumination’ illumination’ss affirmative affirmative interpretation interpretation of the tribes’ human nature accords well with Pico’s own wide-ranging interests in non-Western religions and belief systems and fits his characterization of the earth as “the most august temple of divinity” and of man as God’s greatest miracle. 65 Book 22 concerns plants’ medicinal properties, a subject depicted literally in the Piccolomini manuscript by two men in a walled garden with many species of  trees and plants (Fig. (Fig. 4.6). 4.6). One, whose more formal dress conveys his superior status, is seated and sniffs the leaves from a cut plant. The other man, dressed as a worker and carrying a shovel, s hovel, approaches him and offers another plant specimen for him to study. The illustration follows the health handbook66 tradition in its depiction of experts inspecting plants within a landscape setting. In contrast, the initial “C” opening Book 22 in Pico’s manuscript surrounds a landscape with no 63

Pliny describes the  Abarimons (7.11); cannibals (7.12); and  Androgens (7.15 and 34–6). The figure seems to have male sexual organs but is reclining in a delicate feminine posture. Furthermore, it may have the left breast of a woman and the right breast of a man that Pliny says Aristotle described as an Androgen characteristic, although damage to the pigment in this area makes it difficult to be certain. 64 Friedman, The Monstrous Races, 178–96; Wittkower, Wittkower, “Marvels,” 176–82; and Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews. Making Monsters in Medieval Art  (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 41–93. 65 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,  Discorso sulla dignità dell’uomo, ed. Giuseppe Tognon (Brescia: Ereditrice La Scuola, 1992), 5–11, for Pico’s characterizations of the earth and of man. The treatise was written in 1486, five years after Pico commissioned the illuminated manuscript of Pliny. Pico considered man to be the centerpiece of God’s creation scheme and the only creature capable of choosing whether his nature would be brutish or divine. See Michael J. B. Allen, “Cultura hominis: Giovanni Pico, Marsilio Ficino and the Idea of Man,” in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (1494–1994), ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 2 vols (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1997), vol. 1, 173–5. 66 See, for example, the illustration in the Tacuinum sanitatis in Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS Leber 3054 (1088), fol. 31 recto, reproduced in Moly Mariotti, “Contribution,” 34, fig. 9. Most of the illustrations of herbalists in earlier manuscripts of  Pliny’s  Natural History isolated the figures and did not depict a landscape; see, for example, the Parma Pliny’s incipit for Book 12, fol. 78 verso, illustrated in Armstrong, “Pliny Manuscripts,” fig. 6a.

 

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4.6

Attributed to Giuliano Amadei. Incipit to Book 22. Gregorio Lolli Piccolomini’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, MS L. 1504–1896, fol. 321 recto. 1460s. Photo courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

 

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plants in sight (Fig. (Fig. 4.7). 4.7). Two Two women, whose long flowing fl owing blonde tresses do little litt le to cover their nudity nudity,, stand on either side of a large metal container. One woman’s face is covered with black and she seems to be applying more black stain to her upper body. body. The other holds her hands together in prayer. The illumination derives from Pliny’s anecdote recounted just below it on the page (22.2) about the wives of Bretons in Gaul who prepare for rituals by disrobing and coloring their bodies blue-black with dyes derived from woad.67 (The pigments on the body of the praying woman have oxidized, so that the original dark tint of her painted body is

now a patchwork of black and silver shades.) 37 deals precious In Pico’s manuscript the initial departs from theBook standard scenewith for this bookgems. – which is either a gem-studded decoration, as in the Parma Pliny, or a representation of a jeweler’s shop (Fig. ( Fig. 4.8). 4.8). The Piccolomini manuscript, for example, illustrates a shop where gems are cut and set. Interlacing bianchi girari wind around the book’s opening initial, the gilded letter “V,” to create a frame for three separate scenes.68 In the central image, two gem specialists stand in a landscape. One points to a pile of unset stones on the ground while the other examines a pendant whose green gem is incised with the figure of a man. In the flanking scenes of shop interiors, a workman polishes stones while another hammers into shape an oversized gold ring on a table strewn with unset jewels. In contrast, Pico’s book depicts a woman standing before a trestle table. She has split open large fish story and is removing a redthestone its belly. The illustration refersa to Pliny’s about Polycrates, tyrantfrom controlling Samos and neighboring islands in the mid-sixth century BC, and the extraordinary sardonyx he once owned. Polycrates worried that his good fortune would anger the gods, and he tried to diminish its outward evidence by throwing a prized gem into the sea. Fortune thwarted his plan: the gem was swallowed by a fish, the fish was caught, and finally, as the initial shows the reader, the gem was discovered as the fish was prepared for dinner in Polycrates’ own kitchen. The The gem was later acquired by the Empress Livia, who donated it to the Temple of Concordia in Rome, where it was displayed in Pliny’s day. According to Pliny, the sardonyx of  Polycrates was judged the least impressive of the jewels exhibited there (37.3–4). With this anecdote Pliny pays tribute to the great wealth and power of Rome and the practice of its best rulers of appropriating treasures for the benefit of the state. At the same time, he tacitly laments that what had seemed precious centuries earlier had become by the standards of his day insignificant. The elaborate pearl-encircled head to the left of the incipit illumination is the pearl-studded portrait of Pompey. The bauble particularly enraged Pliny because it symbolized the way extravagance had seduced Rome’s greatest general. Pompey displayed this portrait in his third triumphal procession celebrating his 67

Armstrong, “Il Maestro,” 21, first pointed out the unusual subject of this illustration, and its derivation from an anecdote in the text. 68 For a color illustration, see Whalley, Pliny, 47.

 

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4.7

Attributed to the Pico Master. Incipit to Book 22. Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 286 recto. Ca. 1480s. Photo courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana; photo source: courtesy of the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art

 

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4.8

Attributed to the Pico Master. Incipit to Book 37. Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 446 verso. Ca. 1480s. Photo courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

 

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victory over Mithridates in 61 BC. The ostentation made “fashion veer to pearls and gemstones” (37.12). Pliny angrily described it later in Book 37: Pompey’s portrait rendered in pearls, that portrait so pleasing with the handsome growth Pompey’s of hair swept back from the forehead, the portrait of that noble head revered throughout the world … Here it was austerity that was defeated and extravagance [ luxuria] that more truly celebrated its triumph. Never, I think, would his surname “the Great” have survived among the stalwarts of that age had he celebrated his first triumph in this fashion! To think that it is of pearls, Great Pompey, those wasteful things meant only for

women, of pearls, which you yourself cannot and must not wear, that your portrait is made! (37.14–16)

Both stories are crucial to Pliny’s running polemic about the dangers of luxuria. To understand the central importance of this theme in the  Natural History, one needs to read the entire text. Pliny was very concerned that during the Empire the rigorous moral standards of the Republic had been replaced by the decadent lust for expensive, exotic materials and wanton despoiling of the earth’s natural resources.69 To appreciate the pearl-studded portrait as a symbol of Pompey’s transformation from venerated warrior to self-indulgent fop, the reader must search the encyclopedia page by page – there is no index of proper names. In Book Seven – on human biology – Pliny proclaimed Pompey the greatest general who ever lived, surpassing even Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar (7.95). Pliny then contrasted him to Alexander who, unlike Pompey, behaved honorably and resisted the lure of jewels. Rather, Alexander used a pearl and gem-encrusted case of unguents gained as booty from Darius to preserve the works of Homer. Pliny commended Alexander for his public-spirited act. Whereas Pompey bought jewels for personal adornment, Alexander rightly recognized that Homer’s Homer ’s writings were among mankind’s greatest legacies, and he sought their transmission to posterity in a suitably precious container (7.108). One last example of the erudition and familiarity with Pliny’s text displayed in the Pico manuscript’s illuminations is the figure beginning Book 35 on geology (Fig. 4.9). 4.9). It has nothing to do with the usual imagery, a depiction of a painter’s workshop or of a painter standing with brush in hand before a panel on his easel  – seen, for example, in the Parma manuscript (Fig. (Fig. 4.10). 4.10).70 This sort of illustration 69

Writers from Cato the Elder (234–149 BC) onward railed against the growing Roman taste for luxuria, a negative term that suggests suspicion and disapproval of things foreign, alten n Rom: Die exotic, expensive, and opulent. Karl-Wilhelm Weeber,  Luxus im alte Schwelgerei, das süsse Gift  (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2003). See also Sandra Citroni Marchetti, Plinio il Vecchio e la tradizione del moralismo romano, Biblioteca di materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici (Pisa: Giardini, 1991), and more generally, generally, Jacob Isager, Pliny on Art and Society: Soci ety: The Elder Pliny’s Pliny’s Chapters on the History Hist ory of Art (London: Routledge, 1991), 52–6; Naas,  Le Projet encyclopédique , 71–105, and Sorcha Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue of Culture: Art and Empire in the Natural History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 75–101. 70 The Piccolomini manuscript represents another series of three scenes within the interlace of bianchi girari surrounding the gilded initial “V.” In the center a painter stands

 

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4.9

Attributed to the Pico Master. Incipit to Book 35. Pico della Mirandola’s manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976), fol. 420 verso (bis). Ca. 1480s. Photo courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

 

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4.10 Cristoforo Cortese. Incipit to Book 35. Pliny the Elder’s  Natural History. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1278, fol. 210 recto. Ca. 1420–30. Photo: su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; photo source: Greci

 

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became standard for Book 35 because Pliny digressed from his catalogue of the earth’s minerals to outline the history of Greek painting. His rationale was that minerals were ground to manufacture pigments. The initial in Pico’s manuscript does not follow this practice, nor does it illustrate a specific anecdote in the learned strategy that I have argued is typical of  many of its illuminations. Instead, by depicting a bust of a painter with a pot of  paints marginalized into a corner of an incipit dominated by large birds in a landscape, it alludes to four of Pliny’s tales about birds deceived by the illusions

wrought by painters. The most famous of these stories became a paradigm for the interpretation of naturalism as the goal of art.71 [Parrhasius] entered into a competition with Zeuxis, who produced a picture of grapes so successfully represented that birds flew up to the stage-buildings [where they hung]; whereupon Parrhasius himself produced such a realistic picture of a curtain that Zeuxis, proud of the verdict of the birds, requested that the curtain should now be drawn and the picture displayed; and when he realized his mistake, with a modesty that did him honor he yielded up the prize, saying that whereas he had deceived birds Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist. It is said that Zeuxis also subsequently painted a Child Carrying Grapes, and when birds flew to the fruit with the same frankness as before he strode up to the picture in anger with it and said, “I have painted the grapes better than the child, as if I had made a success of that as well, the birds would inevitably been afraid of it.” (35.65–66)72

Retold again and again by intellectuals during the Renaissance and later epochs, it was used to praise artists who succeeded in creating a convincing replica of nature.73 on an elevated base so that he can paint the ribbed vaults above him. To the left, a helper grinds pigments on a table outdoors, while on the right another painter decorates cassoni. See the color illustration in Whalley, Pliny, 45. 71 Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 12–14, critiques the notion that art should be a record of  perception, which is, in his estimation, the prevailing theory in western aesthetics from the Renaissance through the writings of Ernst Gombrich in the twentieth century. century. He traces the origin of the theory to ancient aesthetics, as epitomized by Pliny’s anecdote. See also Stephen Bann, The True Vine: On Visual Representation and the Western Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 28–35. 28–35. A recent exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington structured its interpretation around themes such as the “Curtain of Parrhasios” and the “Grapes of Zeuxis.” See the exhibition catalog: Sybille Ebert Schifferer, ed.,  Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe-l’oeil Painting (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2002). 72 Pliny,  Natural History (Books 33–35) , 35.65–66, pp. 310–11. Marcon, in Vedere i classici, ed. Buonocore, 425, connected this illustration to the Zeuxis anecdote but did not develop the point. 73 Leonard Barkan, “The Heritage of Zeuxis: Painting, Rhetoric and History,” Antiquity and its Interpreters, ed. Alina Payne, Ann Kuttner, and Rebekah Smick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 99–109, assesses why the anecdote was so often repeated. Creighton Gilbert, “Grapes, Curtains, Human Beings: The Theory of Missed Mimesis,” Künstlerischer Austausch. Artistic Exchange, ed. T. W. Gaehtgens, 3 vols (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), vol. 2, 413–19, probes the implications of Pliny’s two stories about Zeuxis and Parrhasius.

 

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Pliny reinforced his endorsement of naturalism in art by supplying two other tales of birds tricked by the mimetic talents of painters. The first concerned the greatly admired stage-sets erected for theatrical performances sponsored by Claudius Pulcher, consul and co-commander of the Roman fleet at Syracuse during the First Punic War (249 BC). The scenery painting was so convincing that crows tried to alight on the roof-tiles of the buildings it depicted (35.23). The second recorded a likeness of a large snake painted on a parchment strip and wound around a tree that so frightened birds that they stopped singing. Aemilius

Paulus Lepidus (the partner of Marc Antony and Octavian in the second Triumvirate of 43 BC) engineered this early version of a scarecrow because the sounds of the birds prevented him from sleeping (35.121). The point of these stories is not how easily birds are deluded into mistaking images of objects for the real things. Above all else, Pliny valued art for its mimetic potentials. Rather, his anecdotes insist upon the great level of skill achieved by certain artists and they measure art in terms of its capacity to trick the eye of natural creatures. The birds, which seek out images that imitate reality, should instead be seen as surrogates for Pliny’s judgment about good art. Pliny’s praise of the bronze statue of a hound licking his wounds that stood before the Shrine of Juno on the Capitol offers a characteristic example of his aesthetic ideals: the miraculous excellence and absolute truth to life of which is shown not only by the fact of its dedication in that place but also of the method taken for insuring it: for as no sum of money seemed to equal its value, the government enacted that its custodians should be answerable for its safety with their lives. (34.38) 74

To Pliny, the birds were far better judges of quality than his fellow Romans, who spurned the naturalistic tastes of their ancestors in favor of other aesthetic criteria based on lavishness of materials and decorative opulence.75 Pico probably designed the allusive illustration to Book 34 for only a reader expert in the nuances of Pliny’s text and cultural context could appreciate the painting’s witty implications and enjoy sharing with fellow intellectuals the satisfactions of their mutual erudition about Roman civilization. This sampling of illuminations from Pico’s manuscript demonstrates that a number of the images in the books’ number books’ openin openingg initials diverge diverge from the standard Plinian repertory of images derived from the herbal and health handbook tradition. 74

Pliny,  Natural History (Books 33–35), 34.38, pp. 156–7. See the  Natural History 35.52, for Pliny’s approving claim that the chief aim of Roman portraiture for generations was to achieve a lifelike resemblance. 75 Pliny denounces the taste for expensive materials in sculpture: Pliny, Pliny, Natural History (Books 33–35), 34.5, pp. 128–9. He also criticizes the painting of his day, which had introduced many colors derived from imported pigments, contrasting it with the four-color palette of Apelles and other earlier painters whose work he esteems: Pliny, Pliny, Natural History (Books 33–35), 35.50 pp. 298–9.

 

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The miniatures in the other incipits are versions of the illustrations established by tradition for each book and provide visual emblems of the book’s contents that any reader would recognize. The departure from the set visual repertory is not wholly unprecedented. Some earlier manuscripts of Pliny had been illustrated with an occasional scene that depicted an anecdote in the encyclopedia, as the images in Pico’s manuscript do. Examples of these rare exceptions fall into one of two categories. The first involves the unique case in which Pliny’s text readily conjured up a visual image:

the explanation (Book 34) why the hunchback Clesippus was always associated in the minds of Greeks and Romans with Corinthian bronze candelabra. In a number of manuscripts this yielded an initial with an image of a male statue between two candelabra.76 The second category (including many examples in Pico’s manuscript) seizes on anecdotes recounted in the opening lines of a book. Pico’s manuscript adopted this system of text and image relationship several times. The illumination in the initial beginning Book Three, for instance, depicts the cosmos because Pliny describes it first, before focusing on the earth. The illumination beginning Book 22 (Fig. (Fig. 4.7) 4.7) – the two women of Gaul dyeing their bodies black  – refers to the first lines l ines of the book where Pliny uses it to exemplify the uses of  plants for human benefit. Whether the Pico illustrations are based on the first visually interesting allusions in a book or on anecdotes buried deep within Pliny’s narrative or on a synthesis of stories and themes in several the relationships text and images are always sophisticated and books, complex. They signify between a deliberate choice of subjects, designed to be intelligible only to a learned audience familiar with Pliny’s dauntingly long and discursive text. The erudite erudit e Pico must have been deeply engaged in devising them. But the motive was the intellectual titillation of  himself and his colleagues through visual allusions to the Greco-Roman culture they so ardently admired, not instruction about science and medicine.

76

See above, note 57.

 

Chapter 5

Reading and Writing the Illustrated Tractatus de herbis, 1280–1526 Jean A. Givens* Givens*

Toward the very end of the thirteenth century, a Salernitan scholar compiled an updated summary of herbal knowledge that has come to be known as the Tractatus de herbis et plantis. Such collections of text extracts were familiar adjuncts to therapeutic theory and practice, but this particular scholar departed from several centuries of medieval practice by including some 400 images as part of his strategy of communication. The decision proved popular as demonstrated by the appearance of the Tractatus in Latin and the vernacular, in many manuscripts, and still later, in print. Indeed, readers appear to have consulted this work well into the sixteenth century. The mere survival of a medieval “scientific” text in print is no novelty; fifteenth- and sixteenth-century printers freely mined comparable sources. Rather, the interest of this text and its survival resides in the ways in which the text and its visual apparatus were initially conceived and then reworked over time to suit a changing audience for the text. Three copies of the Tractatus – manuscripts in Latin and English and a printed book in English – exemplify the ways in which the goal of learning by reading could be guided by a combination of verbal verbal and and visual visual strateg strategies. ies. A Latin manuscript, London, British Library, Egerton MS 747 dates to the very late thirteenth or early fourteenth century and it is the oldest copy of the Tractatus. Another, much less well-known manuscript, Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 227 2°, combines illustrations derived from Egerton 747 with a French translation of the text; it is one of the oldest surviving copies of this French * I want to offer my sincere thanks to the organizations that supported this project and helped make the research possible, including: the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, as well as the Research Foundation and the School of  Fine Arts of the University of Connecticut. Colleagues at the British Library, the library of  the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, and the Yale University Cushing/Whitney Medical Library generously made the books in their care available to me. Many individuals have kindly offered their assistance, as well. Erik Petersen and others at the Kongelige Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen Copenhagen have made my studies of MS GKS GKS 227 2° a pleasure. Peter Murray Jones, William Clark, and Fred Biggs have all been generous with their time and their expert advice. Finally, I am very grateful to Lana Babij, Lynn Sweet, Lois Fletcher, and, especially, Michael Young of the University of Connecticut, Homer Babbidge Library for their gracious help with this project.

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version, usually known as the  Livre des simples médecines. Finally, the Grete  Herball of 1526 – a translation of the French text – has the distinction of being the first illustrated herbal printed in English. These multiple versions of the Tractatus demonstrate a fair degree of stability; a reasonably knowledgeable reader can move from one to the other with some confidence. All register considerable deference to Latin nomenclature, and features common to all three include an organizational system derived from the Latin original, a synthesis of therapeutic and theoretical information drawn from classical and medieval sources, and the use of illustrations to signpost the text. At

the same time, a process of reorganization and reordering of the contents as well as the introduction of visual cuing systems helped sustain the use of this text for over 200 years.

A Treatise for the Scholarly Reader: London, British Library Library,, Egerton MS MS 747

The earliest manuscript of the Tractatus known to scholars, Egerton 747 is a lavishly illustrated work that appears to have been compiled in the ambit of the medical school at Salerno.1 The university link is confirmed by the specific pattern of the manuscript’s foliation, by two images of scholars contained in this manuscript, and by the manuscript’s incorporationmost of a striking text thatfeature became reading in 2 Salerno ca. 1280. The is required its several hundred illustrations, and it is these pictures, and especially their naturalism, that have attracted most scholarly attention. Egerton 747 was first discussed in a seminal and frequently cited essay by art historian Otto Pächt that addresses the moment when, as he put it: “nature observation, the study of the individual appearance of  the external world, became of topical interest to Italian artists.”3 As Pächt first recognized, and as other scholars have confirmed since, the plant images included in Egerton 747 frequently are remarkably descriptive, and in this, a striking departure from much (although by no means all) imagery of the period.4 1

Minta Collins’s dating of Egerton 747 to ca. 1281–1309 corresponds to that cited in

nearly all other major studies. Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Illustrative Traditions Traditions (London: British Museum, 2000), 245. Composed of 148 parchment folios, this manuscript today measures 360 x 242 mm with approximately 55 lines of text in two columns. It shows evidence of having been trimmed. For a facsimile of folios 1–109, see  A Medieval Herbal:  A Facsimile of British Library Egerton MS 747 , intro. Minta Collins, list of plants by Sandra Raphael (London: British Library, 2003). 2 P. O. Kristeller, “The School of Salerno, Its Development and its Contribution to the History of Learning,” in Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1956), 495–551; and Gerhard Baader, “Die Schule von Salerno,”  Medizinhistorisches Journal 13 (1978): 124–45. 3 Otto Pächt, “Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950): 28, 13. 4 For other descriptively rendered images contemporary with Egerton 747, see: Jean A.

 

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Pächt’s interest in this phenomenon is part of art history’s long-standing project Pächt’s to identify the origins of descriptive naturalism, an enterprise that can be traced back to early modern and even Roman commentaries on the artist as an observer of nature. Equally important, his essay validates this accomplishment with an argument that is grounded in several key assumptions about the manner in which illustrated books on plants like Egerton 747 were used. Taking his cue from historian of science Charles Singer, Pächt makes the claim that herbals were practical manuals, that their illustrations “would be useless to the herbalist (and doctor) unless the plants were depicted with such veracity as to be easily

identified,” and that most medieval herbals failed to achieve this standard since illustrations typically were mindlessly copied again and again. again.5 Although he stops well short of claiming they are based on the firsthand observation of nature, Pächt highlights the informational value of the images in Egerton 747, and by extension, the assumption that its readers used this lavishly illustrated book as a guide to plants in the wild. Even so, the use of such a book by university-trained scholars  – more precisely, precisely, the use of the pictures – is not at all obvious. The value of images as sources of information and, by extension, the divergent strengths of visual and verbal communication have been subjects of debate for centuries..6 Equally important, although it is easy to overlook this point, the vast centuries majority of medieval plant books did not incorporate images, and those few that do nearly always were copies of a single late antique text – the fourth-century work known as self-evident the Pseudo-Apuleian . On awere purely pragmatic the seemingly notion that  Herbarius medieval images intended to helplevel, medieval practitioners locate plants in the field misses the point that by the time the Egerton manuscript was produced, the sort of university-trained scholar likely to have used this book would have received plant materials in prepared form, much like his modern counterpart. As Karen Reeds observes in her survey of medieval and Renaissance botanical study, plant gatherers typically are identified in medieval texts as rustici, a group singled out for criticism by Roger Bacon specifically for being illiterate.7 Just as important, it is difficult if not impossible to imagine anyone an yone taking a big, expensive book like Egerton 747 out into the field. As a consequence, the function of illustrated plant books remains a much more open-ended question than the accounts of Pächt and, before him, Singer might suggest.

Givens, Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 5 Pächt, “Nature Studies,” 25–7, citing Charles Singer, “The Herbal in Antiquity and its Transmission to Later Ages,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 47 (1927): 1–52. 6 See, for example, David Freedberg, “The Failure of Colour,” in Sight and Insight:  Essays on Art and Culture in Honour of E. H. Gombrich at 85, ed. John Onians (London: Phaidon, 1994), 245–62; and W. J. T. Mitchell, “Nature and Convention: Gombrich’s Illusions,” in  Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 75–94. 7 Karen Meier Reeds,  Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York: Garland, 1991), 10, 24–5.

 

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Whereas the many pictures included in Egerton 747 have attracted considerable scholarly attention, the text generally has been neglected, perhaps because in contrast to the seeming innovation of the images, it remains a more typical “medieval” product in its respect for traditional sources. The Tractatus builds on a substantially earlier Salernitan work known as Circa instans, so called from the first two words of the incipit: Circa instans negotium in simplicibus medicinis (“About the present business with the medicinal simples”). 8 Circa instans was composed by one “Platearius,” most likely Matthaeus Platearius of  Salerno, and it contains well over 200 entries concerning “simples,” that is,

medicines with a single active ingredient as opposed to compound remedies. 9 Widely circulated from the twelfth century onward, Circa instans provided a useful synthesis of a range of ancient and medieval medical sources. This textual information presumably was capable of standing on its own; given the many unillustrated copies of this text made both before and after Egerton 747 was written, it seems safe to conclude that the original Circa instans had no pictures. As a consequence, the inclusion of images of plants and figural scenes in the revision of this text that appears in Egerton 747 was a significant innovation. 10 Along with including illustrations, the compiler of the Tractatus expanded on the text of Circa instans in several, clearly visible ways.11 First, of all, the revised text includes a longer list of substances, including a few exotics such as nux sciarca (melegueta pepper) and blacte bisancie (a mollusk from Byzantium). Additional information is drawn from the Pseudo-Apuleian  Herbarius, as well as from authorities such as Dioscorides, Macer Floridus, Constantine the African, and others.12 A dietetic treatise treatise by an Egyptian physician known as Is’h.a- q ibn-Sulayma- n

For the Latin text of Circa instans see: Liber de simplici simplici medicina dictus circa circa instans. Practica platearij (Venice: Octauianus Scotus, 1497). This edition recently has been placed on line by the Göttingen State and University Library. For a French translation of a thirteenth-century French manuscript of the text see Paul Dorveaux,  Le livre des simples medecines (Paris: Société française d’histoire, 1913). Here and elsewhere, the title of the  Livre des simples médecines is cited in modern French (with an accent) or middle French (without), following the author’s preference. My citations are in modern French. 9 The attribution to Platearius is complicated by the existence of two authors of that name: “Johannes” and “Matthaeus.” Dorveaux,  Livre des simples, v. 8

10 A. Baumann,  Das Erbario Carrarese und die Bildtradition des Tractatus de herbisFelix (Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1974), 116; Carmélia Opsomer, Enid Roberts, and William T. IV.. 1024: A 15th-Century Stearn, eds,  Livre des simples medecines Codex Bruxellensis IV French Herbal (Antwerp: De Schutter, 1984), 16. This publication is a revised edition and

translation of Carmélia Opsomer’s 1980 French-language transcription of this same manuscript. The French and English editions are not identical. 11 An explicit  on fol. 106 recto of the Tractatus credits the “hand and mind of  Bartholomeus Mini of Siena, well versed in the knowledge of drugs and spices” and offers the wish that Bartholomaeus may “live blessed (?) in heaven.” As first noted by Pächt, however, both references to Bartholomeus are written over erasures. Pächt, “Nature Studies,” 28, n. 3; Collins and Raphael, Facsimile, 4. 12 For the sources of the French version of the Tractatus that circulated as the Livre des simples médecines, see Opsomer, Roberts, and Stearn, eds,  Livre des simples, 12.

 

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al-Isra-’ı-lı- (Isaac Israel: or Isaac Judaeus) also is cited at length in passages inserted at various points. This expanded version of Circa instans comprises the first 106 folios, followed by several images of plants with little or no text on fols 106 verso to 109 recto. Fols 109 verso–111 verso contain texts written in a later hand, followed by an unnumbered leaf, and a final set of texts on compound medicines written in the same hand as the Tractatus.  Antidotarium m Nicolai Nicolai (another work sometimes attributed These last works – the Antidotariu medicinarum, a quid pro quo or list to Matthaeus Platearius), a copy of De dosibus medicinarum of substitutions, information on weights and measures, a list of synonyms of plant

names drawn from Galen and other authorities, and an incomplete copy of an addendum to the  Anti round d out the pres presentat entation ion of   Antidota dotarium rium Nico Nicolai lai  – roun pharmaceutical knowledge by pairing the account of simples provided in the Tractatus with an account of the use of compound medicines. 13 That parallelism is underlined visually by the inclusion of images of university scholars positioned at  Antidotarium m Nicolai on fol. the start of both the Tractatus on fol. 1 recto and the  Antidotariu 112 recto – the only two figural initials in the manuscript.14 The arrangement of the entries in Egerton 747 reflects the additive manner in which the text was conceived. That is, the armature and the basic structure of the Tractatus is provided by Circa instans, to which the compiler adds supplementary information from his several sources as well as pictures. Finally, he appends information drawn from the text by Isaac. The first surviving folio of Egerton 747 includes the preface to Circa instans and an initial that pictures a university scholar reading that same text (Fig. (Fig. 5.1). 5.1). (The words Circa instans are clearly visible in the book he holds.) Next follows a table of contents – a list of plants beginning with the letter “A.” Following frequent medieval practice, alphabetization extends no further than the first f irst letter; thus, the plant entries begin with aloen, but absinthium is nearly halfway down the list.15 Once established, this order is followed in the text entries as well. The substances listed in the “A” section duplicate those found in Circa instans until about three-quarters through the list when we reach aspaltum (bitumen), at which point entirely new substances begin to be introduced. Other changes occur when some of the sections on individual plants are given an extended treatment. For example, in Circa instans, the entry for appium (probably celery) briefly mentions the names, etymologies, and uses of three variant forms: appium raninum, appium risus, and appium emoroidarum. The entries in the Tractatus, in turn, expand on this information. First, the text provides a main entry for appium Collins and Raphael, Facsimile, 23–4 citing Lynn Thorndike and Pearl Kibre,  A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin (London: Mediaeval Academy, 1963), cols 1231, 1059, 439, 740, 27. 14 For a color photograph of fol. 112 at the start of the  Antidotarium Nicolai see Collins,  Medieval Herbals, pl. XXIII. Unfortunately, the recent facsimile omits the  Antidotarium and the other, unillustrated sections of Egerton 747 that begin on fol. 109 recto. 15 Lloyd W. Daly, Contributions to a History of Alphabetization in Antiquity and the  Middle Ages (Brussels: Lathomus, 1967), especially 69–75. 13

 

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5.1

Preface, table of entries beginning with the letter “A,” and aloen (aloe). Tractatus de herbis. London, British Library, Egerton MS 747, fol. 1 recto. Ca. 1280–1300. Photo by permission of the British Library

 

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commune with a text that follows Circa instans. Following this, we find what are now separate entries for appium raninum, appium risus, and appium emoroidarum that expand upon habitats, the names by which these plants are known, and several extra remedies. Finally, in this modified form, each of the individual entries is paired with a picture. The relationship between the short table of contents included at the start of each alphabetical section and the text entries themselves reveals that the compiler of the Tractatus groups plants in ways that superficially resemble Linnaean binomial nomenclature. As we have seen, the term appium is used here to refer to a grouping

or “family” of plants that is, in turn, broken into sub-categories. And following the form of the plant list provided in Circa instans, in the table of contents for entries beginning with the letter “A” only appium is cited, not the separate listings for the variant plant forms (Fig. (Fig. 5.1). 5.1).16 This pattern holds true elsewhere, for example in the entries for other plants listed by the letter “A” such as aristolongia and amigdales. For each of these items there is a single listing in the table of contents, but just as we saw for appium, the body of the text includes information on multiple forms of each. Moreover, the fact that the scribe left room for images of the variant forms indicates that expanded entries of this sort were planned from the start. In this case and elsewhere, the scribe sometimes underestimated the amount  of space required – as for example, in the case of appium risus at the foot of the right column co lumn of fol. 3 verso – but he consistently left room for pictures (Fig. ( Fig. 5.2). 5.2). This sort of advance planning is not evident when it comes to the way information drawn from Isaac’s text on dietetics is incorporated in the Egerton manuscript. A relatively new addition addition to the Latin therapeutic repertoire, repertoire, Isaac’s Isaac’s treatise was translated from the Arabic into Latin as the  Liber dietarium universalium et particularium by Constantine the African only in the late eleventh century.17 This text addresses the value of a series of familiar botanicals such as olive oil and hazelnuts. In some cases, the added information simply expands upon the properties of simples already covered in Circa instans; in other cases, wholly new substances are added. In either case, these passages are squeezed into the margins even though they appear to be written at the same time as the main text. See, for example, the passage at upper left of fol. 3 verso (Fig. ( Fig. 5.2). 5.2). The layout of the book suggests that these entries were a late addition. When entries supplement information previously , theinsubstances are Circa instans illustrated. But entirely new entriesprovided – that is,by ones covered only the marginal notations taken from Isaac’s text – are not provided with pictures. 16

Medieval Latin nomenclature is by no means identical to Linnaean terminology. Rather, the similarities often derive from Linnaeus’s injunction in his 24th canon: “The ancient names of the classics are to be respected.” John Earle,  English Plant Names from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880), xl. 17 For Isaac’s treatise see Omnia opera Ysaac (Lyon: Bartholomaeus Trot in officina Johannis de Platea, 1515). On Isaac and Constantine the African, see Manfred Ullmann,  Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978), 53; and Ullmann,  Die  Medizin im Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1970). For the Antidotarium Nicolai see Dorveaux,  Livre des simples, x.

 

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5.2  Appium commune (celery), appium raninum (buttercup), and appium risus (celery-leaved buttercup). Tractatus de herbis. London, British Library, Egerton MS 747, fol. 3 verso. Ca. 1280–1300. Photo by permission of the British Library

 

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These and other choices such as the use of smaller, lighter script establish a textual hierarchy in which the comments from Isaac’s text are clearly subordinate. In practice, the reader moves between the main body of the text and the supplementary entries from Isaac, the sort of slightly awkward shift of attention familiar to any modern reader of footnotes. Even so, the citations from Isaac’s text were drafted carefully. Most entries begin with a large, decorative letter. These litterae notabiliores are usually written in brown ink, although in a few cases they are highlighted in red. In one batch of entries for cucumeris, citruli, caules, cicer, and castanee (fols 27 recto–28 verso) the initial letter is omitted, a clear indication

that these were to have been added by a second scribe or in a second round of  finishing up the manuscript that was missed here. Many of the entries are relatively easy to locate, thanks to the fact that the citations usually begin with the name of the subject under discussion, but other design choices, particularly the tiny script, mean that the reader has to work a bit harder to read the passages from Isaac’s text. Examined closely, it is clear that the design of the Tractatus facilitated the reader’s task of locating certain kinds of information. Tables Tables of contents of the sort included for the letter “A” introduce nearly each alphabetical listing, and within these tables, each item listed is set off with an elaborated “C” for capitulum (known as a  paraph symbol) highlighted alternately in red and blue. When we move to the entries in the body of the text, each includes a picture and the name of the remedy under discussion. Those names are introduced with litterae notabiliores that alternate in red and blue, a pattern that is visible on fols 3 verso and 4 recto (Figs 5.2 and 5.3). 18 Subdividing the text still further, each substance is, in turn, associated with a series of remedies, and these individual cures are highlighted with alternating red and blue paraphs. For example, the discussion of  antimonium in the right-hand column of fol. 4 recto (probably sulphide of  antimony) details its use against canker (entry line 9), polyps (line 11), for problems of the eye (line 13), for nose bleeds (line 16), and so on; thanks to the colored symbols, it is relatively easy to pick out the start of each individual citation. Then or now, any reader of Egerton 747 who knows the medieval Latin name of a substance is able to use the tables of contents at the start of each alphabetical section to locate the full textuses. entries, symbols that highlight thethe textseparate make itentries; easy toand findwithin their therapeutic Thethe system has its limitations, however. however. It is easy to move from f rom substance to remedy, but moving in the other direction – that is, starting with an ailment and trying to locate the available treatments – requires a close reading of the whole text. Even so, the book’s design facilitates consultation as well as the broader understanding of the complementary nature of “simple” versus “compound” remedies, this last thanks 18

For the medieval use of punctuation and letterforms to emphasize text patterns see Malcolm Parkes, Pause and Effect, An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), especially 41–61.

 

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5.3  Appium emoroidarum (lesser celandine), amidum (starch), antimonium (antimony), and acatia (blackthorn). Tractatus de herbis. London, British Library,, Egerton MS 747, fol. 4 recto. Ca. 1280–1300. Photo by Library permission of the British Library

 

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to the (generally overlooked) texts appended to the Tractatus. And its overall layout provides a practical analog to the scholarly efforts that Malcolm Parkes identifies in western scholarship from the twelfth century onward, that is: compilatio, or summary versions of authoritative texts and ordinatio or systematic organization of the text’ text’ss apparatus.19

si mples médecines: médecines: Copenhagen, Kongelige Elite Concerns and the Livre the  Livre des simples Bibliotek, GKS MS 227 2°

An early-fifteenth-century manuscript copy of the French translation of the Tractatus de herbis known as the  Livre des simples médecines, Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, Bibliotek, MS GKS 227 2° follows the model of Egerton Egerton 747 in many ways, but by no means all, particularly when it comes to way-finding devices. 20 The scholarly consensus is that Egerton 747 was intended for the use of a university-trained physician – someone like the figures in academic garb represented in the initials at the start of the Tractatus and the  Antidotarium  Nicolai. The folio that introduces the core text in the Copenhagen manuscript also pictures “professionals” – in this case, working physicians occupied in a range of  activities such as examining a uroscope vase, reading, operating a still, and examining a patient (Fig. (Fig. 5.4). 5.4). The theoretical and historical basis of the healing arts is suggested by the presence of the standing figure of Galen at right (identified by the name prominently displayed on the hem of his garment). Despite these visual references, this copy may have been made for an educated bibliophile rather than a researcher or practitioner. In contrast to the staining of  Egerton 747, the Copenhagen manuscript shows few signs of heavy wear. As important, the layout of the text has changed. The body of the text often lacks the signposting we find in Egerton 747; for example, the individual applications of 

Malcolm Parkes, “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book,” in  Medieval Learning and Literature, Essays Presented to  Richard William William Hunt , ed. J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 115–41; reprinted in Parkes, Scribes, Scripts and Readers (London: Hambledon 19

Press, 1991), 35–69.Kongelige Bibliotek MS GKS 227 2º contains 217 parchment folios 20 Copenhagen, measuring 310 x 220 mm ruled in double columns of approximately 40 lines of text. For the dating cited here and the association with the Master of Guillebert of Mets, see Kåre Olsen and Carl Nordenfalk, Gyllene Böcker: Illuminerade Medeltida Handskrifter i Dansk  och Svensk Ägo, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Maj–September Maj–September,, 1952 (Stockholm: National Museum, 1952), 1952), entry 141. A recent catalog catalog extends extends the dating to to 1400–1450: Erik Erik Petersen, ed.,  Living Words and Luminous Pictures: Pic tures: Medieval Book Culture in Denmark, Catalog (Copenhagen: Kongelige Bibliotek, 1999), cat. 138, p. 98. See also N. C. L. Abrahams, Description des manuscrits français du moyen âge de la Bibliothèque royale royale de Copenhague (Copenhagen: Imprimerie de Thiele, 1844), 34–9; and C. Brüün,  De illuminerede Haandskrifter i Det store kongelige Bibliothek  (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1890), 217–18.

 

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5.4

Preface. Livre des simples médecines. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 227 2º, fol. 28 recto. Ca. 1430. Photo courtesy of the Royal Library, Copenhagen

 

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each plant are not always highlighted. Conversely, like many of the manuscript copies of this French translation of the Tractatus, GKS 227 includes two aids to the reader that are not in the version of the text in Egerton 747: a list of remedies and a glossary. The translation of the Tractatus de herbis contained in GKS 227 circulated widely and is known by several titles, including the  Livre des simples médecines. The French connection here makes sense in light of some marginal notations in Egerton 747 that Otto Pächt describes as “written in a fifteenth-century hand.” Based on these notes, he concluded that this manuscript was in France at least by ca. 1458 since we know that a manuscript copy of the Latin Tractatus was made

there around that date. More recently, François Avril dated the translation of the Tractatus into French to the late fourteenth century.21 Codicological studies by Felix Baumann and François Avril separate the surviving illustrated manuscripts in French into at least two, and perhaps three, groups. But both scholars agree that the Copenhagen manuscript figures in a small number of manuscripts that demonstrate a particularly close relationship to Egerton 747.22 In turn, this specific manuscript has been dated to ca. 1420–40 and attributed the workshop of a figure with ties to court patronage, the so-called “Master of Guillebert of Mets.” If we approach the Copenhagen manuscript expecting it to be more accessible or “user-friendly” than its scholarly Latin prototype simply because it is written in the vernacular, the contents of this manuscript potentially come as something of a surprise. First of all, although the body of the text has been translated into French, the tables of contents follow the Latin original even when French plant names would seem to dictate otherwise. For example, in Egerton 747 the table of  contents for the letter “A” lists the Latin names beginning with De aloen, followed by  De aloen ligno ,  De auro,  De argento vivo,  De assa fetida,  De agno casto,  De alumine, and so on. In the Copenhagen manuscript, a table listing the same

Pächt, “Nature Studies,” 28, n. 3. Platéarius,  Le livre des simples médecines, d’après le manuscrit français 12322 de la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, trans. and adaptation by G. Malandin, commentaries by François Avril, Pierre Lieutaghi and Ghislaine Malandin (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1986), 268. Baumann dates the translation to the early21

fifteenth century; Baumann, , 100. Collins ( Medieval 245)  Erbario Carrarese dates the translation to the late-fourteenth or early-fifteenth century, citing theHerbals résumé, of C. Maury’s thesis: Un herbier en français du XVe siècle: Le livre des simples médecines . Thèse à l’Ecole nationale des chartes, 1963. Résumé published in Ecole nationale des chartes, Positions des thèses soutenues par les élèves de la promotion de 1963 pour obtenir le diplôme d’archiviste paléographe, Paris, 105–8. 22 Baumann’s survey divides the north French manuscripts into three groups, whereas Avril concludes in favor of two. But both identify a cluster of five texts that Avril describes as “la plus proche du manuscrit de Londres” (Baumann’s group 3): Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 227 2°; Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 2888; Dijon, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 391; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12320; and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 19081. Baumann,  Erbario Carrarese, 121; Platéarius, Le Livre des simples médecines , 280, n. 15.

 

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substances similarly precedes the text proper. Some of the names retain their Latin form – for example aloen. Others are translated into French; thus argentum vivum (quicksilver or mercury) appears here as vif argent . Significantly, however, even when the name changes completely, for example when the Latin aurum (gold) is replaced by the French or, it remains in the table of contents beginning with “A.” The practical effect is that locating any individual substance requires knowing the medieval Latin terminology as well as the French translation. Although the general layout follows the Egerton manuscript, a number of  changes make locating some individual remedies more difficult. Ordinarily, the start of each entry is signaled by an elaborately decorated initial that incorporates

gold leaf along with an illustration modeled on the one in Egerton 747. Many of  these illustrations are labeled, and at first glance this appears to be an effort to aid the reader in associating text and image. On closer examination, though, we find occasional over-painting that suggests at least some “captions” were scripted first and the images drawn afterward, a sequence that may mean the labels were intended to guide the illustrator rather than the reader. When it comes to the overall design of the manuscript, we find that the layout of GKS 227 actually reduces the number of visual cues to the contents of the body of the text. The systematic use of paraphs to highlight individual applications was planned; indeed, marks to guide the scribe are visible throughout. But the colored pen work often was not added. In some instances, the “C” of contre is crossed to make a paraph mark, as in line 13, right column, fol. 34 verso (Fig. (Fig. 5.5). 5.5). In other instances, paraphs appear to have been added. See, for example, the end of line 6, right column, fol. 35 recto (Fig. (Fig. 5.6). 5.6). But some such marks are the same color as the running text, making the cues much less visible. Other, more subtle systems of  identification are dropped, as well. Entries in the Egerton manuscript frequently begin with a list of synonyms by which each plant is known – for example, “to the Gauls,” “to the Dacians,” “to the Italians,” and especially to unspecified “others” or “alii.” These lists often are subtly pointed up with tiny splashes of red that, once noticed, are easy to find; see, for example, the synonyms for appium risus and appium emoroidarum  – left column, fol. 4 recto (Fig. 5.3). 5.3). In the Copenhagen manuscript, however, these lists are truncated, and alternative names are not highlighted. As a consequence, here as elsewhere, the reader finds that items singled out in Egerton 747 are sometimes more difficult to locate in the later French manuscript. Other changes include the way the passages from Isaac’s text are treated. In the Copenhagen herbal, these are no longer listed separately; rather, they are integrated here into the text proper. As noted above, in Egerton 747 the information drawn from Isaac was treated two ways when it came to illustrations. Substances already included in Circa instans were illustrated, whereas those entries cited for the first time based on Isaac were not. In the Copenhagen manuscript, however, the new entries drawn exclusively from Isaac’s treatise are paired with pictures.

 

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5.5  Apium emoroidarum (lesser celandine) and amidum (starch). Livre des simples médecines. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek MS GKS 227 2º, fol. 34 verso. Ca. 1430. Photo courtesy of the Royal Library, Copenhagen

 

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5.6  Antimonium (antimony). Livre des simples médecines. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek MS GKS 227 2º, fol. 35 recto. Ca. 1430. Photo courtesy of the Royal Library, Library, Copenhagen

 

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The illustrations derive for the most part from those in Egerton 747 or something very much like it. The dependent nature of that artistic relationship is demonstrated again and again; physical details, including leaf shape and flower form, generally are simplified and sometimes misunderstood in the fifteenthcentury French copy. The images of apium emoroidarum  – probably the plant known as lesser celandine – pictured on fol. 3 verso of the Copenhagen manuscript and on fol. 4 recto of Egerton 747 demonstrate the differences between the two sets of illustrations (Figs 5.3 and 5.5).23 In this case, the illustration in the Egerton manuscript highlights three sets of cordate leaves on long thin stems, whereas the plant pictured in the Copenhagen manuscript is far less distinctive.

With regard to the plant images that have been copied from an earlier manuscript source, the relationship between model and copy demonstrated here is precisely the one predicted by Pliny the Elder and, later, by any number of modern visual theorists. According to Pliny, Greek botanists abandoned the practice of  illustrating botanical treatises in part because of an inherent difference between visual and verbal description; that is, unlike the text passages, those images could not be reliably reproduced. As he explains, whatever the informational value of an image, its reproduction introduces error: “multumque degenerat transcribentium  fors varia.”24 The Copenhagen illustrator was not always content simply to copy illustrations, however. however. As noted above, an entry like the one for amidum or starch (one of the non-botanical substances that is not illustrated in Egerton 747) is now paired with a picture, in this case a vat filled with irregularly shaped sheets. When it comes to the entries drawn from Isaac that now required illustration, such as, for example, the hazel or filbert on fol. f ol. 49 verso, the plants are represented following a scheme much like the one employed elsewhere in the Copenhagen manuscript – that is, with few overlapping structures, a flattened silhouette, and a neatly outlined margin. Images are expanded in other ways: the so-called “action” figures are handled with a degree of finish not seen in the earlier manuscript. Humans appear in the entries for a very diverse range of mineral, animal, and vegetal substances, among them: aloe wood (fol. 30 recto), gold (30 verso), sulphide of antimony (35 recto), orpiment (44 verso), balm of Gilead (50 recto), bole armeniac (51 recto), an ointment from the glands of the beaver (67 recto), a powder derived from embalmed mummies (141 recto), musk (145 verso), and sulfur (188 recto). In Egerton 747, such scenes generally are crudely executed and rendered in a sketchy 23

Here and elsewhere, considerable variation in spelling occurs in these manuscripts and printed books.  Appium and apium are variant forms of this name as used in Egerton 747 and GKS 227, for example. And even within a given volume, the same name may be spelled several ways. 24 Pliny, Natural History (Books 24–27), ed. and trans. W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 25.8, pp. 140–41. See also: William M. Ivins, Jr, Prints and Visual Communication (195 (1953; 3; reprint, reprint, Cambri Cambridge: dge: MIT MIT Pres Press, s, 1985), 14–16.

 

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manner that differs from the subtle techniques employed in the plant images (Fig. (Fig. 5.3). 5.3 ). In contrast, the corresponding images in the Copenhagen manuscript are carefully rendered in bright colors. The artist crafted the figures in a masterful fashion that highlights costume details, lively poses, and a plausible rendering of  space and physical setting (Fig. ( Fig. 5.6). 5.6). It is hard to know what function most of these images served – to inform, to serve as mnemonics, to visually signpost the entries or, perhaps, simply to assert a degree of textual authority – although in a few cases the illuminators may be employing visual means to identify one sub-category of entries. That is, along with a range of vivid pigments that tended to be very expensive, the artists and

scribes responsible for the Copenhagen manuscript also had access to the use of  gold, which provides a sparkling accent to the flourishing on several folios as well as the elaborate litterae notabiliores that highlight the start of each entry. Touches of matte (as opposed to burnished) gold appear scattered elsewhere throughout the manuscript, and in some cases this selective use coincides what were regarded as noble remedies suitable for notable persons.25 Thus the image paired with an entry for the hardened cartilage believed to derive from the heart of a stag (fol. 160 verso) is highlighted in gold, as are musk (fol. 145 verso) and what probably is amber or “lynx stone” (fol. 133 recto). All of these substances figure among those used to dose royal or aristocratic patients, as was the case during the last illness of Edward I in 1307, a circumstance documented in the enormous pharmaceutical bill of some £134 left unpaid at the King’s death. 26 Other expensive items highlighted in gold include lapis lazuli (fol. 125 recto), but gold highlights also are used on much humbler items such as the hat of the figure mining for sulfur and the plant commonly known as fleabane (fols 188 recto and 166 recto). Conversely, several expensive items such as roses (179 recto) – mentioned in the fourteenth-century pharmacist’s bill – are overlooked by the artist with the gilded touch. In this context, expensive materials may tell us much more about the reader than about the text being read, and if the attribution of the illustrations in the Copenhagen manuscript to the “Master of Guillebert of Mets” is correct, then we should probably look to aristocratic patronage. This “Master” is an anonymous

The images touched in gold are paired with entries that include: icensaria  – a herb with “a smell of incense,” fol. 123 recto; lapis lazuli, fol. 125 recto; “lynx stone,” possibly yellow amber, fol. 133 recto; “stones found in sponges,” fol. 133 recto; “gum from an overseas tree,” fol. 135 verso; honey, fol. 145 recto; musk, fol. 145 verso; eggplant, fol. 151 verso; water lily, fol. 154 recto; nutmeg – “the fruit of a tree that grows in India,” fol. 154 verso; “stag’s heart cartilage,” fol. 160 verso; cuttle bone, fol. 161 recto; fleabane, fol. 166 recto; and sulfur, fol. 188 recto. 26 “ Item, pro uno electuario confortativo cum ambra et musco, et marga margaritar’ ritar’ et  25

 jacinctar’ et auro et argento puro lb. viii.–viii marc. Item, pro sucurosset’ acuat’ cum margaritar’et curall’uncias iiii – v. marc … Item, pro aqua rosata de Damasc’lb. xl. – iiii. li … ,” Charles H. Hartshorne, “Bill of Medicines Furnished for the Use of Edward I. 34 and 35 Edw. I., 1306–7,”  Archaeological Journal 14 (1857): 267–71.

 

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illuminator whose work has been associated with the activities of the scribe, Guillebert of Mets. (Although the terminology is confusing here, it is important to note that these two are separate figures.) The scribe Guillebert himself is named in a French translation of the  Decameron (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5070) and also in a manuscript that contains his description of the city of Paris as well as texts by Christine de Pisan (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 9559–64).27 The illuminator whose work is associated with him, the “Master of  Guillebert,” appears to have been well connected. Among Among other things, his earliest work appears in a breviary made for a noble patron, either Jean sans Peur of  Burgundy or his wife (London, British Library, Harley MS 2897). 28 His

association with the scribe, Guillebert, is notable, as well, since the latter described himself as the “libraire” of Jean, Duke of Berry, and the scribe’s 1434 history of Paris mentions the celebrated Limbourg brothers–“les trois freres enlumineurs”–artists responsible for Jean de Berry’s most famous illuminated manuscript.29 Although one authority wrote off the “Master of Guillebert” as a figure “of little importance,” more recently, scholars have underlined his skills as a gifted colorist and adroit composer of narrative scenes. 30 The attribution to the Master of Guillebert of Mets certainly warrants further study, but whether or not the association with this specific “Master” holds, several points are clear. First, there is no question that the prefatory page and the figures in the “action” scenes in the Copenhagen copy of the Livre des simples have been illustrated by a talented artist skilled in the techniques of luxury manuscript production. Moreover, Moreover, the flourishing applied to the opening of the text proper on fol. 28 recto of GKS 227 and occasionally, elsewhere in this manuscript also has many analogs in luxury manuscripts. See Maurits Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the Eighth to the Mid-Sixteenth Century (Leuven: Brepols, 1999), 241–8; and Scot McKendrick, “Painting in Manuscripts of Vernacular Texts, circa 1467–1485,” 258, in Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick,  Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triump Triumphh of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003). Other works associated with this anonymous Master include a Book of Hours dated to approximately 1440–50 (Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek MS NKS 132 4°) and a Book of Hours of Tournai use also dated to around 1440 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. liturg. e. 14). Erik Drigsdahl, “The False Use of  Rome: Apropos a Reconstruction of Copenhagen MS NKS 132 4º Illuminated by the Master of Guillebert of Mets,” in Flanders in a European Perspective: Manuscript   Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad (Leuven: Peters, 1995), 581–91. 28 McKendrick, “Paintings in Manuscripts,” 258, n. 7. Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries (New York: Braziller, 1974), 325–7. 29 Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, 70. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Bibliothee k, MS 133. A. 2. 30 L. M. J. Delaissé,  A Century of Dutch Manuscript Illumination (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 64, n. 14; fig. 119. Also, see James R. Tanis, from Philadelphia Collections (Philadelphia: ed., Leaves of Gold: Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), cat. 34, in which Roger Wieck expands the Master of  Guillebert’s oeuvre to include a Book of Hours today in the Free Library of Philadelphia (MS Lewis E M 5.20, 5.19). 27

 

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In contrast, the plant images appear to be the work of a different artist: unlike the vivid color range and subtle shading applied to the figures, plants are rendered in flat washes of a relatively limited range of greens. The task of producing this large manuscript appears to have been divided among several craftsmen: the scribe who produced the main text, a rubricator responsible for the initials and perhaps the flourishes, and at least two illuminators – the one who produced the figures and another painter in charge of the plants. This sort of division of labor would have been standard practice for f or any elaborate thirteenth-century manuscript production. As is often the case in such big projects, this manuscript includes notes that communicated instructions to the scribes and artists. Tiny letters in red

cued the rubricator to the placement of decorated initials, and from fol. 60 recto onward (the start of signature “e”), small notes often instruct the plant illustrator by indicating the French names of the colors in which some of the roots are to be painted, among them brun and groen. The scale of this production, the expensive materials employed, the elaborate ornamental vocabulary, and the involvement of a talented artist capable of  drawing elegant figures all support the conclusion that this manuscript was made for a very wealthy patron. Whatever that patron’s status or intentions, as we have seen, this book was handled carefully, but this does not mean it was not read. In fact, the reader – then and now – has the advantage of the two informational  Les remedes pour lez maladies de la teste) guides guid es to the text. A list of remedies remedies ( Les and a glossary of problem terms ( La  La exposition des mos obscurs) constitute the first 27 folios of the Copenhagen manuscript. Significantly, perhaps, neither of  these seems to have formed part of the earliest Latin version of the text. Although Egerton 747 has long been missing three folios (room, perhaps, for f or an introduction of some sort), this would not be sufficient space for these two, companion texts.31 Examining GKS 227 reveals that fols 1 recto–27 verso – those that comprise  Les remedes and  La exposition  – were composed separately from the rest of the manuscript as it appears today today,, although at the same time. The script in which this “front-matter” is written is the same as that used in the main text, and the hand is especially close to the one responsible for the signatures from fol. 60 onward. These prefatory folios are carefully written and give very little evidence of  updates or corrections. Almost certainly, the scribe simply copied these sections from his manuscript exemplar since the glossary and list of remedies are 31

Another sort of index is found in the opening folios of a late-thirteenth-century Italian manuscript with a text that has been compared to Egerton 747 – the so-called Rufinus herbal (Florence, Laurentian Library, MS Ashburnham 189). In this case, however, the listing achieves a different purpose. Plant entries are placed in roughly alphabetical order along with the ailments each is said to cure. As a consequence, it is a handy guide to the uses an individual plant might achieve, but not an index to remedies for individual ailments. Lynn Thorndike, The Herbal of Rufinus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), xl. For references that cite the Rufinus herbal in the context of the Tractatus and  Livres des simples tradition, see: Opsomer, Roberts, and Stearn, eds, Livre des simples, 44; and Collins and Raphael, Facsimile, 11.

 

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incorporated into most of the  Livre des simples manuscripts.32 Modest soiling on both fol. 1 recto and fol. 28 recto suggests the two sections existed as separate volumes before they were bound together; but the fact that fol. 28 recto is cleaner than fol. 1 recto may be evidence that this joining happened not long after the two parts were written (and before there was much chance to dirty fol. 28 recto). The glossary and index found in the Copenhagen manuscript direct the reading process in new ways. The “list of remedies” follows two organizational systems: one anatomical, the other alphabetical. The list begins with ailments associated in some way with the head, in which the first sub-category is headache, followed by a list of relevant remedies listed in the same, roughly alphabetical order used for

the entries themselves. Thus we find that aloe purges the stomach in ways that are good for the head, aloe ligno is good for weakness of the brain, to warm the cold brain, and so on. The list then moves on to a second category of illnesses related to the hair; then to the eyes and eyelids; to the ears; to the nose and nosebleed; to the throat; and it concludes with more general categories, including fever and poisons. As for the “exposition of obscure words” (fols 23 verso–27 verso), this alphabetical listing contains terms and their definitions. Approximately Approximately half of the items covered are ailments such as asmatique and melancolie. Others include specific remedies, among them some compound medicaments “to be had in the apothecary,” substances such as savon, instruments such as siringue (syringe), qualities and concepts such as corrosive and degre, and finally, a few parts of the body, among them: diaframe (diaphragm) and  pores (pore (poress in the skin). skin). A reader puzzled by a term encountered in the body of the text could often, in fact, look up the relevant entry in this glossary. Locating individual remedies within the body of the text is still a matter of sifting through the loose groupings of alphabetical listings. But even so, the Copenhagen herbal includes aids that allow the reader to clarify some of the nuances of therapeutic nomenclature and to identify remedies for specific illnesses – two points of access unavailable to the reader of Egerton 747..33 747

Of the French manuscripts cited by Baumann, the majority include the glossary and list of remedies, although not always in the same order. Baumann,  Erbario Carrarese, 108–13. 33 GKS 227 later passed through the hands of one owner who entered a passage on fol. 216 verso that Abrahams identified as a prescription in Dutch, and another who signed himself “Johannes le Duerg” in 1626 on folio 217 recto. An inscription on what appears to be the inside of the original binding reads “ Liuinus Stuudert me ligavit – Jn Gandavo” and has been noted and identified by Erik Drigsdahl as the signature of a well-known Ghent bookbinder. According to the inscription on a paper leaf bound at the start of the manuscript, GKS 227 was donated to the Royal Library in 1737 by Princess Charlotte Amalie, daughter of King Frederik IV. Abrahams, Description des manuscrits français, 43; Drigsdahl, “False Use of Rome,” 581. 32

 

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Remedies Reme dies for All Manne Mannerr of Diseases Diseases:: the Grete Herball 

Some hundred years later, when the Livre des simples was translated from French into English and printed by Peter Treveris of Southwark in his edition of 1526, it was transformed beyond recognition, and in the process, a new set of aids to the reader was added. Indeed, the publisher of the Grete Herball incorporated changes that made it possible to navigate the text in ways not possible in the two manuscripts surveyed above. We know that the Grete Herball is based on a French version of the text since Treveris concludes the text proper of his book with a note: “Thus ends the great 34

herbal with his [its] tables which is translated out of the French into English. This statement certainly is true, although the Grete Herball also appears to draw some features from works in German and Latin, notably editions of the so-called Gart der Gesundheit and the Hortus sanitatis.35 Even so, the relationship between the Grete Herball and its French prototypes frequently is very close. The publishing history of the  Livre des simples médecines is a big topic and one that is vastly complicated by the many late-fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editions— each with very few surviving copies—and the fact that these editions often did not include publication specifics.36 That said, even a very brief overview of these publications helps to bridge the gap between fifteenth-century French manuscripts like GKS 227 and the early-sixteenth-century Grete Herball. The  Livre des simples médecines was first printed by Pierre Metlinger in Besançon in either 1485 or 1486. Titled the  Arbolayre, Metlinger’s edition resembles aspects of GKS 227.37 Just as we saw in the Copenhagen herbal, the

See Agnes Arber,  Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: Evoluti on: A Chapter in the History of   Botany,, 1470–1670, 3rd edn, intro. and annot. by William T. Stearn (Cambridge:  Botany Cambridge University University Press, 1986), 26–8, 44–50. Arber highlights the relationshi relationship p between the Grete Herball and  Le Grant Herbier although she does not specify an edition of the latter. As for Treveris’s claim, this sort of statement is by no means unique. For example, the edition of the Grant Herbier published by Guillaume Nyverd, ca. 1520 (discussed below) similarly credits a translation, in that case, from the Latin to the French. 35 This subject awaits further, comprehensive study, but the relationship is routinely cited. For example, Arber,  Herbals, 45 describes the illustrations to the Grete Herball as “degraded copies of the series which first appeared in the  Herbarius zu Teutsch.” The catalog description of the Grete Herball cited in Stanley H. Johnston, Jr, The Cleveland   Herbal, Botanical, and Horticultural Collections, Descriptive Catalog … (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1992), cat. 36 also associates the introduction, the conclusion, and the illustrations of the Grete Herball with the Gart der Gesundheit and the Hortus sanitatis. For studies of the Gart der Gesundheit and the Hortus sanitatis see Gundolf Keil, “ Hortus Sanitatis, Gart der Gesundheit, Gaerde der Sunthede,” in Medieval Gardens, ed. Elisabeth MacDougall (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1986), 55–68. 36 Frank J. Anderson, The Illustrated History of Herbals (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 98–105. 37 Metlinger’s 1486 publication of the French translation of the Tractatus was followed by Pierre le Caron’s late-fifteenth-century publication as well as a long series of sixteenthcentury editions, all of which use some version of the title,  Le Grant Herbier en francoys. 34

 

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book opens with a list of remedies and a glossary, followed by the prologue based on Circa instans, and by the entries beginning with the “A” table of contents and the entries for “A” starting with aloe. As in GKS 227 the entries in the Arbolayre conclude with  zuccaro (sugar), and the list of remedies and the glossary also are very similar to those found in that manuscript. Some new features register the change in technology. Like many printed books, the  Arbolayre includes a titlepage, in this case, one that is followed by a full-page image that serves as a frontispiece.38 Other changes reveal alternate sources of information or organizational schemes. The tables of contents in the  Arbolayre include both the Latin names of the simples as well as French translations of some (but not all)

entries. The tables also include variants for substances like apium, and in a few instances, entries are added, such as the one for aqua or leaue found at the very end of the listing for the letter “A.” Aspects of the design of the  Arbolayre were abandoned at least by 1520 when Guillaume Nyverd published one of his editions of the French translation as  Le Grant Herbier (the title used for all editions after the first). The book begins with an elaborate title-page and a prologue based again on Circa instans (just as is found in  Arbolayre). At this point, the text launches directly into the first of the individual entries, but in this case there are no tables of contents. This edition of  the Grant Herbier also differs from GKS 227 and the  Arbolayre in that lists of  remedies and the glossary are now to be found after the last entry for  zuccaro. Finally,, there is a new item added to the very end of the book: an alphabetical list Finally of entries that indicates where each item is to be found in the volume. This list capitalizes upon the fact that in the 1520 edition of the Grant Herbier each page in the body of the text is identified in the upper right corner as a numbered fueillet . This system does not extend to the list of remedies, the glossary, or the index; although these sections are cued to the text they accompany, they were printed separately.. The list of chapters together with this printed foliation allow the reader separately to locate individual entries, thus providing a substitute for the alphabetical tables of contents that we saw in earlier manuscript and printed copies. The Grete Herball was published in 1526, only a few years after this French edition by Guillaume Nyverd. Again, we have a decorative title-page – in this case, one that pictures figures harvesting flowers and the vintage, flowering plants, as well as a male and female mandrake. Along with identifying the scope of the text and its grounding in the knowledge of “many expert and wise masters,” the text of the title-page cites information not seen in Nyverd’s edition or the  Arbolayre, including a note crediting the printer – “me Peter Treveris” – and a

38

The title-page reads: “ Arbolayre, contenant la qualitey et vertus, proprietey des

herbes, arbres, gommes, et semences extrait de pluseurs tratiers de medicine, comment  davicenne, de rasis, de constantin, de ysaac, et plateaire, selon le connunn usaige bien correct .” .” The frontispiece shows scholars in the open air holding books and, in one case, a plant. This same woodcut appears in the Gart der Gesundheit  as printed in Strassburg by Johann Grüninger ca. 1485.

 

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dedication of the work to the “perfect knowledge and understandings of all manner of herbs and their gracious vertues.” 39 Following a short prologue, the reader encounters a Register of the Chapters in Latin and English, an alphabetical listing that combines features seen in both the  Arbolayre and the Grant Herbier. Like the tables of contents found in  Arbolayre, the list is primarily in Latin but it sometimes includes translations into the vernacular. Like the alphabetical listing found at the end of the Grant Herbier, the  Register numbers each entry. But this time, rather than numbering the  folios of the volume, the publisher has numbered each entry as a separate chapter. chapter. Thus the text begins with “Aloe/ a juice so named ca. i.; Aloes / a wood so named ca. ii.; Aurum/gold Aurum/gold ca. iii.; Argentum vivum/ quick 40

silver ca. iiii.; Asa fetida ca. v. and so on (Fig. 5.7). 5.7). The  Register is followed by an image of a skeleton that introduces the names of bones of the body body,, and then the text proper follows, beginning as usual, with De aloe (Fig. 5.8). 5.8). As in the 1520 Nyverd edition of  Le Grant Herbier, there is no table of contents; it is not needed since the  Register of Chapters identifies the contents of the text entries.41 At the end of the entries, the Grete Herball also includes a separate section of some 25 remedies that the publisher claims are an innovation. Labeled “Hereafter follows a rehearsal of diverse chapters which before have not been specified concerning diverse causes of medicines needful to the behalf of man,” this section follows the discussion of  zuccarus or sugar (traditionally, the last entry). The section must have been planned from the start, however, since the entries are listed in the initial  Register of Chapters. A tre treati atise se on urine that the publisher ascribes to Avicenna comes next. As in  Le Grant   Herbier, the glossary follows toward the end of the volume and, once again, we have virtually the same list found earlier in both the  Arbolayre and GKS 227. The Grete Herball demonstrates several ways in which a publisher might direct the reader’s access to the information a book contains. The division into chapters introduced here follows a system that occurs in at least one of Treveris’s earlier publications, and in this case the system makes it easy to locate individual remedies.42 For example, the first listing – for aloe – is labeled in Latin and clearly All citations here are derived from the first, 1526 edition of the Grete Herball and are quoted in modern English spelling. 40 For an analysis of the English plant names in the Grete Herball, see Mats Rydén, The 39

 English Plant Pl ant Names in the Grete Herball (1526): A Contribution to the Historical Study of English Plant-Name Usage (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1984). 41 When the Grete Herball was published in a second edition in 1529, the skeleton disappeared and the Register was reworked, as well. 42 Treveris published an English translation of Hieronymus Brunschwig’s  Noble  Experyence of the Vertuous Handy Warke of Surgeri that incorporates numbered chapters and a text that frequently is set in labeled blocks for emphasis. The plate with the skeleton found later in the Grete Herball appears here, as well. The  Handy Warke of Surgeri was published in March, 1525 – just over a year before the Grete Herball made its appearance in July, 1526. See Hieronymus Brunschwig, The Noble Experyence of the Vertuous Handy Warke of Surgeri, English Experience, No. 531 (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1973).

 

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5.7  Registre of the chaptrees. The Grete Herball. Southwark: Peter Treveris, 1526. London, British Library, C.27.11. C.27.11. Photo by permission of the British Library

 

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5.8  De aloe (aloe). The Grete Herball. Southwark: Peter Treveris, 1526. London, British Library, Library, C.27.11. Photo by permission of the British Library

 

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indicated as “Chapter “Chapter i” i” in the upper right of the left text column (Fig. (Fig. 5.8). 5.8). Here, as elsewhere, a picture follows the label and serves to indicate the text block. A very large and elaborate initial equivalent to some nine lines of text heads the entry (its size in this case determined by the fact that this particular initial introduces the section with entries beginning with “A”). Within the text, individual cures are set off from the introductory remarks; for example, at the very bottom of the right-hand text column, a label introduces the text that follows on the use of aloe to purge phlegm, and a key at the right indicates this is remedy “A.” Thus the reader knows this entry is to be found under Chapter i  i  – subcategory A. A. In this fashion, the reader of the Grete Herball is equipped with a full set of coordinates for finding individual remedies and specific manifestations of 

their use. Equally important, the Grete Herball includes something Treveris describes as a “table very useful and profitable for them that desire to find quickly a remedy against all manner of diseases and they be marked by the letters of the A. B. C. in every chapter.” At this point, the publisher has introduced a way-finding device that we have not seen before – a look-up table that compactly synthesizes the sort of index of cures found previously in  Les remedes included in the Copenhagen herbal, the  Arbolayre, and the Grant Herbier—along with other useful information (Fig. (Fig. 5.9). 5.9). As in the earlier listings, ailments are listed roughly roug hly from head to toe and from specific to general (although the categories diverge somewhat from those in the earlier lists). The Table begins with remedies “Against ache of the head” and complaints such as “for a broken head,” “against a bald head,” “for forgetfulness,” “for lunatic people,” “against shaking of the head,” “to grow hair,” “to dye hair black,” and it concludes with “for them that be fearful,” “to make the folk merry,” “for worms,” and “to recover strength.” Rather than listing remedies by name, in each category, the publisher simply lists the numbered chapters and subheadings. Thus, for example, with this chart in hand, a reader seeking a remedy “against headache” is neatly directed back to remedies in the text, among them Chapter i, i, entry F; conversely, to find how “to purge phlegm” one simply moves to  to Chapter i and i and entry A at the bottom bottom right of  of  the page. These cues demonstrate that the Grete Herball could be used for reasonably  Registe sterr clarifies easy and selective access to verbal information. The  Regi nomenclature and provides a guide to the numbered items; the entries themselves are arranged in a way that makes it easy to skim the various complaints an individual “simple” might cure; and the Table of remedies makes it just as easy to locate the several possible cures for any manner of problems. When it comes to pictures and, by extension, the reader’s access to visual information, the situation is much less clear. Many of the illustrations are relatively schematic, and the association of text and image often is far from secure. The pictures are a mixed lot. With their neat, black borders, the illustrations in the Grete Herball recall those used in works such as the 1520

 

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5.9

Table of Remedies. The Grete Herball. Southwark: Southwark: Peter Tre Treveris, veris, 1526. London, British Library, Library, C.27.11. Photo by permission of the British Library

 

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Grant Herbier.43 Some images bear at least a passing resemblance to the substance under discussion such as allium – chapter xviii xviii (garlic) shown with large large bulbs; or  fragraria  – chapter clxxv (strawberries) complete with simple, five-petaled flowers and berries. Others, such as the image of aloe (chapter i), i), bear no resemblance to the plants with which they are paired. Some plates are repeated; for example, the same picture illustrates the entries for auro or gold (chapter (chapter iii) iii) and for argento vivo or quicksilver (chapter iiii). But just when we conclude that the publisher is completely unconcerned with any notion of representational accuracy,, we come across the note paired with the entry for boragine (chapter lviii accuracy  – borage) that alerts the reader to “Note the picture of bombax and borago. The one is put for the other.”44 Judging from the illustrations (which roughly resemble

cotton and borage), the printer swapped the pictures, noticed his mistake before the reverse side of the page was printed and included this note as an erratum. The question that remains, of course, is how the publisher and the reader intended to use this book, a question that is not easily answered. Introductory comments in the Grete Herball refer to “villages whereas neither surgeons nor physicians be dwelling nigh by many a mile, as it is in good towns where they be ready to hand.” This sort of comment should not be taken too seriously, though, since related topoi are a frequent occurrence in early printed works.45 Indeed, none of the works reviewed here gives a secure indication of its intended function, despite seeming clues such as the academics pictured in Egerton 747 and the physicians shown working with their patients in the Copenhagen manuscript. None of these should be taken as a portrait of the reader at work; rather, they are a reflection of ideal conditions of use. The question of the intended and, perhaps, actual use of these books demands the clues to be drawn from extra-textual sources such as records of the medieval university curriculum, evidence of elite book-collecting practices, and patterns of book ownership and sales. What these books do tell us, even at a preliminary stage of this research project, is nonetheless suggestive. First, when it comes to their informational value, the images demonstrate a trajectory bound to surprise most art historians. That is, it is

Several of the plates in  Le Grant Herbier are reproduced in Anderson,  Herbals, fig. 42 and fig. 44; pp. 98–105. The images of  plantagine and cepe he illustrates correspond to the ones in the 1526 Grete Herball, chapters cccxliiii and cvii. The Grete Herball woodcuts were reused in the translation of The Vertuose Boke of Distyllacyon by Hieronymus Brunschwig published by Laurence Andrewe in 1527. See Hieronymus Brunschwig, The Vertuose Boke of Distyllacyon , English Experience, No. 532 (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1973). 44 These two entries are on the front and back of the same leaf.  Bombax also is one of  several entries that are not numbered. 45 See Paul Slack, “Mirrors of Health and Treasures of Poor Men: The Uses of the Vernacular Medical Literature of Tudor England,” in Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 237–73. My thanks to Peter Murray Jones for this reference and other much-appreciated advice related to the problem of establishing the readership of the Grete Herball. 43

 

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the earliest of the books surveyed here – the late-thirteenth-century Egerton manuscript – that contains the most descriptive images, whereas the later works are much further from any version of accurate representation. Pliny’s caution about the effect of copying notwithstanding, most standard histories of art routinely trade heavily on the notion that “early modern” or “Renaissance” images typically are more naturalistic than those produced in any “medieval” atelier. In contrast, the images reviewed here suggest both that this dualism is an oversimplification, and that conditions of use may well determine the artist’s commitment to naturalistic rendering.46 As important, the illustrations to the Tractatus in its several versions form just one part of a larger system of  signposting the text. Up to a point, their job was to help the reader to find his way

around the text rather than the herb garden. Pictures and other visual cues highlight sections of these books. These cues to the reader change over time, suggesting that the reader’s priorities (at least as the scribe or printer understood and anticipated them) have changed. The examples offered here demonstrate a range of visual and verbal devices that enlarge and reshape the text by providing what graphic designers aptly refer to as way-finding devices. Articulation systems that include page layout, text hierarchies, the emphasis provided by punctuation, and the use of color are as much visual as verbal. These three presentations of the Tractatus thus reflect several interrelated processes. The text is recast into the vernacular – first French and then English (a relatively fluid process that retreats from aspects of the Latin original only very slowly). Latin nomenclature defines the order of entries in the French  Livre des simples; and even in the Grete Herball, English terminology takes a back seat to Latin, at least in the very useful  Register that introduces the volume. Both versions of the Tractatus in the vernacular acknowledge the problem of interpreting “obscure and problematic” terms. Indices and look-up tables increasingly come to direct the reading process; and paired with the notational guides provided by the scribe and, later, the printer, printer, they establish a set of visual hierarchies. The result is an important shift, at the end of which we have, in the Grete  Herball, a book with a flexible design that permits it to be read several ways, among them: by going directly to one of the subjects neatly listed in the  Register, by consulting the treatise on urine, by clarifying specialized terms in the glossary, glossary, and by locating a specific cure for a specific ill – as listed in the Table at the book’s book ’s end. Here and elsewhere, these manuscript and print versions register a synergy between verbal text, illustrations, and communication design. Text layout, page design, and navigational tools directed the way this medieval text was read, initially by academics, and later by bibliophiles as well as readers seemingly more interested in practice than theory. As Tony Hunt observed a few years ago, “the study of the translation of scientific texts in the Middle Ages is, surprisingly, surprisingly, still

46

Givens, Observation and Image-Making, chapter 5, 5, 134–68.

 

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in its infancy.” infancy.” But it is a study worth expanding to encompass the interpenetration of visual and verbal systems with the goal of understanding the book as an agent of scholarly communication.47

Tony Hunt, “Old French Translations of Medical Texts,” Forum for Modern  Language Studies 35 (1999): 350–7. 47

 

Chapter 6

Leonardo da Vinci’s Anatomical Studies in Mi Mila lan: n: A Re Re-e -exa xami mina nati tion on of Si Site tess and Sources Monica Azzolini

On Sunday 26 April 1478, Giuliano de’ Medici was murdered as he attended High Mass in Florence’s cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Led by members of the Pazzi family with the support of Count Girolamo Riario, Pope Sixtus IV, and Federico da Montefeltro, the conspirators planned to kill both Lorenzo de’ Medici and Giuliano. The events of that day seized the imagination of contemporary Florentines. In his  Istorie Fiorent Fiorentine ine, Machiavelli recounts how one of the conspirators, Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli, stabbed Giuliano in the stomach and inflicted many more wounds on his body as Giuliano lay on the floor.1 Having failed to kill Lorenzo, Bernardo fled Florence and took refuge in Turkey, but he was eventually tracked down and extradited. On 28 December 1478, he was hanged publicly in Florence. Bernardo’s public execution is famously recorded in Leonardo da Vinci’s pen-and-ink sketch of his hanging body. This is Leonardo’s first extant sketch of the body of a criminal.2

The Dead Body on Public Display Three decades after Leonardo sketched the assassin’s corpse, he witnessed and recorded another public execution. While in Milan around 1508, Leonardo observed the dissection of a hanged criminal, made direct observations, and drew

1

Niccolò Machiavelli,  Istorie Fior Fiorentine entine, Vittorio Fiorini ed., intro. Delio Cantimori (Florence: Sansoni, 1962), Book VIII, i–x, esp. vi; and Florentine Histories, trans. Laura F. Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr; intro. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). Recent studies of the conspiracy include Lauro Martines,  April  Blood: Florence Florence and the Plot Plot Against Against the Medici Medici (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 2 Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, reproduced in Martines,  April Blood , 170. See also Carmen C. Bambach, “Documented Chronology of Leonardo’s Life and Work,” in  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Master Draftsman, ed. Carmen C. Bambach (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 229. 147

 

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some conclusions about hotly debated issues of Galenic anatomy. Leonardo’s Leonardo’s note addresses the reasons for the erection of the penis in some cadavers (Fig. ( Fig. 6.1). 6.1). Here Leonardo rejects the Galenic explanation that the “wind” causes the erection in favor of the theory that the phenomenon is caused by settled blood. Leonardo explicitly says he had observed it himself: “This I have seen in dead men who have this member erect, for many die thus, particularly those hanged. Of these I have seen the anatomy.”3 The reference to “those hanged” (li apichati), in the plural, suggests that he observed the dissection of a number of criminal bodies at close range. In recent years, much emphasis has been placed on the relationship between criminal justice and dissection in pre-modern Europe. The widespread assumption has been that dissection was practiced only on the bodies of criminals and that it

was seen as the ultimate punishment for the unrepentant.4 In a seminal article in 1994, however, Katharine Park demonstrated that autopsies were far more common in medieval and Renaissance Italy than had been generally assumed. She also argued that these practices coincided with the emergence of autopsy and dissection as a regular part of both legal and medical practice in northern Italy.5 Her article corrected the persistent misconception that the opening of corpses was a well-established taboo in medieval and Renaissance Europe and that dissection was used solely for punitive purposes. In Italy dismemberment and dissection do not seem to have provoked much unease. Boniface VIII’s bull  Detestande feritatis – promulgated for the t he first time 3

“ Ne morti che an tal membro djritto perche perche molti cosi muoiono e massime li apichati de quali ho visto notomja.” Kenneth Keele and Carlo Pedretti state that “this note … confirms that Leonardo dissected hanged criminals.” See Kenneth D. Keele and Carlo Pedretti, eds, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: Corpus Corpus of the Anatomical Studies in the Collection of Her  Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, 2 vols (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978–80), vol. 1, 92, commentary to 39 verso, W. 19019v (B2v), n. VI. All references to the anatomical sheets in the Royal Library Collection at Windsor Castle in this article follow the standard Windsor Castle reference system (W. #). 4 This is still maintained in the otherwise praiseworthy book by Andrea Carlino,  La  fabbrica del corpo: Libri e dissezione nel Rinasciment Rinascimento o (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), 67–132; translated as Books of the Body: Anatomical Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Renaissance Learning, trans. John Tedeschi and Ann C. Tedeschi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). See also the earlier studies: Francis Barker, “Into the Vault,” in his The Tremulous Private Body: Essays in Subjectivity (London: Methuen, 1984), 72–112; Glenn Harcourt, “Andreas Vesalius and the Anatomy of Antique Sculpture,”  Repre  Representations sentations 17 (1986): 28–61; Marie-Christine Pouchelle, Corps et chirurgie à l’apogée du Moyen Age. Savoir et imaginaire du corps chez  Henry de Mondevill Mondeville, e, chirurg chirurgien ien de Philippe Le Bel (Paris: Flammarion, 1983), and its English translation, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages , trans. Rosemary Morris (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990); and Jonathan Sawday, The Body  Emblazoned: Dissection and the the Human Body in in Renaissance Renaissance Cultur Culturee (London: Routledge, 1995). 5 Katharine Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Early Renaissance Italy,”  Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994): 1–33; and for a more detailed discussion, Katharine Park, The Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of   Human Dissection (New York: Zone Books, forthcoming 2006), esp. ch. 3. 3.

 

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6.1

Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomical Drawings. Two Two small drawings of the alimentary system (with a note on the erection of the penis). Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19019v. Photo courtesy of The Royal Collection Collec tion © 2005, Her Majesty Majesty Queen Elizabeth Elizabeth II

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in 1299 and, successively, in 1300 and 1303 – forbade the practice of  dismembering and boiling corpses (a practice related to embalming, the multiplication of burial sites, and the transportation of the deceased from distant lands). Even so, there is no evidence that this religious pronouncement stopped Italian physicians from performing post-mortems and dissections.6 Dissection and dismemberment certainly had theological implications relative to the doctrine of  resurrection, but beliefs about the effects of dismemberment on resurrection differed substantially among the Church Fathers and medieval theologians. For example, Saint Augustine believed that, ultimately, the fate of the body was meaningless as the soul of the dead separates itself completely from the body at 7

the moment death. Others, like eleventh-century theologians at the 8 University of of Paris, argued against thissome position.

6

On the impact of the bull on civil and religious practice see Mary Niven Alston, “The Attitude of the Church towards Dissection before 1500,”  Bulletin of the History of   Medicine 16 (1944): 211–38; Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator 12 (1981): 221–70; Brown, “Authority, the Family, and the Dead in Late Medieval France,” French Historical Studies 16 (1990): 803–32; Francesco Santi, “Il cadavere e Bonifacio VIII, tra Stefano Tempier e Avicenna: Intorno a un saggio di Elizabeth Brown,” Studi Medievali, 2nd series, 27 (1987): 870; Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, “Storia della scienza e storia della mentalità: Ruggero Bacone, Bonifacio VIII e la teoria della ‘prolungatio vitae,’” in Aspetti della della letteratura letteratura latina latina nel secolo secolo XII: atti del  primo convegno internazionale internazionale di studi dell’Associ dell’Associazione azione per il Medioevo e l’Umanesimo  Latini , ed. Bagliani, C. Leonardo anddel G.Papa Orlandi (Firenze: La 1994), Nuovatranslated Italia, 1983), Paravicini  Il corpo (Turin: Einaudi, as The243–80; Pope’s  Body, trans. David S. Peterson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); and Katharine Park, “The Life of the Corpse: Division and Dissection in Late Medieval Europe,”  Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995): 111–32. Paravicini Bagliani sees Boniface VIII’s position as a reflection of a “Mediterranean” investment in the integrity of the corpse. For a different position see Brown, “Authority, the Family, and the Dead,” and Park, “The Life of the Corpse,” esp. 113. 7 Augustine, The City of God against Pagans, ed. and trans. G. E. McCracken et al., Loeb Classical Library, 7 vols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957–72), vol. 1, 1.12–13 and vol. 7, 22.9; See also Augustine,  De civitate dei contra paganos, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina [electronic resource] (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1993–5), vol. 41, col. 0026–0028, 0771–2; and Augustine,  De cura pro mortuis geren gerenda da, in Patrologia Latina, vol. 40, col. 0593–6, 0598–605. 8 On the discussion about the unity of the body, and against the practice of separate

interment, in the Faculty of Theology in Paris in the eleventh century see note 6 above. For a wider account of the development of the doctrine of the resurrection through the Middle Ages, see Roger K. French,  Dissection and Vivisection in the Euro European pean Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 8–11; and Roger French and Andrew Cunningham,  Befor  Beforee Science: The Invention Invention of the Friars’ Natural Philosophy Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate, Ashgate, 1996), esp. ch. 6. 6. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, “Body Miracles and the Resurrection of the Body in the High Middle Ages,” in Thomas A. Kselman, ed.,  Belief in History: Innovative  Approaches  Appr oaches to European European and American American Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1991), 68–106; and Bynum, “Material Continuity, Personal Survival and the Resurrection of the Body: A Scholastic Discourse Discourse in its its Medieval and and Modern Contexts,” Contexts,” in her Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval  Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 239–97.

 

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As Park demonstrated in still another article, unlike Northern Europeans, Italians believed that, at death, body and soul were entirely and radically separated, and that the body no longer affected the afterlife of the soul. 9 Leonardo da Vinci himself reflected this view when he stated that “The soul can never be infected by the corruption of the body, but acts in the body like the wind which causes the sound of the organ.”10 Leonardo’s most prominent Milanese patron, Ludovico Sforza, seems to have shared this relaxed attitude towards post-mortems. When the Milanese ambassador in Florence, Francesco Castiglioni, reported to Ludovico on the death and autopsy of Lorenzo il Magnifico in April 1492, the exchange is remarkably detached tone. In this surrounding instance, Ludovico had about the suspiciousincircumstances the deaths of queried LorenzoCastiglioni and of his physician,

Pierleone Leoni. Rumor had it that Pierleone had caused Lorenzo s death and that the Medici family had taken revenge by killing Pierleone (found dead at the bottom of a well only a few days later). Castiglioni reported, however, that there was nothing suspicious in Lorenzo’s death, and that once the body was opened, “all the internal organs were found to be in their place, with the exception of the tip of his heart, which was found to be a bit damaged ( guasta).”11 Lorenzo de Medici’s autopsy, together with those of other members of powerful families (both male and female) and the numerous autopsies of aspiring female and male saints, constitute evidence that this practice was not seen as a violation of the body of the person who was anatomized.12 By the late-thirteenth century, postmortems were regularly conducted for religious, forensic, or public health purposes. Over the course of the fourteenth century, human dissection was introduced into the medical curriculum for the teaching and the study of anatomy. By the end of the fifteenth century, public dissection, forensic and medical autopsy, as well as private dissection, were common features of Renaissance medical practice.13 9

Park, “The Life of the Corpse.” 10 Leonardo da Vinci, Codice Trivulziano [i.e. Milan, Castello Sforzesco, Codex Trivulzianus N 2162], fol. 71 recto, in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. Edward MacCurdy, 2 vols (New York: George Braziller, 1958), vol. 1, 68, as quoted in Park, “The Life of the Corpse,” 119. 11 Archivio di Stato Milano (henceforth ASMi), ASMi), Carteggio Sforzesco, Potenze Sovrane, cart. 937, Francesco Castiglioni to Ludovico il Moro, Florence, s.d. (ca. April 1492): “ Ill.mo et ex.mo s. mio: Le altre lettere lettere de vostra eccelentia venute in queste tre cavalcate cavalcate non ricercano altra risposta sinoche circha al facto de Magistro Piero Lione como se e  precipitato  prec ipitato in uno pozzo, a quest’hora per altre mie letter letteree la eccellen eccellenza za vostra l’havera apieno inteso. Fo pur deliberato al ultimo de aprire il Magnifico Lorenzo et cuosi Lunedi da sera avanti fosse portato alla sepoltura fo aperto, et fo li trovato tuti li interiori neti e ben disposti, excepto che la puncta del cuore fosse uno puocho guasta.” On Pierleone Leoni see Maike Rotzoll, Pierleone da Spoleto: Vita e opere di un medico del Rinascimento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000). 12 For numerous examples of women as well as other members of noble families mentioned in the medical literature, see Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body,” and “The Life of the Corpse.” 13 Park, “The Criminal and Saintly Body.”

 

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In light of Park’s general conclusions as well as additional evidence such as Castiglioni’s letter to Ludovico, this essay argues that several long-standing assumptions about Leonardo’s anatomies and his relationship with contemporary medical practitioners need to be reconsidered. Found in standard authorities on Leonardo as well as in popular accounts, these assumptions include the notion that an ingrained taboo against dissection meant that Leonardo could not view autopsies and that he had to teach himself anatomy and perform dissections alone and in secret. Another assumption has been that Leonardo’s limited knowledge of  Latin and his lack of university training both isolated him from the professional medical learning of his day and enabled him to look afresh at the anatomy of the body to discover thingsonly his contemporaries had not studies noticed.that Scholars also often and assume that it was in his late anatomical Leonardo

collaborated closely with an anatomist, the Paduan Marcantonio della Torre (1478–1511) – a bright young medical professor at Pavia. In re-examining these assumptions, I concentrate on Leonardo’s anatomical work in Milan, the city where he spent more time than anywhere else.

Leonardo’s Anatomical Studies in Milan and Florence Leonardo lived longer in Milan than in any other city – 23 years in all – from about 1482 to 1499 and, again, from about 1506 to 1512. Although the intellectual and social contexts of his artistic commissions in Milan have been the subject of  much recent scholarship by art historians Martin Kemp, Evelyn Welch, Paola Venturelli, and Pietro Marani, the circumstances of his anatomical work in Milan have received far less attention.14 In part, this is because his best-documented anatomical drawings – and, to many scholars, the apex of his anatomical studies – seem to date from a brief  sojourn in Florence around 1507–8. There, at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, Leonardo dissected the corpse of a centenarian man who had died before his eyes in the hospital. He recorded his observations in the notes and sketches known as the “centenarian series.”15 These Florentine studies on human bodies are also

14 Martin Kemp, “‘Your “‘Your humble servant and painter:’ Towards a History of Leonardo da Vinci in his Contexts of Employment,” Gazette des beaux-arts 140 (2002): 181–94; Evelyn Welch, Art and and Authority in Renaissance Renaissance Milan (New Haven: Yale Yale University Press, P ress, 1995); Paola Venturelli, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci Vinci e le pietre preziose: Milano Milano tra xv e xvi secolo (Venice: Marsilio, 2002); Pietro C. Marani, “Leonardo’s Drawings in Milan and their Influence on the Graphic Work of Milanese Artists,” in  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Master  Draftsman, ed. Carmen C. Bambach (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 155–90. 15 Kemp maintains that Kenneth Clark presented convincing evidence in favor of the dating to 1507–8. See Martin Kemp, “Dissection and Divinity in Leonardo’s Late Anatomies,”  Journal of the Warburg Warburg and Courtauld Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972): 200; reprinted in Claire J. Farago,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: Selected Scholarship, 5 vols – vol. 5:  Leonar  Leonardo’ do’ss Science and Technology: Essential Readings for the Non-Scientist  (London: Garland,

 

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unequivocally documented by contemporary sources. An anonymous sixteenthcentury author (the so-called Anonimo Gaddiano) recounts how Leonardo “made innumerable drawings, all marvelous things, and among them one of one of our Ladies and a Saint Anne, which went to France, and anatomical studies which he drew in the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence.” 16 This passage often has been interpreted as evidence that Leonardo performed the Florentine anatomies in secrecy and on his own. 17 Such an interpretation, however, warrants reconsideration on several grounds. First, the  Anonimo tells us that Leonardo sketched these anatomies in Santa Maria Nuova, within the hospital premises, a fact that makes it unlikely that Leonardo performed the dissection secretly. the hypothesis that he wasBody alonesnatching does not constituted reflect the practice of  dissectionSecond, and autopsy in the Renaissance. a criminal

offence, and the very rare cases reported in the Renaissance were severely punished.18 Post-mortems as well as dissections generally were performed by an équipe of medical practitioners that often included an incisor, an ostensor and, at least in the case of public dissections, a lector who would explicate an anatomical

1999), 230; and Kenneth Clark,  A Catalogue of the Drawings of Leonar Leonardo do da Vinci at  Windsor Castle, 2nd edn rev., with the assistance of C. Pedretti, 3 vols (London: Phaidon, 1968–9), nos W. 19020, 19021, 19023, 19027, 19030, etc. See also Martin Clayton,  Leonardo  Leonar do da Vinci: Vinci: The Anatomy of Man (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1992), 18–19. 16 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale,  Anonimo Gaddiano, MS Magl., XVII, 17, fol. 91 verso: Fece infinitj disegnj, coseGherardini, meravigliose meravigliose, , et of infra li altrj una Nostra Donnadi[possibly Lisa di“Antonio Maria di Noldo wife Francesco di Bartolommeo Zanobi del Giocondo] e una santa Anna ch’ando in Francia, et più notomie le quali ritraeva in nello spedale di Santa Maria Nuova di Firenze.” The original Italian also was published in Cornelius von Fabriczy,  Il libro di Antonio Billi e il codice dell’anonim dell’anonimo o gaddiano (Farnborough: Gregg, 1969). An English translation is available in Claire J. Farago,  Leonardo  Leonar do da Vinci: Selected Scholarship, 5 vols – vol. 1,  Bibliography and Early Art  Criticism of Leonardo da Vinci (New York: Garland, 1999), 73–5. In my translation, I interpret “una Nostra Donna” as referring to the portrait of the Mona Lisa, and not, as indicated in Farago, 75, to the Virgin Mary (“ Madonna”). 17 This is, among others, the view of McMurrich, who also stressed Leonardo’s freedom of thought, independence from authority, and reliance upon direct observation. See James P. McMurrich,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: the Anatomist (1452–1519) (Baltimore: William and Wilkens, 1930), esp. 16; and Jane Roberts, “An Introduction to Leonardo’s Anatomical Drawings,” in  Nine Lectur Lectures es on Leonar Leonardo do da Vinci, ed. Frances Ames-Lewis (London: University of London Press, 1990), 53–62, now reprinted Farago, Leonar  Leonardo’ do’ss Science and  Technology, 265–74. This myth of Leonardo’s secret anatomies has been portrayed popularly in a BBC documentary entitled  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: The Man Who Wanted to Know  Everything (Producer Malcolm Clark, Executive Producer Michael Mosley, 2003). It also is firmly maintained in some of the scholarship. See for example, Edwin M. Todd, The  Neuroanatomy  Neuro anatomy of Leonar Leonardo do da Vinci, preface by Carlo Pedretti, foreword by Kenneth D. Keele (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1983); reprint, with a foreword by James T. Goodrich (Park Ridge: American Association of Neurological Surgeons, 1991). 18 See the case of Maestro Alberto of Bologna in Park, “The Criminal and Saintly Body,” 7. Park remarks that it was only with Vesalius in the mid-sixteenth century that “anatomists began to rely heavily on unofficial or extralegal sources of supply” (17). Carlino, La fabbrica del corpo, 222–30.

 

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text (most often, Mondino’s  Anatomia).19 A solitar solitary y dissection dissection thus thus would would have contravened well-established professional hierarchies in Renaissance hospitals and medical schools.20 It seems much more plausible that Leonardo performed these dissections in concert with Florentine medical practitioners. Leonardo’s dissection of the centenarian in Florence was not exceptional. There is evidence to suggest that anatomies of this t his sort were practiced regularly in Milanese hospitals; and Florence, in this respect, was no different from Milan. Moreover, attending anatomies may have been relatively easy once someone had ties and contacts with the medical community. His courtly patronage, as well as his many other contacts in the city, could easily have given Leonardo ample opportunities to witness (and possibly perform) anatomies in a semi-private context.21 Although documentary evidence of Leonardo’s contacts with Milan’s medical

and scientific community in the city and at the Sforza court is less detailed than historians of medicine would wish, it is still possible to reconstruct the context of  medical practice in the city and the milieu of his researches. In turn, several questions deserve further study. When did Leonardo begin his studies of anatomy? What are the sources of his learning, and how did he learn to dissect the human body? Who were his contacts contacts at court and in the city? A fresh look at the evidence of Leonardo’s notes and the context of medical practice in Milan may provide some answers. One of the few dated anatomical sheets to have survived is the first leaf of a sketch-book reporting that on 2 April 1489 – in his seventh year in Milan – 19

For a detailed description of the roles of those involved in public dissections, together with a discussion of the visual and documentary sources, see Carlino,  La fabbrica del corpo, chs 1–2. 20 For a survey of the function of Italian Renaissance hospitals in this period, see Katharine Park, “Healing the Poor: Hospitals and Medical Assistance in Renaissance Florence,” in Medicine and and Charity before before the Welfar Welfaree State, ed. Jonathan Barry and Colin Jones (London: Routledge, 1991), 26–45. See also Welch,  Art and Authority, chs 5–6. 21 The difficulty of establishing a reliable chronology is a persistent theme in Leonardo scholarship. The two most recent co-editors of the anatomical sheets, Carlo Pedretti and Kenneth Keele, admit that Leonardo’s own study practices – which often included the writing and re-writing of different different notes on the same sheet at years’ distance – make the attempt to order these drawings chronologically quite challenging. In discussing Leonardo’s drawings I rely substantially on Keele’s and Pedretti’s chronology. For a facsimile edition of the anatomical sheets, see Keele and Pedretti,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci. Corpus of Anatomical Studies. For a brief history of Leonardo’s manuscripts and their fate, see Edward MacCurdy, ed., The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols (London: Jonathan Cape, 1938, 2nd edn 1956), vol. 1, 42–55; and also Jean Paul Richter, ed., The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols (London: Phaidon, 1970), vol. 2, 393–9 (I refer to passages in Richter’s anthology according to his numeration, by R. #). On the reconstruction of Leonardo’s now lost book of painting, see Carlo Pedretti,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci on Painting: A Lost Book, Libro A, reassembled reassembled from the Codex Vaticanus Vaticanus Urbinas 1270 and from the Codex Leicester (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964). On recent challenges to the established chronology of Leonardo’s drawings, see Bambach, “Chronology,” and Marani, “Leonardo’s Drawings in Milan,” 155–90.

 

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Leonardo intended to start a book entitled “On the human figure” (Fig. ( Fig. 6.2). 6.2).22 This note accompanies some of his earliest-known anatomical drawings (of the skull and vessels of the forehead), and it is the earliest extant testimony of Leonardo’s interest in systematically systemat ically studying the workings of the human body body.. Another note, this one dated 1510, states that he hoped to finish his anatomies by that date (Fig. ( Fig. 6.3). 6.3 ).23 Leonardo thus seems to have been engaged in the writing of a book on human anatomy for over two decades, from his early stay in Milan to his later visit in 1510–12. Numerous contemporary and posthumous references to Leonardo’s anatomical drawings suggest Milanese connections. The most famous of these accounts occurs in Giorgio Vasari’ Vasari’ss second edition of the Vite (1568). Vasari Vasari not only refers to a “book on the anatomy of the horse ( libro di notomia di cavagli)” that Leonardo prepared for the equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza, but also to

the fact that he “applied himself, but with greater care, to the anatomy of man, assisted by and in turn assisting, in this research, Messer Marcantonio della Torre, an excellent philosopher, who was then lecturing at Pavia, and who wrote on this matter.”24 I shall return to Marcantonio della Torre Torre later, but for the moment I want to emphasize that Vasari’s testimony – taken together with Leonardo’s numerous extant sketches of horses – documents Leonardo’s Leonardo’s dissections of animals in Milan while under the patronage of Duke Ludovico il Moro. Writing somewhat earlier, the Renaissance historian Paolo Giovio (1486–1552) recorded that Leonardo “dissected the corpses of criminals in the medical schools (in ipsis medicorum scholis) indifferent to this inhuman and disgusting work,” in order to “paint the various joints and muscles as they bend and stretch according to the laws of nature.”25 According to Giovio’s description, Leonardo tabulated all the different parts down to the smallest veins and the composition of the bones with extreme accuracy in order to make it possible for his work to be printed.26 22 23

“ A dì 2 d’aprile 1489 libro titolato titolato de figura umana.” See W. 19059r, R. 1370. “ In questa vernata del mille 510 credo spedire tutta tal notomia.” See W. 19016, R.

1376. 24

“attese di poi, ma con maggior cura, alla notomia degli uomini, aiutato e scambievolmente aiutando in questo messer Marcantonio della Torre, eccellente filosofo, che allora leggeva a Pavia, e scriveva di questa materia.” Giorgio Vasari,  Le Vite de’più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1893), 199. The English quotations are from Giorgio Vasari,  Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and a nd Architects by Giorgio Vasari Vasari; trans. Gaston Gasto n du C. de Vere Vere (1913; reprint, reprin t, New York: AMS Press, 1976). 25 “Secare quoque noxiorum hominum cadavera in ipsis medicorum scholis inhumano  foedoque labore didicerat, ut varii membrorum flexus et conatus ex vi nervorum vertebrarumque naturali ordine pingerentur.” Paolo Giovio,  Leonar  Leonardi di Vincii Vita, first published in Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana (V (Venice, enice, 1796), vol. 7, 1641–2. For the Latin original and its English translation, see Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. 1, 2–3 (recently reprinted in Farago,  Biogra  Biography phy and Early Early Criticism Criticism, 70–71). 26 Giovio, Leonar  Leonardi di Vincii Vincii Vita Vita “… Propt Propterea erea particularum omnium formam formam in tabellis, usque ad exiles venulas, interioraque ossium, mira solertia figuravit, ut ex eo tot annorum opere (infinita exempla) ad artis utilitatem typis aeneis excuderentur .”

 

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6.2

Leonardo da Vinci. Anatomical Drawings. Two Two drawings of the cranium (with the date of 2 April 1489). Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19059r.. Photo courtesy of The Royal Collection © 2005, Her Majesty 19059r Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

 

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6.3

Leonardo da Vinci. Anatomical Drawings. Large study of the left foot and leg, showing muscles of the calf and tendons; sketch of the arm and hand (with the date of winter, 1510). Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19016r.. Photo courtesy of The Royal Collection © 2005. Her Majesty 19016r Queen Elizabeth II

 

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Giovio’s testimony is particularly relevant because he was a late contemporary of  Leonardo who lived in Milan and Pavia and who may have known him personally. 27 Moreover, Giovio refers to the dissection of criminals ( noxiorum hominum cadavera) in medical schools, a testimony that may be related to Leonardo’s note of ca. 1508 of his study of the penises of criminals, as well as to the two dated notes of 1489 and 1510 mentioned above. These notes, drawings, and sixteenth-century testimonies leave little doubt that while he was in Milan, Leonardo was able to study anatomy from the corpses of  both animals and human beings and that he attended a number of dissections in the city’s medical schools. Giovio’s account also furnishes valuable evidence about the semi-private practice of autopsies. Dissections might be disgusting, but they were not forbidden, and they did not have to be performed in secrecy. It now remains to be determined just where in Milan Leonardo might have executed his

sketches, what kind of cadavers were available, how he could have procured these bodies, and, finally, how he learned anatomy.

Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Milan The practice of dissection and autopsy was well known in Milan from the midfourteenth fourtee nth century century onward. Demands Demands on physicians’ physicians’ techni technical cal expertise expertise were frequent. Deaths in Milan were regularly documented in the  Books of the Dead  (Libri de Morti), which often recorded the cause of mortality as well as the name of the physician providing the diagnosis.28 Doctors in most northern Italian cities were required by law to report violent or suspicious deaths, as well as wounds, evidence of sodomy, and certain physical ailments.29 Most important for our purposes, the early practice of forensic medicine in Milan is documented in the city statutes of 1351–1481 that regulated the medical profession under Visconti–Sforza rule, including provisions for dissections.30 Documents for Bologna, Padua, and Florence cited by Park show that Italian 27

There are at least two periods in which both Giovio and Leonardo were living in the same city: sometime between 1501 and 1509, when Giovio had moved first to Milan and then to Pavia to pursue his studies; and a later period in Rome (between 1513 and 1516, when livedthe briefly in Rome). this second period, moreover, Leonardo and GiovioLeonardo were under patronage of In members of the Medici familyboth (Leonardo under Giuliano di Lorenzo Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Giovio Giovio under Cardinal Cardinal Giulio de’ de’ Medici, who was was to become Pope Clement VII). For Giovio’s role as a humanist physician and his relationship with Leo X, see T. C. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of  Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton Princeton University Press, 1995), esp. chs 2–3. 28 ASMi, Popolazione, Parte Antica, “Libri dei Morti.” See also Ann Carmichael, “Contagion Theory and Contagion Practice in Fifteenth-Century Milan,”  Renaissance Quarterly 44 (1991): 213–56. 29 Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body,” 5–6, 8–9. 30 Archivio dell’Ospedale Maggiore (hereafter AOM), Codex Statutorum Veterum  Mediolani, 1351–1481 1351–1481 (hereafter CSVM ). ).

 

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doctors often performed forensic autopsies, most commonly in order to rule out the suspicion of poisoning.31 The Milanese statutes do not explicitly refer to the possibility of performing post-mortems to ascertain the cause of death, but no document officially sanctions the practice. It seems entirely plausible that Milanese doctors – like their counterparts in other major northern Italian cities – performed autopsies for this purpose. We know that physicians were asked to carry out post-mortems during the plague epidemics that hit Florence and the rest of Italy in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.32 Physicians on the city payrolls also were employed for the cure of plague in the city’s lazarettos.33 Although Milan did not establish the office of   Magistrato di Sanità  – health officer – until 1534,34 the city had an Officio di Sanità (Health Office) and it appointed health officers (called ducales conservatores or deputati sanitatis) as early as the late thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries.35 It seems likely that in the majority of cases, bodies were opened to determine the cause of death and not necessarily to dissect them. Indeed, as Katharine Park has observed, public dissections were less common in fifteenth-century Italy than often is imagined.36 The Milanese city statutes of 1351–1481, like those of most northern Italian cities, called for at least one public dissection a year.37 The ordinance entitled  De cadavere dando medicis pro faciendo nothomiam indicates that on the petition of the prior of the college of physicians or of that of surgeons,

31

Park, “The Life of the Corpse,” 5. 32 One such wave of epidemics hit Venice in 1535 and the Health Office forced a rather unwilling College to practice a series of anatomies to establish the cause of death. See Richard Palmer, “Physicians and the State in Post-Medieval Italy,” in The Town and State Physician from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment , ed. A. W. Russell (Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, 1981), 56; and Palmer, “The Control of Plague in Venice and Northern Italy 1348–1600” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kent at Canterbury, 1978). See also, Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body,” 4–5. 33 The first Milanese lazaretto was established in Milan in 1451. See Carlo Decio,  La  peste in Milano nell’anno 1451 e il primo lazaretto a Cusago (Milan: Tip. L. F. Cogliati, 1900). For Venice, see Palmer, The Control of Plague. For Florence, see Ann Carmichael, Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 34 See Alessandro Visconti, Visconti, “Il magistrato magist rato di sanità nello Stato S tato di Milano,” in Archivio Storico Lombardo 4th inseries, 15 (Perugia: (1911): 263–84; Giussani,  L’archivio del  Magistrato di Sanità Milano Unione Achille Tipografica Cooperativa, 1915), previously published in  Annuario R. Archivio di Stato di Milano per l’anno 1951, 139–93. 35 ASMi, Sanità, Parte antica, 44: “Compendio cronologico storico delle vicende più rimarchevoli che hanno dato materia alle incombenze straordinarie del Magistrato di Sanità Supremo.” 36 Park, “The Criminal and Saintly Body,” 8. 37 Compare this regulation with the 1405 and 1442 University of Bologna regulations discussed in Giovanna Ferrari, “Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of Bologna,” Past and Present 117 (1987): 53–4; for university regulations in other northern cities, see her n. 23.

 

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the potestas of the city was to release the body of a criminal for dissection. 38 This dissection was to be performed in the hospital of the Brolo: The Podestà of Milan ought to concede and hand over (or have handed over by somebody else) one cadaver to the priors of the doctors of medicine just as to those of surgery who ask for it in order to perform an anatomy on the bodies of those upon whom justice will be served, and will die by justice, as long as the body that is given is of vile and humble condition. And it is clear that the Podestà ought to [do] [d o] every year as written below, namely: The cadaver of a man one year, and of a woman the other year, just as the opportunity will occur. And in order to do the said anatomy, the vicar of the office of provisions ought to make available a room in the Brolo hospital, so that it will be done more expediently.39

Contemporary evidence shows, however, that regulations like these often were neglected and that public dissections were held infrequently.40 Even had they been observed, such provisions obviously were insufficient for

the instruction of medical students. Moreover, as the Bologna anatomist Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (ca. 1460–1530) lamented in the late-fifteenth l ate-fifteenth century, public dissections taught hardly anything to those who were present. Berengario, who claimed to have anatomized several hundred bodies, did not hesitate to dismiss them as useless displays. His praise was instead for private anatomies carried out with a small number of students.41 It seems plausible, therefore, that dissections of 

38

In Milan, surgeons seem to have been clearly distinct from learned physicians. According to the Milanese statutes, Milan had both a college of physicians and  a college of surgeons. Unfortunately, we do not possess any other documentation about the college of surgeons. The little information we can infer is limited to their mention in the civic statutes, and to occasional “gride” promulgated by the Duke to reinforce regulations. We can presume, however, that the relationship between doctors and surgeons was largely one of collaboration and dependence. The statutes of the city of Milan seem to indicate that surgeons were generally employed by the civic authorities for the cure of the poor and the convicts in prisons. AOM, CSVM, Rubrica Iurisdicioniis, Cap. cxlvii: “ De ellectio ellectione ne et  officio medici cilorgie pauperum: Unus medicus cilorgie qui appelletur medicus pauperum elligatur per dominum Mediolani, cuius officium duret per annum unum et habeat pro  feudo suo libras quinquaginta tertiolorum omni anno et qui teneatur et debeat medicare gratis infirmos hospitalium civitatis Mediolani et suburbiorum Mediolani et carcerum.” 39 “ Dominus potestas mediolani teneatur concedere et trader traderee [sic] seu tradidi facere unum cadaver prioribus medicorum tam phisice quam cirogie petentibus, pro nothomiam  facienda, ex illis corporibus de quibus fiet iustitia, et morientur mediante iustitia, dum tamen illud quod singulis contingetannis, dari sit [sic ] et humilis videlicet: condicionis, et ad hoc teneatur dominus potesta subvillis forma infrascripta, cadaver masculi uno anno, et mulieris alio anno, prout casus occurrerit, et quod pro dicta nothomia facienda, vicarius officii provisionum teneatur concedi facere locum in domibus hospitalis Brolii,  prout expedientius expedientius fuerit .” .” AOM, CSVM, Extraordinariorum, cap. clii. 40 See a letter from the rector of the faculty of arts and medicine at the Studio of Pavia (the University of the Duchy of Milan) requesting the body of a woman accused of  witchcraft. The rector lamented the fact that the last public dissection happened six years before. London, Wellcome Institute, MS 5265 (dated ca. 1464–5). I wish to thank Professor Vivian Nutton for drawing my attention to this document. 41 Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body,” 15–16, esp. n. 51. On Bologna specifically, see Ferrari, “Public Anatomy,” esp. 53–5.

 

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the sort Berengario favored were practiced (whether in hospitals or doctors’ homes), and that the provenance of the bodies was not always restricted to those of criminals. Two hospitals were pre-eminent in Renaissance Milan: the Brolo and the Ca’ Granda. As far as we know, public dissections in Milan were performed only at the older of the two, the Brolo hospital – a large foundation that at times housed up to 500 bed-ridden patients. Apart from lepers, anyone who was sick could receive help there, and the commune paid the hospital’s team of three surgeons to perform surgical operations on the poor.42 Administered by a religious order, the Brolo is typical of Renaissance charitable institutions, a setting in which Italian patricians publicly demonstrated their piety by supporting the weak, the sick, and the destitute.43 Toward the late twelfth century, however, increasing mismanagement came to

characterize Milanese hospitals, and by the end of the thirteenth century a reform was much needed. Valuable Valuable examples of successful large-scale management came from Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and Santa Maria della Scala in Siena. 44 With the rise of the Sforzas, a new hospital was conceived for Milan – the Ca’ Granda. Intended to compete in splendor and efficiency with hospitals of Florence and Siena, the project was initiated by Francesco Sforza in 1456, and the Florentine architect Antonio Averlino, known as Il Filarete, was commissioned to design it – evidence of what Evelyn Welch regards as the “overwhelming control of the new duke and a small faction of his patrician supporters” over this municipal 45

institution. As forpatients patient care, the Brolo, the Ca’ Granda generally housed only short-term withunlike potentially deadly conditions, and not the chronically ill.46 By 1459 most of the Milanese hospitals were administered officially by the  Deputati sopra le Provvisioni dei Poveri (Deputies Providing for the Poor) based in the the Ca’ Ca’ Gr Gran anda da..47 A delibe deliberation ration of of these deputies deputies of of the hospital hospital dated dated 7 42

On the Brolo see Bonvesin da la Riva, De magnalibus magnalibus Mediolani, ed. and trans. Paolo Chiesa (Milan: Scheiwiller, 1997),  1997),  ch. 3, 3, vi. According to Bonvesin, at the end of the trecento Milan counted around 15 hospitals. See also Welch,  Art and Authority, 125. 43 Welch, Art and Authority Authority, 126. For the charitable as well as medical functions of the Renaissance hospital, see John Henderson, “The Hospitals of Late-Medieval and Renaissance Florence: a Preliminary Survey,” The Hospital in History, ed. L. Granshaw and R.nel Porter (London: Routledge, 1989); andsanitario-devozionale,” Henderson, “Ospedali Medicina fiorentini nei edi secoli opere d’arte Rinascimento: valore storico e ruolo ne 12 (2000): 273–95. 44 Welch, Art and Authority, 126–7. 45 Welch, Art and Authority, 120. 46 In the year 1481–2, when the Ca’ Granda was fully operative, the books record record 1808 deaths in Milan, of which 3 per cent, or 57, occurred in the city hospitals. Ten of those were in the Ca’ Granda. By the last decade decade of the fifteenth century century the number of deaths in the hospitals had increased to 10 per cent. Welch,  Art and Authority, 162. 47 The origins of the hospital and its organization in the Renaissance have been investigated in Franca Leverotti, “Sulle origini dell’Ospedale Maggiore di Milano,” Albini, “La gestione  Archivio  Arch ivio Storico Lombardo Lombardo 10th series, 6 (1981–3): 77–103; Giuliana Albini,

 

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December 1491 officially states that doctors could perform “anatomies” on the bodies of the poor, an indication that criminals were not the only subjects of  dissection. Dissection in the Milanese hospitals thus is clearly documented in 1491, and in this case, the setting appears to have been the Ca’ Granda. (Even if  these dissections took place at the Ca’ Granda, presumably the public dissection of the bodies of criminals remained at the Brolo.) The deputies of the hospital also indicated that the bodies of the poor who died in the Ca’ Granda could be used for ad hoc anatomies (nothomia particularis) at the discretion of the physicians. Most significantly for understanding Leonardo’s work, the deliberation also specified that drawings of such dissections be made ( fiat designum), and be kept on the hospital’ss premises.48 Unfortunately, none of these drawings have been preserved. hospital’ How public were these anatomies? Judging from the different status of the corpse – no longer that of a criminal but that of a pauper – the liberty conceded to

the doctors, and the meaning of the term  particularis, it is possible to speculate that these were private or semi-private anatomies to be carried out in the hospital premises by physicians and their pupils.49 As noted, they also required the presence of an artist. While we have no direct proof that Leonardo visited the Ca’ Granda, in his manuscripts there are scattered references to the Brolo, which was situated very close to the Ca’ Ca’ Granda, at the back of the Milanese cathedral.50 The Brolo remained the wealthiest wealthiest and most important hospital after the Ca’ Granda, and was particularly famous for its surgical team.51 In the documents of the time

dell’Ospedale Maggiore nel Quattrocento: un esempio di concentrazione ospedaliera,” in Ospedali e città. L’Italia del Centro-Nord, XIII–XVI secolo , ed. Allen J. Grieco and Lucia Sandri (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1997), 157–78; and Albini, “La riforma quattrocentesca degli ospedali nel Ducato di Milano, tra poteri laici ed ecclesiastici,” in Povertà e innovazioni istituzionali in Italia. Dal medioevo ad oggi , ed. Vera Zamagni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), 95–110. 48 AOM, 7 December 1491, Ordinazioni Deputati Spedalieri, “‘pro nothomia’: deliberaverunt quod de pauperibus moriendi in hospitale ad discre discretionem tionem dictorum phixicorum [sic] fiat not(h)omia particularis, et de ipsa not(h)omia fiat designum perpetuo remanendum remanendum in  prefa  pr efato to hospi hospital talee.” See also Carlo Felice Biaggi, “Gli studi anatomici dell’Ospedale Maggiore nel sec. XV e Leonardo Leonardo a Milano,” Milano,” Ospedale Maggiore 7 (1956): 405–10. 49 The context in the ordinazione does not help much in clarifying the meaning. The only other occurrences of the term “ part  particu iculari lariss” known to me are documented in the mid-sixteenth century. In this instance, it seems that its meaning can be translated either as “ad hoc” or 50 Leonardo “specific,” and itrefers refersdirectly to private Carlino,  La fabbri fabbrica del corpo del coMuseum, rpo, 225–6. to anatomies. the Brolo inSee London, Victoria andcaAlbert Codex Forster II 2 [formerly London, Forster Library, South Kensington Museum, MS S.K.M. II.2], fol. 65 recto, which can be dated to 1495–7: “Piscina da Mozania all’ospedale di  Brolio  Broli o ha molte vene per le breaccia breaccia e gambe.” See R. 1521. It is not clear what he means with “Piscina da Mozania.” In Paris, Institut de France, MS F. (2177), [inside front cover; former foliation 0’; (datable to 1508–9 or earlier)], he refers to the stufe: “ Va ogni sabato alla stufa e vedrai delli nudi .” The term stufe often indicated the communal baths at the hospital. Leonardo da Vinci,  I manoscritti dell’Institut de France, ed. Augusto Marinoni, 12 vols – Il Manoscritto F (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1988): transcr. vol., 3. See R. 1421. 51 See Welch, Art and Authority, 125; and Leverotti, “Sulle origini dell’Ospedale,” 106, where she reports the salaries of the Rettori for the year 1461.

 

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hospitals are mostly referred to as luoghi pii (pious institutions), but occasionally also consorzii or scuole.52 The name scuole (or scolle, scole) seems particularly significant given Paolo Giovio’s use of the term (in the plural) medicorum scholis to refer to the places where Leonardo performed his anatomies. Although the practice of dissection is documented only for the Brolo and the Ca’ Grand Granda, a, autopsies autopsies and dissections dissections were were routinely routinely practiced practiced in Milanese hospitals. There is no incontrovertible evidence that Leonardo practiced anatomies in the Brolo or the Ca’ Granda, but there is good reason to believe that some of Leonardo’s studies happened within these premises. Leonardo’s bestdocumented series of drawings substantiates the hypothesis that his studies were undertaken under taken in hospitals hospitals such as the Ca’ Grand Grandaa and Santa Maria Maria Nuova. The The dissection of the centenarian was completed in Florence in late 1507 or early 1508, although according to Pedretti, the detailed notes and finished drawings

were not set down until after 12 September 1508 on Leonardo s return to Milan (Fig. 6.4 and 6.4 and Fig. 6.5). 6.5).53 Significantly Significantly,, Leonardo’s description of the procedure and his statement of the cause of death of the old man reflect quite closely the general practice of post-mortem carried out by contemporary physicians in medical schools. Equally important, in Leonardo’s report, there is no hint of secretiveness or difficulty about obtaining the body. Leonardo recalls how the man died at the hospital soon after their conversation and how he performed an “anatomy” (notomia) on the old man’s body. His note reports on the cause of death of the old man, what in modern terms would be defined a coronary occlusion: And this old man, a few hours before his death told me that he was over a hundred years old and that he felt nothing wrong with his body other than weakness. And thus, while sitting on a bed in the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, without any movement or other sign of mishap, he passed out of this life. And I made an anatomy of him in order to see the cause of so sweet a death. This I found to be a fainting away through lack of blood to the artery which nourished the heart, and other parts below it, which I found very dry; thin and withered. This anatomy I described very diligently and with great ease because of the absence of fat and humours which greatly hinder the recognition of the parts. The other anatomy was on a child of two years in which I found everything contrary to that of the old man.54 52

Welch, Art and Authority, 131.

53

Forofthe dating, seeStudies Pedretti’s in Keele Pedretti,  Leonardo Vinci, Corpus Anatomical , vol.comments 2, 114–15 (note and to R. 848),  Leonar and in do hisdaRichter commentary, note to R. 848 in Carlo Pedretti, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci: Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter , 2 vols (London: Phaidon, 1977), hereafter cited as Pedretti,  Richter Commentary Commentary with Richter’s R. #. 54 “ Ecquesto vechio dj poche ore inanzi lazua morte mj djsse lui passare cento anni e chenonsi sentiua dalcun mancamento nela persona altro che deboleza e così standosi a sedere sopra vno letto nello spedale dj santa maria nova dj firenze sanza altro movimento osegnjo dalchuo accidente passò dj questa vita – e io ne feci notomja per uedere lacausa djsi dolce morte la qualle trovai venjre mene per il mancamento dj sangue, che arteria che notria ilcore elli altri membri inferiori li quali trovai molti aridi stenuati esecchi lacqual notomja discrissi assai diligentemente e con gran facilita peressere priuato dj grasso

 

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6.4

Leonardo da Vinci. Anatomical Drawings. The superficial veins of the left arm, and the vessels of the young and old. Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. W. 19027r. 19027r. Photo courtesy of The Royal Collection © 2005, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

 

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6.5

Leonardo da Vinci. Anatomical Drawings. The portal veins in old age and notes recording observations on the death of an old man in Florence. Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19027v. Photo courtesy of The Royal Collection Collection © 2005, Her Majesty Majesty Queen Queen Elizabeth Elizabeth II

 

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Leonardo’s own opinion of the value of his anatomical drawings, Paraphrasing Leonardo’s Martin Kemp comments that viewing the series “would be at least as good as the witnessing of an actual dissection,” yet at the same time he seems to exclude the possibility that Leonardo was actually performing a formal autopsy.55 Leonardo’s note, however, clearly states that he performed the anatomy to determine the cause of death. His words are remarkably similar to those used by fifteenth-century physicians in documenting their autopsies. For instance, the Florentine Antonio Benivieni reported in similar terms on the anatomy of one of his relatives, Antonio Bruni, who arranged for his body to be dissected for public benefit: Wherefore, the cadaver of the deceased having been cut up for public benefit, it was found that the ventricle of the man had so hardened in the joints of the opening toward its lowest part, that since it was able to transmit nothing from there to the inferior parts, by necessity death followed.56

On the basis of such comparisons, we can set aside Kemp’s interpretation and read Leonardo’s passage as the account of an autopsy, followed by a dissection of the rest of the body. The term “notomia” used by Leonardo and his contemporaries is semantically ambiguous, meaning – depending on context – embalming, post-mortem (or autopsy), dissection, or possibly a combination of two or more of these.57 As noted, post-mortems were much more frequent than public dissections, and semiprivate dissections seem to have been particularly common. It is impossible, however, to determine where a physician (or Leonardo, in our case) would have drawn the line between an autopsy and a dissection. Autopsies certainly offered the opportunity for physicians to increase their knowledge of the human body. It can be presumed that attempts to locate the origin of a disease saw no established edjomore che assai impedjsce lacognitione delle parti laltra notomja fu dun putto dj 2 annj  nelquale trovai ognj cosa contraia aquella del uechio .” W. 19027v; ca. 1504–6. Transcription [contractions expanded here] and translation, Keele and Pedretti,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Corpus of Anatomical Studies, vol. 1, 214, 69v (B10v), n. III. 55 “ … his ultimate aim cannot be equated with that of a modern pathologist examining a heart-failure victim in a post-mortem room.” Kemp, “Dissection and Divinity,” 203 (reprinted in Farago, Leonar  Leonardo’ do’ss Science Science and Technology, 233). Similarly, Keele says, “The stimulus to Leonardo’s performance of a post-mortem was to find the cause of the physiology of death, not its pathology as is assumed today.” Keele and Pedretti,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Corpus of Anatomical Studies, vol. 1, 214. Leonardo’s comment is on W. 19070v. 56 “Quare defuncti cadavere publicae utilitatis gratia inciso inventum est hominis ventriculum ita iunctis oris ad imam eius partem obcalluisse, ut cum nihil inde ad inferiora transmittere potuerit, necessario mors subsecuta sit .” .” Antonio Costa and Giorgio Weber, “L’inizio dell’anatomia patologica nel Quattrocento fiorentino sui testi di Antonio Benivieni, Bernardo Torni, Leonardo da Vinci,”  Arc  Archivio hivio “de Vecchi” per l’anatomia  patologica 39 (1963): 564–5. For further examples, see Antonio Benivieni,  De abditis nonnullis ac mirandis morborum et sanationum causis , ed. Giorgio Weber (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994). 57 On the term “anatomy” used to indicate embalming, see the case indicated in Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body,” 6.

 

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limits to the intervention of the physician (or the person who was manually performing the operations under his guidance) on the corpse of the deceased. This can explain why, when it comes to images, it is not always easy to distinguish between representations of the different practices associated with anatomy – namely public dissection, autopsy, and private dissection.58 From the detailed nature of Leonardo’s drawings of the vecchio’s internal organs, it seems evident that both for Leonardo and for fifteenth-century physicians, performing a notomia may have often entailed practicing both an autopsy and a partial dissection. Although there is no evidence that Leonardo participated in the anatomies anatom ies held at the Ca’ Grand Granda, a, we should notice notice the similarities similarities between between Leonardo’s partial anatomies and the provisions for anatomies and drawings indicated in the 1491 deliberation of the Milanese hospital. At the very least, Leonardo was not unique in recording anatomical dissections, and he may well have taken part in the anatomies that were carried out in the Milanese hospitals.

Leonardo’ss Interactions with the Milanese Medical Community Leonardo’ Leonardo’s drawings were not based solely on observation; much of what he drew Leonardo’s does not correspond to our current knowledge of anatomy. This is a point that has often troubled historians of anatomy: how could such a keen observer and skilled draftsman make such mistakes? If, however, we regard these drawings as a form of visual thinking, through which Leonardo tried to understand beliefs and theories of the human body found in the anatomical textbooks of the time (particularly Mondino’s  Anatomia and Avicenna’s Canon), then these drawings become less problematic.59 That is, Leonardo sketched the human body not only according to what he was able to observe, but also according to what he read and heard from his contemporaries. Reading, listening, and observing were intimately interrelated aspects of Leonardo’s learning. Personal interpretation, graphic codification, and expectations based on acquired learning all intertwined in a complex set of relationships. This can be seen particularly well in an anatomical drawing dated to around 1493–1500 and produced in Milan (Windsor 19097v). The drawing addresses issues of embryology, reproduction, and the shape and function of female and 58

Andrea Carlino, “Marsia, Sant’Antonio ed altri indizi: Il corpo punito e la dissezione fra Quattro e Cinquecento,” in  Le corps à la Renaissance Renaissance:: Actes du XXXe Colloque de Tours 1987 , ed. Jean Célard (Paris: Aux amateurs de livres, 1999), 135. For a study of  Renaissance anatomical iconography see also Carlino, La fabbrica del del corpo, esp. ch. esp. ch. 1. 1. In addition, Park remarks that “the techniques of embalming and autopsy are so similar that it is impossible to distinguish them in contemporary images.” Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body,” n. 13. 59 See especially Martin Martin Kemp, “‘Il concetto concetto dell’anima’ dell’anima’ in Leonardo’s Leonardo’s Early Skull Studies,” Journal of the Warburg Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 115–34, and Kemp, “Dissection and Divinity.”

 

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(Fig. 6.6). male genitalia (Fig. 6.6). Leonardo’s note seems to be a memorandum; it comprises a series of questions that he wants to investigate. They include a note as to what the testicles have to do with coition and the sperm, how the infant breathes and how it is nourished through the umbilicus, why one soul governs two bodies as you see when the mother desires a certain food and the infant remains marked by it, and why an eight-month baby does not live. 60 As scholars have noticed, the drawings of the male and female reflect some common medical beliefs of the time, and not the actual anatomy of the human body as we understand it today.61 For example, it was generally believed that the imagination of the mother influenced the embryo, and that a desire for a certain type of food would leave a mark on the baby’s skin (a belief that is still present in Italian folklore). Likewise, according to Hippocratic–Galenic physiology, on conception, the blood of the retained menses would be carried to the breasts by way of the epigastric veins and transformed into milk.62 Although, below this drawing, Leonardo scribbled

the note “here two creatures are cut through the middle and the rest is described,” it seems clear that Leonardo’s sketch of the female and male copulating does not reflect an actual dissection.63 It follows, instead, a number of popular medical theories about the source of conception and the begetting of the soul in the body of the embryo. Leonardo was here investigating the anatomy of the penis in order to establish how the soul was infused in the embryo. This study seems to have preceded, and may be related to, his study of the erection of the penis in his 1508 note. 64 Examples of this kind demonstrate Leonardo’s interest in and reliance upon the theories propounded in the medical literature of the time. Given his description of  himself as a “man without letters,” how did he learn these medical concepts?65 The

60

The recto of this folio may refer to the statue of Francesco Sforza or to the building up of an anatomical model. Clark dated it to ca. 1493. O’Malley and Saunders date the sheet to around 1500 on the basis of a reference to ulcers ( ferite) that, they speculate, may refer to syphilis. I think the sentence “ per queste figure si dimosterra la cagione di molti  pericoli di ferite e malattie” is too generic to grant such an interpretation, and I am more inclined to keep Clark’s dating of around 1493. See Clark, Drawings of Leonar Leonardo do da Vinci Vinci, vol. 3, 37–8; and Charles D. O’Malley and J. B. de C. M. Saunders, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Vinci, on the Human Body (New York: Henry Schuman, 1952), 460. 61 Keele and Pedretti, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Vinci, Corpus Corpus of Anatomical Studies, vol. 1, 78, 35r. 62 On the blood’s transformation into breast milk, see Hippocrates, Volume VIII , ed. and trans. Paul Potter, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), Glands, paragraph 16, 123–4. On maternal imagination, see Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, Wonders and an d the Order of Nature, N ature, 1150–1750 1150–1750 (New York: York: Zone Books, Books , 2001), 221, 330. 63 “Qui si taglia due creature per me[z]zo, el rimanente si disscrive .” O’Malley and Saunders’s translation “Here two creatures are cut through the middle and the remains are described” may be over-interpreting “el rimanente.” It is unlikely that Leonardo referred to the human remains of a dissection. O’Malley and Saunders,  Leonard  Leonardo o da Vinci on the  Human Body, 460. 64 Cf. W. 19019v (Fig. (Fig. 6.1) 6.1) and W. 19097v (Fig. (Fig. 6.6). 6.6). 65 For Leonardo’s description of himself as a “homo sanza lettere,” “a man without letters,” in the Proemio to the book on painting, see Richter, vol. 1, 116, R. 10.

 

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6.6

Leonardo da Vinci. Anatomical Drawings. Coition of hemisected man and woman (with dissection of the penis). Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 19097v. 19097v. Photo courtesy of The Royal Collection © 2005, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

 

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question of Leonardo’s knowledge of Latin and his access to these medical writings has haunted Leonardo scholars for decades. All major scholars agree that Leonardo’s medical knowledge derives in large part from the classical, medieval, and Arabic works that were studied in the medical curriculum of fifteenth-century universities. There is no consensus, however, about how Leonardo managed to read this material, which was written in rather technical, and sometimes difficult, Latin.66 Leonardo’s Latin was, at best, fair, certainly not proficient, and he had no university training in medicine. A brief note – “Have Avicenn vicennaa translated (Fa tradurre Avicenna)” – reveals Leonardo’s willingness to go to considerable lengths to understand a key medical authority available only in Latin. As a general assumption, it is reasonable to suggest that Leonardo learned a good deal of medicine through oral instruction. Like all artists of his day, he acquired his craft in workshops where knowledge was shared and instruction was imparted verbally. It is also well documented that

he learned mathematics this way from his friend, the Franciscan mathematician Luca Pacioli.67 If Leonardo was similarly able to listen to Milan’s physicians and surgeons expound texts, to pose his questions directly to them, and to work with them at the dissecting table, this would help explain his access to the content of  Latin medical treatises and the related issues of his ability to procure bodies and perform anatomies.68 Documenting such unofficial, non-contractual situations often is impossible; but miscellaneous notes in Leonardo’s manuscripts show several examples of interactions between him and Milanese medical practitioners. There were three institutional settings where Leonardo would have encountered learned Milanese physicians: the hospitals (and their pharmacies), the court, and the Studio – the Duc Duchy’ hy’ss unive universi rsity ty in neighboring Pavia. Physicians were connected to the court through the Sforza 66

Scholars who have raised doubts about Leonardo’s knowledge of Latin include Eugenio Garin, Carlo Dionisotti and, especially, Augusto Marinoni. See E. Garin, “Il problema delle fonti del pensiero di Leonardo,” in  Atti del Convegno di Studi Vinciani (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1953), 157–72; C. Dionisotti, “Leonardo uomo di lettere,” Italia  Medioevale e Umanistica 5 (1968): 183–216; A. Marinoni, Gli appunti grammaticali e lessicali di Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols (Milan: Castello Sforzesco, 1944–52); A. Marinoni, “Saggio sugli appunti grammaticali e lessicali di Leonardo,” in Leonardo da Vinci, Scritti  Letterari, ed. A. Marinoni (Milan: Rizzoli, 1974), 227–38; and Marinoni, “Note sulla ricerca delle fonti dei manoscritti vinciani,” Raccolta Vinciana Vinciana 25 (1993): 3–37, esp. 5–11. Scholars more inclined to believe that Leonardo possessed at least a working knowledge of  Latin include Pierre Duhem, Etudes sur L. de V. V. Ceux qu’il qu’il a lus et ceux ceux qui l’ont l’ont lu (1906; reprint, Paris: Editions des Archives Contemporaines, 1984); and Edmondo Solmi, Scritti Vinciani (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974). Joanne Snow-Smith’s article, “Leonardo da Vinci and Printed Ancient Medical Texts: History and Influence,”  Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 90 (2004): 2–16 should be used with caution. 67 On the relationship between Leonardo and Pacioli, see Monica Azzolini, “Anatomy of a Dispute: Leonardo, Pacioli and Scientific Courtly Entertainment in Renaissance Milan,”  Early Science and Medicine Medicine 9 (2004): 115–35. 68 The annotations in R. 1448 suggest that Leonardo asked people to explain a variety of subjects. They often start with “Fatti mostrare … ,” “ Domanda a … .”

 

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patronage of hospitals and through the Duke’s control over university appointments.69 The court itself employed a number of physicians and surgeons, and some universitytrained medical professors also were appointed as court physicians. Leonardo’s earliest documented acquaintance with a doctor is that of Fazio Cardano. The degree of Fazio’s active involvement in medicine is hard to determine. He earned his living partly as a lawyer, but he also possessed a degree in medicine (a fact that has been largely overlooked by Leonardo scholars). 70 Sometime after 1502, he taught geometry in the Scuole Piattine, one of the civic schools schoo ls attached to the hospital Ca’ Grand Granda. a.71 The Cardano family itself produced numerous practicing physicians, notably Fazio’s son, Girolamo Cardano.72 Leonardo’s manuscripts reveal ample familiarity with Fazio Cardano’s edition of  Pecham’s Perspectiva communis, which was published in Milan in 1482–3. 73 Leonardo also refers to a “Fatio” in a miscellaneous list of books that Leonardo wanted to see – datable to 1495–9: “Ask Messer Fazio to show you the book ‘On

Proportions (Fatti mostrare da messer Fatio di proporti Proportions proportione one ), and he adds, get from Messer Fazio the proportions of Alkindi with the notes of Marliano (le  proportioni  proporti oni d’Alchino colle considerationi considerationi del Marliano da messer messer Fatio).”74 One

69

The Duke of Milan exerted direct control over the appointment and the salaries of the professors teaching at the Studio. Ludovico il Moro, however, maintained a separate school for rhetoric, poetry, Greek and mathematics in Milan. The scholars teaching in Milan generally had higher salaries than those in Pavia. On the relationship between the Duke and the Studio, see Agostino Sottili, “L’Università di Pavia nella politica culturale sforzesca,” in Gli Sforza a Milano e in Lombardia e i loro rapporti con gli stati italiani ed europei (1450–1535) (Milan: Cisalpino Goliardica, 1982), 519–81. On the Studio of Pavia see also, Paul F. Grendler, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 82–93. On the Milanese teaching of Pacioli, see Alfonso Corradi,  Memorie e documenti per la Storia dell’Università dell’Università di Pavia e degli uomini più illustri illustri che v’insegnarono , 2 vols (1877–8; reprint, Bologna: Arnaldo Forni editore, 1970), vol. 1, 162–5; and Sottili, “L’Universita di Pavia,” 540–42. 70 Cardano’s dedicatory preface notes that Pecham’s work has been edited: “ per eximius eximius artium et medicine ac iuris utriusque doctorem ac mathematicum peritissimum Facium Cardanum Mediolanensem in venerabili colegio peritorum Mediolani residentem ,” fol. 2 recto. (Emphasis is mine.) On Fazio and Leonardo and some of the terminology of the Paragone, see also, my “In Praise of Art,” Renaissance Studies Studies 9 (2005): 487–510. 71 Savatore Spinelli,  La Ca’ Granda 1456–1956  (Milan: Antonio Cordani, 1956), 97; and Nancy Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance  Medicine (Princeton: Princeton Princeton University Press, 1997), 98, and 270, n. 23. 72 ASMi, Giovanni Sitoni di Scozia, Theatrum Genealogicum Familiarum Illustrium,  Nobilium, et Civium Inclytae Inclytae Urbis Mediolani […], MS. 1705, s.v. Cardano. 73 Johannes de Pecham, Perspectiva communis (Mediolani, 1482–3). On Fazio and Leonardo see Solmi, Scritti Vinciani, s.v.; Kemp, The Marvellous Works, 102 and  passim; and Claire Farago,  Leonar  Leonardo’ do’ss Paragone: A Critical Interpret Interpretation ation with a New New Edition of  the Text in the Codex Urbinas (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 291. Leonardo owned Pecham’s book, which is listed in the book list in the  Madrid Codex II . See item n. 42 (“Prospettiva comune”), in Marinoni, “I libri di Leonardo,” in Leonardo da Vinci, Scritti Letterari, 242. Fazio’s son, the famous Girolamo, was well acquainted with Leonardo’s researches, but he had mixed feelings about them. See Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror, 99, 110. 74 See R. 1448 (translations mine).

 

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could even speculate that Leonardo was Fazio’s pupil at the Scuole Piattine. This note also suggests the possibility that it was through Fazio that Leonardo first came in contact with the powerful Milanese family of the Marliani, many of  whom practiced medicine and law and enjoyed the Duke’s patronage. The bestknown member of this family was the ducal physician Giovanni Marliani, whose studies in physics received critical attention by Marshall Clagett. 75 Marliani’s sons were themselves university doctors and taught in the Studio in neighboring Pavia. Notes scattered over a dozen years reveal Leonardo’s knowledge of books written or owned by the Marliani, as well as his assumption that he would be welcome to consult their copies. Around 1493, Leonardo notes that “Maestro Giuliano da Marliano has a fine herbal,” and he specifies Marliani’s address: “He lives opposite to Strami the Carpenters ( Maestro Giuliano da Marliano a un bello erbolaro; sta a riscontro alli Strami legnamieri).”76 In the 1495–9 list of books

that Leonardo wanted to see (some of which appear in his second book list of ca. 1503–4), along with the note linking Fazio and Marliani to the work by Alkindi on proportions, Leonardo notes books on both mathematics and medicine available at the Marlianis: Algebra which is with the Marliani and was written by their father ( Algibra ch’é apresso i Marliani fatta dal loro padre) [Book] on the bones at the Marlianis (dell’osso, de’Marliani).77

And in another shorter list, Leonardo refers briefly to “Marliano ‘On calculation’ ( Il  Il Marliano de calculatione).”78 Alongside that  Marlian  Marliano o de calcula calculatione tione , Leonardo lists an important anatomical treatise in Latin by one of the most established anatomists of the day, 75

Marshall Clagett, Giovanni Marliani and Late Medieval Physics (1941; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1967). My spelling follows Clagett except when I quote Leonardo. 76 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Codex Forster III [Formerly London, Forster Library, South Kensington Museum MS S.K.M. III] fol. 37 verso; R. 1386 (translation mine). Richter indicates in a footnote that this refers to a “Giuliano da Marliano, appointed physician of Lodovico il Moro.” I have not found any Giuliano da Marliano identified as a physician of Ludovico il Moro in any of the sources consulted (archival or otherwise). Numerous members of the Marliani family practiced medicine, so Leonardo could be referring to one of them. It is also possible that Richter transcribed incorrectly. I have not been able to consult the original manuscript to verify the transcription. The date is from Pedretti, Richter Commentary Commentary, vol. 2, 328, R. 1386. 77 R. 1448 (translations mine). 78 Paris, Institut de France, MS F. (2177), [inside front cover; former foliation, 0’]. Leonardo,  Il Manoscritto F : transcr. vol., 3, 4 n. 7, R. 1421. Girolamo Calvi,  I manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci dal punto di vista cronologico storico e biografico (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1925), dates MS. F to 1508–9. The note is certainly related to the Milanese milieu, as it also mentions a “Dante di Niccolò della Croce.” Niccolò della Croce was a noble Milanese favored by Ludovico il Moro. As the list includes a number of books which appear in the second list of 1503–4, I would be inclined to date the note to the earlier period of Leonardo’s first stay in Milan, and certainly before 1503.

 

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the Venetian Alessandro Benedetti. What Leonardo calls  Anatomia, Alessandr Alessandro o  Benedetto is probably the first printed edition of the Historia corporis humani humani sive  Anatomice, libri v, published in Venice Venice in 1495. (A second edition appeared in 1502.)79 The Benedetti reference and the t he reference to the Marliani’s book on bones in the 1495–8 list testify to Leonardo’s serious interest in anatomy by 1495. Leonardo’s Milanese medical contacts were not limited to Cardano and the Marliani. At least four other names can be mentioned. A note dated to Leonardo’s Leonardo’s first period in Milan, stating that “the sons of maestro Giovanni Ghiringhelli have works by [Biagio] Pelacani ( Eredi  Eredi di maestro Giovanni Ghiringhello anno opere del Pelacano),” seems to indicate that Leonardo also had contacts with the family of Giovanni Ghiringhelli, another well-established medical professor at Pavia. 80 We also know that on at least one occasion, Leonardo met three other ducal physicians – Ambrogio Varesi, Gabriele Pirovano, and Nicolò Cusano – in front of whom Leonardo may have disputed on the superiority of painting painti ng over the other 81

liberal arts. Leonardo may have had some further contacts with at least one of  these three physicians, Nicolò Cusano, as he further mentions menti ons “el Cusano medico” in a sheet of the Codex Atlanticus.82 Finally, there is the famous association between Leonardo and the young Paduan professor at Pavia, Marcantonio della Torre, that was recorded by Vasari and perhaps also indicated by the note on a sheet of Leonardo’s embryological drawings: “libro dell’acqua a messer Marcho antonio (the book on water to master Marco Antonio).”83 Even without knowing the precise circumstances of  their dissecting partnership or the town that was the site of their dissections, it is clear that this represents a situation where Leonardo’s knowledge of anatomy was facilitated by close contact with the medical community of Milan and the Pavia

79

Leonardo,  Il Manoscritto F: transcr. vol., 3, 4 n. 7; R. 1421 (translations mine). 80 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Codex Forster III [formerly, Forster Library, South Kensington Museum MS S.K.M. III] fol. 86 recto; R. 1496. Giovanni Ghiringhelli taught at Pavia between 1443 and 1483: ad lecturam Logicae between 1442 and 1443, ad  lecturae medicinae et metaphysicae in 1453, ad lecturam philosophiae ordinariae in 1455, ad lecturam physicae ordinariae between 1461 and 1462, ad lecturam philosophiae ordinariae between 1464 and 1465, ad praticae medicinae de sero between 1467 and 1468, and ad lecturam Almansoris in 1483. Biagio Pelacani taught at Pavia between 1374 and 1407: ad lecturam loycae et philosophiae between 1374 and 1375, ad lecturam  philosophiae moralis, astrologiae et mathematica mathematicaee in 1404, and between 1406 and 1407. Corradi, Memorie e documenti, vol. 1, 115 and vol. 2, 147. 81 Luca Pacioli,  De divina proport proportione ione, intro. by Augusto Marinoni (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1982; facsimile edition of the manuscript at the Ambrosiana Library, Milan), fols 1 verso–2 recto. See also Azzolini, “Anatomy of a Dispute,” 115–35. 82 R. 1424. See also Solmi, Scritti Vinciani, s.v. On Cusano see  Memorie e documenti, vol. 1, 120; and Pedretti, Richter Commentary Commentary, vol. 2, 336, R. 1424. 83 Vasari, Vite, note 24 above. See Clark,  Drawings of Leonar Leonardo do da Vinci, vol. 3, 40, and comments on W. 19102r. Pedretti,  Richter Commentary, vol. 2, R. 1433. See also Martin Clayton, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Vinci, The Anatomy of Man: Drawings from from the Collection Collection of   Her Majesty Majesty Queen Queen Elizabeth Elizabeth II (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1992), 125, cat. 22A. The book on water may have been Leonardo’s own work.

 

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Studio. But, rather than this being Leonardo’s first association with a learned physician, it may have been the last of several.84

Conclusion: The Myth of the Isolated Genius This essay has focused quite narrowly on Leonardo’s connections with the Milanese medical community and the consequences of these connections for his work in anatomy, medicine, and natural philosophy. Even without Leonardo’s presence, the make-up of that community and its members’ roles in Milanese civic life, public health, medical education, medical practice, and court culture warrant much more attention from historians. However, this essay has a larger aim: to use the interactions between Leonardo and the Milanese doctors as a partial corrective to the deep-rooted Romantic view of Leonardo as the isolated genius. Given the strong sense of professional hierarchy among physicians in the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one could legitimately object to the picture presented here on the grounds that the world of the Milanese doctors would have been closed to Leonardo; he belonged to a distinctively different social class, and he did not share their command of Latin. Leonardo did, however, have much in common with the university-trained surgeons who operated with these physicians. For both the surgeons and Leonardo, work consisted of the union of theory and manual practice, and informal instruction was probably in the vernacular. 85 In any case, it is possible that too much emphasis has been placed on the separation between the professional spheres of the learned physician, the surgeon, and the artist. To cite a parallel example, Pamela Long’s recent studies of  Renaissance technology convincingly demonstrate that the flourishing production of manuscripts on the mechanical arts by both artisans and university-educated humanists in fifteenth-century southern Germany and northern Italy fits poorly with Edgar Zilsel’s influential position that the Renaissance artisan was separate from learned elites.86 The commonality of themes and interests suggests a certain level of interaction and exchange between high and low culture, as well as theoretical and practical knowledge. 84

Marcantonio della Torre died of plague in 1511. On della Torre see M. T. Gnudi, “Torre, Marcantonio della,” in Dictionary of Scientific Scientific Biography Biography, ed. Charles Gillispie, 18 vols (New York: Scribner, 1970–81), vol. 13, 430–31. On Leonardo’s anatomical studies in the Roman hospitals, and his relationship with Leo X, see Adalberto Pazzini, “Leonardo da Vinci e l’esercizio dell’anatomia in Roma,” Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissensc Naturwissenschaften haften 37 (1953): 329–37. 85 On Milanese surgeons, see note 38 above. 86 Pamela O. Long, “Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of  Ars: From Mechanical Know-How to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age,”  Isis 88 (1997): 1–41, esp. 1–6; and Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of  Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore (Baltimore:: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), esp. chs 4 and 7. See also Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and   Experience in the Scientific Scientific Revolution Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

 

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Long argues that the patronage that encouraged the production of texts on subjects as varied as gunpowder, artillery, machines, painting, sculpture, architecture, and the military arts developed because of a new, close alliance between political and military praxis and the mechanical arts. Mario Biagoli has documented a similar social phenomenon for teachers of geometry and arithmetic in which patronage and military interests elevated the social status of all these practitioners of the mechanical and mathematical arts.87 University-trained natural philosophers also were welcomed at the court, as historians of science have shown; and, for at least a small, elite group of artists and poets with high intellectual aspirations, the courts offered numerous contacts with the learned and semi-learned spheres of society.88 Many, perhaps most, contacts among otherwise socially distinct classes of practitioners – university-trained natural philosophers or physicians, mathematicians, engineers, artisans, literary figures – happened in the context of Renaissance patronage.89 It was not exceptional for a person with a valuable set of skills to find noble

patrons. Leonardo could be counted as a member of many of these categories – artist, artisan, inventor, engineer, mathematician – but, in fact, it was his activities as a military engineer for the Duke of Milan and his projects related to the castle of Porta Giovia that brought him into Milanese court circles.90 Courtly patronage was instrumental in bridging the social and educational gap that divided him from the university-trained physician. In order to meet, artists and physicians had to be a legitimate part of the same social milieu, and court patronage provided a common ground for such encounters. The myth of Leonardo da Vinci as an isolated genius is an old one; and, like the myth of medieval and Renaissance resistance to dissection, it has proven almost impossible to extinguish. Similarly, Leonardo’s “modernity” continues to captivate historians; Carmen Bambach, for instance, describes Leonardo as 91 “largely self-taught intellectually.” She goes on to describes him as “the 87

Mario Biagioli, “The Social Status of Italian Mathematicians: 1450–1600,”  History of Science 27 (1989): 41–95. A parallel dynamic dynamic of social advancement advancement can explain explain both Pacioli’s and Leonardo’s arguments in favor of mathematics and painting in their works De divina proportione and the Paragone; see Azzolini, “Anatomy of a Dispute.” 88 See Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), and Frances Ames-Lewis, The Life of the Early Renaissance Artist  (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 89 See, for example, Bruce T. Moran, ed., Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court, 1500–1750 (Rochester: Boydell, 1991); Mario Biagioli, “Galileo’s System of Patronage,”  History of Science Science, 28 (1990): 1–62; and Biagoli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 90 “ Leonar  Leonardus dus de Flore Florentia ntia ingeniare [sic] et pinctore.” See ASMi,  Autografi, Elenco  Ingegneri ducali, cart. 87, s.d. See Alba Osimo, “Bramante, Leonardo e gli altri,” in  Ludovico il Moro Moro:: La sua città e la sua corte (1480–1499) (Milan: New Press, 1983), 85–104, esp. 103. 91 Carmen C. Bambach, “Introduction to Leonardo and his Drawings,” in  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Master Draftsman, 3.

 

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polymath theorist, scientist, and inventor whose work has spoken across the centuries with an astonishingly modern voice,” and someone who “transcended his time.”92 In discussing Leonardo’s anatomies, she also reiterates the point that “human dissections were extremely regulated and usually performed only on the corpses of criminals.”93 In a similar fashion, Jane Roberts describes Leonardo as an autodidact in the practice of anatomy, a man who was “centuries in advance of  others.”94 The theory of the self-taught man certainly sustains the idea that Leonardo remained excluded from much of the learning of his day. This, in turn, overplays his “discoveries” and feeds into the image of the genius. Even when scholars admit some collaboration, as in the case of Leonardo’s association with the anatomist Marcantonio della Torre, it is to argue that Marcantonio recognized Leonardo’s genius and that he partnered with him in order to illustrate a book on anatomy.95 The danger of taking Leonardo’s isolation and superiority for granted is that it stops us from asking what Leonardo shared with his contemporaries. Once we start looking for evidence of possible associations and collaborations, we

see a man eager to overcome his own deficiencies of education by learning from others. Recognizing this does not diminish Leonardo’s unprecedented talents, but it will enlarge our own understanding of his accomplishments and his world.

92

Bambach, “Introduction,” 4. For a provocative argument against Leonardo’s “modernity” see Piers Britton, “The Signs of Faces: Leonardo on Physiognomic Science and the ‘Four Universal States of Man,’”  Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 143–62, esp. 143–4. 93 Bambach, “Introduction,” 15. 94 Roberts, “An Introduction,” 62, reprinted in Farago,  Leonar  Leonardo’ do’ss Science and  Technology, 274. 95 Erwin Panofsky, “Notes on the ‘Renaissance-Dämmerung,’” in The Renaissance: Six  Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 162; reprinted in Claire J. Farago,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: Selected Scholarship, 5 vols – vol. 4,  Leonar  Leonardo’ do’ss Writings Writings and the Theory of Art  (New York: Garland, 1999), 60, where he compares Leonardo’s collaboration with Marcantonio to that of other famous pairs such as Vesalius and Calcar, and Galileo and Cigoli. On the collaboration of artists and anatomists, see Bernard Schultz,  Art and   Anatomy in Renaissance Renaissance Italy (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985).

 

Chapter 7

(Hu)morall Exempla (Hu)mora Exemplars: rs: Type and Temperament in Cinquecento Painting Piers D. Britton* Britton*

For Suzy Butters, with affection and esteem In Leonardo da Vinci’s provisional outline for a tract on human physiology,

anatomy, and physiognomy, dated to around 1490, he made it clear that part of the anatomy, function of his book would be to describe the “complexions” of men and women.1 For Leonardo and his contemporaries, this term meant rather more than skin tone and texture: in the Galenic medical tradition on which he drew, “complexion” connoted a person’s whole physiological and temperamental makeup. makeup.2 In similar vein, certain fragments of Leonardo’s writings on figural representation indicate that his ideas on the human form in action and repose were informed by the theory of four humors, with which the idea of complexion was inextricably related. 3 Later

*  Among the people whose suggestions have influenced the ideas embodied in this essay are Michael Bury, David O’Connor, Caroline Elam, Nicholas Penny, John Onians, Jill Dunkerton, Alex Pilcher, Sive Walker, Humfrey Butters, John Law, and Patricia Rubin. I am especially grateful to John Paoletti and Simon Barker for invaluable comments on early drafts of this text, and to Dolly Conger for fastidious proofreading. Carol Plazzotta and other members of the curatorial and library staff at the National Gallery, London, were unfailingly helpful at an early stage in the planning. I also thank Gene and Dodie Cavender for providing warm hospitality while I was preparing this piece, and the editors of  Visualizing Medieval Medicine, Jean Givens, Alain Touwaide, and Karen Reeds, for an extraordinary level of support and encouragement. To the dedicatee, my Ph.D. supervisor Suzy Butters, who nurtured the better parts of the thinking that informs this piece for almost a decade, I owe more than can possibly be vested in words. 1 W. 19037v, in Kenneth D. Keele and Carlo Pedretti,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: Vinci: Corpus Corpus of the  Anatomical  Anatom ical Studies Studies in in the Collect Collection ion of Her Her Majesty Majesty the Queen Queen at Windsor Castle Castle (London: Johnson Reprint Co., 1978–80), 81v: “ Poi discrivi l’omo cresciuto e la femmina, e sue

misure, e nature di complessione, colore e filosomie … Dipoi figura in quattro storie quattro universali casi delli omini, cioè letizia, con vari atti di ridere, e figura la cagion del riso;  pianto,, in vari modi,  pianto modi, colla sua cagione; cagione; contenz contenzione ione con vari vari movimenti movimenti d’uccisioni d’uccisioni,, fughe,  paure,  paur e, ferocità, ferocità, ardiment ardimenti,i, ’micidi ’micidi e tutte cose apparte appartenenti nenti a simil simil casi.” 2

For an excellent recent analysis of the role of complexion and humoral theory in Leonardo’s thinking about anatomy and physiognomy, see Domenico Laurenza, De figura umana: Fisiognomica, anatomia e arte in Leonardo (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2001), esp. 30–1, 66–70, and 96–9. 3 For a good summary of the interrelation of the notion of humors and complexions, see 177

 

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Italian authors on the theory and practice of painting, such as Paolo Pino, writing in the 1540s, and Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, writing around 1570, also showed familiarity with the principle of diverse complexions or humors, in relation not only to artists’ subjects but also artists themselves and their audiences. Pino was at pains to stress that painters should have an understanding of human physiognomy, and that the representation of complexional variety was a demonstration of skill proper to the medium.4 Conversely, Lomazzo complained that relatively few painters had the subtlety to show how men’s actions were informed by their passions and humors.5 In the light of this written evidence, which spans the better part of a century, it seems reasonable to assume that humoral/complexion theory had some influence on Italian figure painting in the Cinquecento, even if it was not as effectively handled by artists as Lomazzo wished. Vasari’s use of the word “melancholic” to describe painted figures by Michelangelo, Perino del Vaga, and his own assistant Doceno suggests that Italian artists both recognized and knew how to render at

least one of the humoral types. Yet, beyond the exegeses of a few obscure and arcane works which seem to depict the four humors as a set, there has been no serious scholarly attempt to explore the extent or range of ways that Italian or Cisalpine painters of the sixteenth century drew on humoral theory in figural imagery.6 The present essay is meant as a preliminary study of the ways that humoral theory influenced figural art in the so-called Renaissance, focusing chiefly on painting practice in Italy.7 The essay divides into three unequal sections. First, I briefly compare passages by Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo which suggest ways in which artists may have relied on humoral theory in developing their images. Next, I examine two categories of figure subjects which appear to be Laurenza,  De figura umana, 96–100. For a fuller discussion of the vicissitudes of these medical principles, see Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and   Melancholy:: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy  Melancholy Philosophy,, Religion and Art  (London: Nelson, 1964), 55–66. 4 Paolo Pino,  Dialogo della Pittura, in Trattati d’Arte del Cinquecento, ed. Paola Barocchi, 3 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1960), vol. 1, 93–139: Pino variously addresses ideal complexion of women (102), the complexion of different parts of the body (128), artists’ tendency to melancholy (97, 135–6), and the relationship between the variety of human  judgment and the diversity diversity of complexions (132). 5 Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’Arte de la Pittura, facsimile of the 1584 Pontio edition (Hildesheim: Olms, 1968), 120: “ ho detto che tutte le passioni dell’animo, onde nascono i moti esteriori, ne i corpi, tanto più, & meno operano in loro, quanto hanno

minore, è magior conformità con i quattro humori di ciascuno d’essi, che si dimandono anco elementi.” 6

The role of humoral theory in the art of the later cinquecento and the seicento on both sides of the Alps is vigorously explored in Zirka Zaremba Filipczak,  Hot Dry Men, Cold  Wet Women: The Theory of Humors in Western European Art, 1575–1700 (New York: The American Federation of the Arts, 1997). 7 The richest cultural–historical study of humoral theory and its impact on Renaissance art is still Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy.

 

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consistently and decorously dependent on the prescriptions of humoral theory. Finally, I consider a small number of images which seem to show the four humoral/temperamental types as a complete “set.” By way of a conclusion, I argue that Leonardo da Vinci played a pivotal role in stimulating interest in the humors  – and more particularly in the virtuoso rendering of groups which collectively embody complexional diversity diversity.. It is important to emphasize that my concern here is not with “The Four Humors” as a primary subject in painting, but with the ways in which humoral theory influenced practice, and also with the contexts in which the humoral types were evoked. Unsurprisingly, there are virtually no published texts from the period which directly attest such uses. 8 In the devotional commissions which were most artists’ bread and butter, patrons were generally laissez-faire about the way that figures within the image were represented. 9 Instructions to evoke the four humoral types would be unlikely to appear unless their presence was necessary to the overt meaning of an image. Documentation for one such case does exist: the

humors are mentioned in notes on the decorative program for the Studiolo of  Francesco de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio, Vecchio, Florence. Vasari’ asari’ss  Zibaldone preserves a lengthy disquisition by the inventor of the room’s complex program, Vincenzo Borghini, which unequivocally records that the humors, like the four elements and qualities, were to be personified on the chamber’s ceiling.10 Yet even here it should be observed that Borghini ostentatiously deferred to Vasari’s superior knowledge of how best to depict the four types.11 This willingness to cede control strongly suggests that the theory of the humors had a less than recherché status among cinquecento artists and iconographers.

A Humoral Template for “The Motions of the Mind”: Alberti and Leonardo Leonardo Indirect forms of textual evidence for popular dependence on humoral theory are copious and pervasive. Martin Kemp scarcely exaggerated when he observed that humoral theory was “ubiquitous” in the early modern period. 12 It appears in a variety of learned and quasi-popular texts from the Italy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from Saint Antoninus’ Summa to a Florentine carnival

It is my hope in due course to augment the material in the present essay with archival research. 9 Charles Hope, “Altarpieces and the Requirements of Patrons,” in Christianity and the  Renaissance:: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattr  Renaissance Quattrocento ocento, ed. Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 541–3. 10 Giorgio Vasari,  Lo Zibaldone, ed. Alessandro del Vita (Rome: Instituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, 1938), 52–60. 11 Vasari,  Zibaldone, 57: “le quali quattro complessioni come si abbiamo a dipignere voi lo sapete meglio di me … .” 12 Martin Kemp,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Natur Naturee and Man (London: Dent, 1981), 158. 8

 

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song.13 Moreover, Leonardo’s allusions to humoral theory in his art-related writings are not without precedent, albeit in the form of oblique rather than overt reference. Lack of directness does not necessarily tell against the credibility of  these seeming allusions. If humoral theory was ubiquitous, writers on the craft and principles of painting could well have invoked its principles in a fairly automatic way, as we today might unreflectively allude to the introvert/extrovert binary. The polymath Leon Battista Alberti, active a generation before Leonardo, is arguably the most important art theorist to touch implicitly on the subject of the humors. His Della pittura, completed in July 1436, contains a celebrated account of human moti mentali, providing a plethora of observations and hints on how aptly to apply them.14 In the course of this discussion, Alberti lists four states of  mind, together with their physical signs, which correspond closely with the emotional conditions proper to the humoral types. Those of a sanguine temperament could decorously be characterized by Alberti’s words merry and  jocose (“li huomini lieti et giocosi”); the impatient and quarrelsome choleric is

obviously related to the angry man ( chi sia irato ); the mood of the melancholy (“chi sia malinconicho”) is by definition linked with humoral influence; and the phlegmatic conventionally shared symptoms with Alberti’s fourth category, the sorrowful (“un atristito”).15 What is chiefly interesting about Alberti’s use of the fourfold arrangement is the mere fact that he did  use it, suggesting that the contemporary mind readily turned to the tetrad when considering behavioral matters. Alberti’s description of  the bodily effects produced by his four emotional states does not incorporate any of the permanent symptoms of the humoral types, such as skin color; nor should 13

A rich array of late medieval medieval and early modern texts texts including the carnival carnival song is discussed, and often cited at length, in Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy, 97–123. For San Antonino’s treatment of the four humors, see Saint Antoninus, Summa theologica (1740; reprint, Graz: Akademische Druck- u Verlagsanstalt, 1959), fols 49/50. 14 See Martin Kemp’s introduction to Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), 18. Alberti had first written the text in Latin, completing it almost a year earlier in August 1435 (17) but, as Kemp reminds us, “the Italian text is not a straight translation” (20), being aimed at practitioners rather than other humanist scholars. 15 Leon Battista Alberti,  Della Pittura, ed. Luigi Mallè (Florence: Sansoni, 1950), 93. Alberti’s phrase evoking the deportment of the atristito, “stanno con sue forze et sentimenti quasi balordi,” resonates with conventional characterizations of the phlegmatic: see, for example, the stanza on the type in the poem  La Sfera, attributed to Leonardo Dati (1408–72), where the phlegmatic is described as “Pesanti e lunghi d’ogni loro affare” (in  La Sfera Da Libro Libro Quattro Quattro in Ottava Rima Rima Da F. F. Leonardo Leonardo di Stagio Dati Dati … , ed. Gustavo Camillo Galletti; Rome: Tipografia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche, 1863, 24); a Florentine carnival song from the first quarter of the sixteenth century calls them “ pigri humidi e lenti,/ placidi inetti” ( Il  Il Tri Trionfo onfo delle Quattr Quattroo Complessioni, printed in Ernst Steinmann, Das Geheimnis Geheimnis der der Medicigraeber Medicigraeber Michelange Michelangelos los; Leipzig: K. K . W. W. Hiersemann, Hierseman n, 1907, 78–9); and, closest of all to Alberti, Giovanni Tolosani, in another encyclopedic poem entitled  La Nuova Sfera, published in 1514, noted of the phlegmatic person that “ Nell’operar suo resta afflitto e lasso … È grave e tardo a muover muoveree il suo passo” (in  La Sfera Da Libro Quattro, ed. Galletti, 164).

 

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this surprise us. For the matter with which Alberti was chiefly concerned, which was the construction of an effective narrative topos, permanent characteristics were not necessarily of any importance. Because the narrative image ( istoria) distils nodal moments of drama from a narrative, the relevance of the characters’ apparent emotion to the events depicted overrides any question of inborn traits.16 A single example will illustrate this point – though not, as we will will see, in any exclusive and tidy fashion. Raphael’s prone and beleaguered Heliodorus, in the Vatican fresco to which the t he ruffian has lent his name, shows all the characteristics of ire listed in  Della pittura .17 Because anger incites the soul, Alberti observes, it causes the eyes and face to bulge, and produces a fiery color in both face and members. member s. Frustrated Frustrated in his act of rapine, Heliodoru Heliodorus’ s’ eyes and facial facial muscles protrude to a monstrous extent, and his skin color is a much more hectic red than that of his lissome archangelic attacker. What is primarily significant here – or at least what would have been significant to Alberti in his role as didact – is that Heliodorus’ facial and bodily expression are consonant both with with the grossness of 

his violence and his anguished fury at the punishment. On the other hand, if the viewer cared to reflect on Heliodorus’ brutish persona, it might seem entirely logical that the blasphemous attack on the temple was not an isolated incident; that his aggression was probably habitual and that he could thereby properly be identified as egregiously choleric. Reference to another artrelated text might encourage such an interpretation of the image. Amidst Leonardo’s notes is a paragraph on the way in which men’s moral characters are etched on their faces. Here Leonardo points out that faces which have exaggeratedly pronounced contours (“di gran’ gran’ rilevo e’ pr profondi ofondità tà”) are proper to bestial, wrathful men who exhibit little capacity for reason (“huomini bestiali et  iracondi con pocha raggione”).18 Raphael’s Heliodorus fits nicely into this category. What distinguishes Leonardo’s passage on facial features from Alberti’s Alberti’s on the exhibition of moti mentali is that Leonardo was concerned with permanent traits rather than fleeting emotions. It was a cornerstone of popular humoral theory that a person’s predominant humor would have a lasting influence on behavior. Leonardo’s paragraph, in which he directly stated that people’s complexions can be read in their faces, is a logical extrapolation from the theory: repeated actions eventually leave indelible marks, in the form of wrinkles and uneven muscular Alberti, Della Pittura, 93: “Poi moverà l’istoria l’animo quando li huomini ivi dipinti molto porgeranno suo movimento d’animo.” 17 There is circumstantial evidence which strongly suggests that Raphael knew  Della Pittura; see Charles M. Rosenberg, “Raphael and the Florentine Istoria,” in Raphael Befor Beforee  Rome, ed. James Beck (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1986), 175–87. For a detail of Heliodorus and the angelic horseman, see Pierluigi De Vecchi,  Raphael (New York: Abbeville, 2002), 173. 18 Leonardo da Vinci, Tr Treatise eatise On Painting Painting (Codex Urbinas Urbinas Latinus 1270) 1270), trans. A. Philip McMahon, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), vol. 2, fol. 109 recto–verso:: “ De fisonomia e’ chiro recto–verso chiromanzia manzia.” 16

 

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massing, on the landscape of the visage. Thus men full of regrets (melancholics) will have horizontal lines on their brows; marked lines around the upper lip and the corners of the eyes will connote lively, laughing people (sanguines); while those who are given to cogitation (wise counsel was sometimes ascribed to phlegmatics) will have smooth features, since their faces are not disturbed by emotion.19 It is possible that Leonardo saw better indices of a person’s humoral type in these gradually developing facial features than in skin tint. However, it is unsafe to infer this simply because there are no other substantial remarks on the symptoms of the four complexions among his writings. Leonardo did not realize his stated intention to represent in four images the “four universal states of man”  – by which he surely meant the emotional states which parallel the permanent psychic conditions of the humoral types.20 Nor, apparently, did he ever write his full-blown tract on the physical properties of the full-grown man and woman, characterizing the relative natures of their “complexion, color and 21

physiognomy. Had he done so, his approach to humoral theory as a tool for the painter would almost certainly have been elucidated. As it is, his surviving (or partially surviving) paintings furnish the only information from which we can make safe conjecture.

Melancholic Seers in Quattrocento and Cinquecento Art Leonardo’s remarks attest that he was interested in representing the habitual behaviors associated with the four humors – interested, that is to say, in representing fixed pathologies and not just fleeting emotional states. In this he was not alone. The work of other artists, from Florence and beyond, reveals clear patterns in the way that given humors are associated with particular social roles or vocations. The most immediately striking is the connection between melancholy and visionary cognition or deep reflection. The traditional pose of the melancholic, the introspective “sufferer” seated with head resting on hand, is best known today from Dürer’s exquisite print  Melencolia I , but was commonly given

19

The connection between the phlegmatic temperament and the capacity for good

counsel (which presupposes some measure of wisdom and reflection) is made in a slightly later Florentine text, Giovanni Tolosani’s La Nuova Sfera of 1514: “Consiglia bene, e non vuole un disagio” (Galletti ed., La Sfera, 164). 20 For a full citation of the passage, see n. 1 above. A humor-ba humor-based sed interpretation interpretation of this passage is also offered in Michael Kwakkelstein,  Leonar  Leonardo do as a Physiognomi Physiognomist: st: Theory and Drawing Practise (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 1994), 57–8. For a different approach, stressing that Leonardo’s concern here was with “accident” rather than (essential) “nature,” see Laurenza,  De figura umana, XVII–XVIII. Laurenza’s view is not incompatible with mine, for I believe that Leonardo’s taxonomy of conditions (casi) was influenced by the fourfold system of humors, not identical with it. 21 See note 1 above.

 

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to contemplatives and prophets in quattrocento and cinquecento art both in Italy and in Northern Europe.22 With a few exceptions, images of melancholic contemplatives in the period appear in an expressly Christian context. The characters most frequently shown in such a guise are seers of the Old and New Testaments. It is important to stress that it was the mere fact of their prescience which marked them as melancholics, not the particular content of their dreams or visions. visions.23 Those who foresaw devastation, such as Jeremiah, Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint Joseph, were obvious candidates to be portrayed as melancholy in the modern, restrictive restr ictive sense of the word. However, following a welldisseminated Aristotelian Aristotelian claim, a range of others, from Elijah and Isaiah to Saint Paul, could be identified as melancholic, simply by virtue of having had direct experience of the spiritual world. By extension, hermits who sought such intimate knowledge of  the divine might share this humor: Saint Jerome, pondering in his study or mortifying the flesh in a desert dwelling, here furnishes the locus classicus.24 During the later quattrocento, Lorenzo de’ Medici and his resident physician-

cum Platonic scholar, Marsilio Ficino, cultivated a fascination with melancholia among Florentine cognoscenti. The first of Ficino’s Three Books on Life, published in 1489, is almost entirely concerned with the influences of black bile, both good and bad, on scholars.25 This preoccupation may in part account for the plethora of images by Florentine artists featuring melancholic figures, though some predate Ficino’s Ficino’s association with the Medici. A bronze relief sculpture of  Saint John the Evangelist by Lorenzo Ghiberti, one of the panels adorning the grandiose north doors of Florence’s Baptistery, was conceived around 1412, and is to my knowledge the earliest extant representation of a melancholic seer in Florence. It is also the most public, and probably the most influential. 26 Ghiberti’s

Widely reproduced, but printed with particular clarity in The Complete Engravings,  Etchings and and Drypoints of Albr Albrecht echt Dürer Dürer, ed. Walter L. Strauss (New York: Dover, 1973), 167, pl. 79. 23 The association between melancholy and prophetic dreams was clearly established in Aristotle’s  Eudemian Ethics: see Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy, 36. For a clear summary of ideas on attitudes to melancholy, sleep and dreams in the Renaissance, see Maria Ruvoldt, The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration: Metaphors of Sex, Sleep, and Dreams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 11–15. 24 On melancholia as a condition proper to hermits, see Allen J. Grieco, “Les plantes, les régimes végétariens et la mélancolie à la fin du Moyen Age et au début de la 22

Renaissance italienne,” in  Le Monde végétal (XIIe–XVI Ie siècles): Savoirs et usages sociaux, ed. Allen J. Grieco, Odile Redon, and(XIIe–XVIIe Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi (Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1993), 11–29, esp. 17–22. On St Jerome as a melancholic thinker in Renaissance art, see Laurinda S. Dixon, “An Occupational Hazard: Saint Jerome, Melancholia, and the Scholarly Life,” in In Detail: New Studies Studies of Northern  Renaissance Art Art in Honor of Walter Walter S. Gibson, ed. Laurinda S. Dixon (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 69–82. 25 Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans. trans . Carol V. V. Kaske and John Joh n R. Clark (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance Society of America, 1989), 21–4, 113–49. 26 On the influence of Ghiberti’s Saint John and the other evangelist panels on the

 

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younger contemporary, Donatello, was clearly thinking of it when, in the later 1430s, he made his own relief of Saint John high up on the altar wall in the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo.27 A yet more famous Florentine, Michelangelo, obviously also remembered Ghiberti’s Saint John when he painted his figure of Jeremiah in the easternmost bay of the Sistine Chapel vault around 1511: both slump forward to the extent that their crowns are almost frontal, and both shroud their mouths and upper lips with their hands.28 An early and sustained association with the Medici family probably stimulated Michelangelo’s interest in melancholia, both in relation to his own emotional life and subjects for art. Working in the ambit of his maecenas, Lorenzo il Magnifico, he may well have had access to Luca Signorelli’s nowdestroyed all’antica image The Realm of Pan29, painted around 1490, one of whose enigmatic subjects is a melancholy nymph. There were also plenty of sacred exemplars. Apart from the Ghiberti and Donatello reliefs of Saint John, Michelangelo surely knew the fresco of a melancholic Saint Jerome in his study by his master Domenico Ghirlandaio, executed in the church of Ognissanti

around 1480 (Fig. (Fig. 7.1). 7.1). He may also have been familiar with Fra Filippo Lippi’s  Adoration panel, commissioned for the convent of Annalena in 1455, now in the Uffizi, which prominently features a figure of Joseph in the classic melancholic pose.30 Michelangelo himself was to produce one of Florence’s most dense and multifaceted expressions of melancholy in a large-scale Medicean project, the chapel known as the “New Sacristy” in the family’s parish church, San Lorenzo. This pendant to the chapel in which Donatello had made his relief of Saint John had a melancholy purpose: it was the grandiose mausoleum primarily meant to house the remains of the first ennobled Medici, Giuliano, duke of Nemours and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, who were also the last legitimate heirs of the line of Cosimo il Vecchio. These two contrasted capitani, as Michelangelo called them, are seated, and the one on the shadowy side of the chapel, representing Duke Lorenzo, is a refined version of the melancholic thinker, head poised rather than pressed against a delicately extended digit. digit . Vasari Vasari explicitly describes the figure of Dawn from the same funerary monument as melancholy, and her pose reflects this: she reclines

Baptistery Doors, see Aldo Galli, “Sur les traces de Ghiberti,” in  Ateliers de la , ed. Roberto Cassanelli (Saint-Léger-Vauban: Zodiaque, 1998), 94 and for a  Renaissance good photograph of the Saint John, see color plate 29 in the same volume. 27 Charles Avery Avery notes the figure’s melancholy melanchol y, in Donatello: An Introduction Introduction (London: John Murray, 1994), 53, but neither he nor other commentators remark on the correspondence of mood between this and Ghiberti’s figure. For good overall and detail reproductions, see John Pope-Hennessy,  Donatello (New York: Abbeville, 1993), 178–9. 28 For an excellent reproduction of this famous image, see Carlo Pietrangeli et al., The Sistine Chapel: Chapel: A Glorious Restoration Restoration (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1994), 159. 29 André Chastel, “Melancholia “Melancholia in the Sonnets of Lorenzo Lorenzo de’ Medici,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1945): 61–7, esp. 64–6. 30 Ruvoldt, The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, 11–13.

 

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7.1

Domenico Ghirlandaio. St Jerome in his Study . Fresco, 184 x 119 cm. 1480. Chiesa di Ognissanti, Florence. Photo courtesy of Scala/Art Resource, NY

 

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like a Roman river god, but has one arm lifted towards her head. 31 Her mournful expression, with bulbously ridged brow and heavy-lidded eyes, is reminiscent of  Donatello’s anguished Saint John. (Vasari did not comment on the mood or complexion of the figure of Night, who corresponds with Dawn on the opposite tomb, though she, too, has the lowered head and supportive, crooked arm of the traditional melancholic pose.)32 By the time that he was working on the New Sacristy, Michelangelo had already made one profoundly melancholic portrayal of a biblical seer, albeit not in Florence. The Jeremiah in the Sistine Chapel, with his dark, shadowed face and inclined head, was probably the most imitated image of the melancholic in the cinquecento. The figure’s pose and even his physiognomy were reinterpreted more or less freely not only by artists who worked in Rome, such as Raphael, Perino del Vaga, and perhaps Leonardo, but also by north Italians such as L’Ortolano. 33 A number of other works from both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries speak to the fact that representations of melancholy contemplatives and seers did not emanate solely from Florence. For example, the Flemish Jan van Eyck (or a

follower such as Petrus Christus) produced a panel of a somberly musing Saint Jerome in melancholic pose in the early 1440s, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts; interestingly enough, this made its way into the possession of Lorenzo de’ Medici.34 According to the 1492 inventory of his collection, this image hung in his Giorgio Vasari,  Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e archi architettori tettori, ed. Rosanna Bettarini, 6 vols (Florence: Studio per Edizioni Scelte, 1966–87), vol. 6, 57–8: “ Ma che 31

dirò io stile alladell’Aurora, scultura?” femina ignuda e da fare uscire il maninconico dell’animo e smarire lo 32 For reproductions of these figures, see Umberto Baldini, The Sculpture of   Michelangelo  Michelange lo (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), plates 107 (Dawn), 118 and 122 (the capitani ), and 125 (Night). 33 Raphael’s first and most famous adaptation of Michelangelo’s Jeremiah was the Heraclitus in The School of Athens, dating from around 1511–12, which is still sometimes regarded (in my view erroneously) as a portrait of Michelangelo: see, for example, Rona Goffen,  Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Michelangelo, Leonar Leonardo, do, Raphael, Titian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 220–6. Another is discussed in the text of this essay. Perino painted a melancholic Isaiah on the entrance arch to the Pucci Chapel in Trinità dei Monti, Rome; reproduced in S. J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500–1600, 3rd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 215; on this image and Vasari’s response to it, see my “‘Mio malinchonico, o vero … mio pazzo’: Michelangelo, Vasari, and the Problem of Artists’ Melancholy in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” Sixteenth Century Journal 34 (2003): 659. It is unclear why the figure of Saint Demetrius in L’Ortolano’s altarpiece of Saints Roch, Sebastian and Demetrius  – NG669, reproduced in Jill Dunkerton, Susan Foister Foister,, and Nicholas Penny,  Dürer to Verone eronese: se: Sixteenth-C Sixteenth-Century entury Painting in the National Gallery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 41 – is portrayed as melancholic; and it was perhaps opaque to contemporaries, too. For some reason Ortolano felt obliged to include a “name tag” for the saint, in the form of the inscribed sheet of paper at his feet. Ortolano’s figure fuses characteristics of the Jeremiah with the standing variant on the melancholic pose apparently devised by Raphael in the Saint Cecilia Altarpiece, which Ortolano probably saw in situ in San Giovanni Evangelista, the church for which it was made in Bologna (see text below). 34 The image is reproduced, and the question of its acquisition and role in Medici

 

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scrittoio, and its influence on Ghirlandaio’s fresco of the same subject for Ognissanti is palpable (Fig. (Fig. 7.1). 7.1). Andrea Mantegna, while working during the 1440s in one of Europe’s greatest centers of medical learning, his native Padua, produced a small devotional panel of a melancholic Saint Mark, now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt. Frankfurt .35 In this bust-length representation, the sill of the window through which we confront the evangelist provides him with a ledge on which to rest the head-supporting right arm, emphasizing the device. It is a pity that the ruined state of the canvas makes it hard to assess Mantegna’s use of color in any meaningful way; but the extreme swarthiness of the evangelist, even allowing for extensive darkening and decay,, may reflect a deliberate decay del iberate attempt to evoke the “atrabilious” “atr abilious” pathology of the 36

melancholic. A pa pane nell of Elijah fed by the Raven by the Brescian painter Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, now in Washington’s National Gallery, also seems to be a studied attempt to combine the traditional pose with the swarthy coloring proper to the type.37 Savoldo’s painting is probably contemporary with Michelangelo’s Sistine

Jeremiah, stressing the fact that the head-in-hand melancholic pose was independently understood in north Italy in the early cinquecento. Correggio, too, produced a half-length devotional image of a swarthy Saint Jerome, contemplating a skull in the classic melancholic posture, which shows no obvious debt to central Italian models. In fact, Correggio’s panel almost certainly pre-dates any journey that the artist made to Rome, having been painted around 1517. 38 North of the Alps, it is the art of the celebrated Nuremberg engraver and painter, Albrecht Dürer, that furnishes the richest vein of melancholic imagery. Apart from the famous  Melencolia I , there is a panel now in Lisbon of a halflength Saint Jerome at his desk, dourly contemplating a skull, painted in 1521 while Dürer was visiting the Netherlands. The figure of the saint proved as influential in the Low Countries as Michelangelo’s Jeremiah – to whom this stocky, long-bearded old man is curiously similar – in Italy. 39 The image can also inform our interpretation of another portrayal of Saint Jerome by Dürer. The Nuremberger sometimes gave away his 1514 engravings  Melencolia I  and Saint   Jerome in His Study as a pair. Frances Yates therefore suggested that the Jerome patronage considered, in Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florent Florentine ine Renaissance: Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 262. 35 Reproduced in Andre  Andreaa Mantegna Mantegna, ed. Jane Martineau (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 120. 36 On the dark skin of the melancholic, see Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy, 59, 114–15, and 290. 37 For a good color colo r reproduction, reproduction , see John Walker, Walker, National Gallery of Art, Washington Washington, rev. edn (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1984), 223, no. 274. 38 David Ekserdjian, Correggio (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 59–61 (and on Correggio’s possible visit to Rome ca. 1520 see 72–3). The image is reproduced on p. 61. 6 1. 39 Erwin Panofsky,  Albr  Albrecht echt Dürer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), vol. 1, 212–13 and vol. 2, 12. The Lisbon painting and two works based on it are reproduced in Dixon, “An Occupational Hazard,” 74 and 77 (figs 11, 15, and 16).

 

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print was meant to exhibit a more elevated form of melancholic contemplation than that of the distrait  flightless genius in the  Melencolia I .40 While the Saint Jerome in the engraving does not adopt a melancholic pose, Yates’s contention is indirectly supported by the Lisbon painting, which confirms that Dürer identified Jerome as a melancholic contemplative.41 Frances Yates’s argument raises an important problem. So far in the present essay, pose has been treated as the main indicator of the melancholic type. There is no doubt that this provides the clearest signifier for the modern viewer, largely due to Panofsky’s Panofsky’s efforts. Recent interpreters’ dependence on this device is also sanctioned by Vasari’s writings: three of the four figures he specifically called melancholic (Michelangelo’s Jeremiah and Dawn, and Perino’s Isaiah) all exhibit 42

some version of the pose. Yet it may be that other traits evoked melancholy just as strongly for a culture steeped in the lore of the black humor. In short, if this temperament was thought of as the condition proper to eremitical contemplatives  – a condition which, as Allen Grieco has indicated, contemporaries believed to be induced by the frugal, herb-based diet of religious solitaries – then viewers from

the period may have been predisposed to think of Saint Jerome, for example, as a melancholic person even without the visual “cue” of the head-in-hand pose. 43 Plenty of images could be adduced in support of the last suggestion; I will mention only three, two of which are by artists whose familiarity with the visual attributes of melancholia has already been discussed. Around 1448, Mantegna painted a panel showing Saint Jerome in his desert grotto, now in the Museo de Arte, São Paulo.44 The hermit saint is lean and swarthy, as melancholics were usually said to be; and although he lacks the leaning pose, his hangdog visage and lugubrious downward gaze strongly suggest a state of melancholia. melancholia. A very similar picture of the hermit saint by Giovanni Bellini, made perhaps 40 years later, and now in the Uffizi in Florence, is almost as telling in its evocation of melancholic earnestness.45 Since dwelling beyond the pale of civilization and adopting a

Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge, 1979), 57–9. For a good reproduction, see The Complete Engravings, Etchings, and   Drypoints, ed. Strauss, 163, pl. 77. 41 For interesting views on the physiological theories which may have informed nuances of the melancholic portrayals in the Lisbon painting’s progeny, see Dixon, “An Occupational Hazard,” 75–9. 40

42 The fourth is a figure of the archetypally melancholic Saturn by Vasari’s assistant Doceno (Cristofano Gherardi), made after Vasari’s drawings, for the now-lost façade frescoes of Duke Cosimo’s coppiere, Sforza Almeni. The image is mentioned in Vasari’s biography of Doceno; see Giorgio Vasari,  Le vite de’ più eccellent eccellentii pittori, scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni di 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and comm. Paola Barocchi, 5 vols (Florence: Sansoni, 1966–), vol. 5, 299. 43 Grieco, “Les plantes, les régimes végétariens et la mélancolie,” 17–22. 44 This image, sometimes attributed to Zoppo, is reproduced in color and discussed by Keith Christiansen in Mantegna, ed. Martineau, 115–17. 45 This is the Saint Jerome in the Desert  (CB25), reproduced in Anchise Tempestini, Giovanni Bellini (New York: Abbeville, 1999), 117.

 

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concomitantly spare vegetarian diet were believed to promote melancholy, the addition of the head-in-hand posture for the hermit saint may have seemed gratuitous to Mantegna and Bellini. No less palpably melancholic than either of these figures is the dark-haired, dark-skinned Saint Joseph, barely emerging from the shadows behind the Virgin in Raphael’s Madonna di Loreto, now in the Musée Condé in Chantilly. 46 Again, Joseph’s status both as a dreamer of prophetic dreams and as a man usually thought to be in the autumn of his years was probably enough to render Raphael’s characterization transparent, without the addition of the hand-cupped head.

The Phlegmatic Norm/Ideal Norm/Ideal for Women: Bronzino’s Bronzino’s Eleonora Melancholic seers and contemplatives represent a select band, if an important one, in art of the early modern period in Italy. Still more powerful evidence of the widespread influence of humoral theory is provided by a much larger group of 

figures. The vast majority of idealizing images of women in Italy, the Low Countries and the German-speaking countries made between 1450 and 1750 show them as phlegmatic.47 According to essentially Aristotelian claims, which were literary commonplaces by 1400, females as a sex are physiologically colder and moister than males.48 Phlegm was the humor which corresponded with this pairing of  qualities, and imaginary or idealizing images of women almost invariably showed them with the defining phlegmatic traits – fleshiness, pallor, and docility. So widespread are images representing this norm-cum-ideal that it seems almost redundant to cite any in particular. The women of Robert Campin and Fra Angelico, Dürer and Lucas Cranach, Raphael and Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt, Antoine Watteau and Domenico Tiepolo almost invariably embody the temperament, and its persistence over such a long period is remarkable. There were occasional disruptions, but in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries the ample, phlegmatic body type resolutely outlasted the fads for a more gamine slenderness, seen for example in the work of Ghirlandaio and Botticelli in the late quattrocento and some of the paintings of Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino in the mid cinquecento. Nor did competing models of feminine beauty suppress the ideal of pallor. Writers like Agnolo Firenzuola, who attributed a more sanguine ruddiness to feminine perfection, seem to have affected the work of some painters: Reproduced in Jones and Penny, Raphael, 86. 47 For a wide-ranging survey of humorally oriented images of both men and women in northern European art during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Filipczak’s  Hot   Dry Men, Cold Wet Wet Women Women. 48 On this idea, and the passage from Aristotle’s  Historia animalium animalium in which it is most infamously stated, see Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Renaissance Notion of of Woman: Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 33–5 and 41–2. 46

 

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Parmigianino and Rosso were again prime exponents of this trend towards the rubicund.49 Yet overall very little warmth of tone thaws out the snowy expanse of  luxuriantly adipose flesh in Renaissance and Baroque art. While generically phlegmatic images of invented female figures – Madonnas, saints, goddesses and so on – need not be discussed here on an individual basis, phlegmatic traits among portraits of female sitters do warrant some attention. Rote workshop practice, unthinkingly passed from one generation to another, might account for the high incidence of phlegmatic traits among wholly synthesized figures. The same is not true in the case of supposed likenesses. In the sphere of  portraiture, recourse to humoral models implies that complexion theory really was a conceptual tool which painters – and presumably others – used to make sense of  what they saw. As might be expected in a genre which ostensibly concerned itself with verisimilitude rather than adherence to paradigms, the data provided by portraits are not stable or unified; but this does not mean that they are not suggestive. An extremely high proportion of female sitters in Italian portraits made after 1500

tend to roundedness and pallor, as well as to the settled passivity which phlegm produced and decorum required in gentlewomen. By the middle of the seventeenth century, century, the fleshy type was endemic to female portraiture throughout Europe. Proponents of Ockham’s Razor might suggest that this was simply a reflection of the physical condition of women in the leisured, well-nourished (and gouty) economic groups which could afford portraiture. There is, of course, no objective evidence to prove the point either way. Yet a couple of images seem deliberately to underscore, through secondary attributes, the fact that the phlegmatic condition was linked with normative ideas of femininity. Leonardo’ss so-called  Mona Lisa, probably begun in about 1505, is a painting Leonardo’ in which the line between likeness and invention is more than usually blurred. If  the image really did start out as a representation of one Lisa del Giocondo, as Vasari reports, it is highly probable that her features were embellished and exaggerated during the two decades that Leonardo kept the painting with him. 50 Vasari’s ornate ecphrasis of the portrait, certainly not based on actual knowledge of the image, serves to demonstrate that it had become a paradigm of feminine beauty in Florence by the mid cinquecento.51 His conventionalized praise of her

49

See Elizabeth Cropper’s seminal article dealing Firenzuola’s text and its influence on, inter alia, Parmigianino: “On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo, and the Vernacular Style,” Art Bulletin 58 (1976): 374–94. 50 The most judicious attempt to reconstruct the genesis and long gestation of the Mona  Lisa is provided in Kemp, Leonar  Leonardo do, 269–70. Kemp’s monochrome reproduction (264) is a great deal clearer than many printed images of this lamentably dirty picture, but for a good color plate, see Marcia Hall, Color and Meaning: Practice and Theory in Renaissance Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 116 or David Franklin, Painting in Renaissance Florence, 1500–1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 31. 51 Patricia Rubin, “What Men Saw: Vasari’s Life of Leonardo da Vinci and the Image of the Renaissance Artist,” Art History 13 (1990): 42.

 

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loveliness is probably also an accurate reflection of the extent to which Leonardo meant his lady to embody “pure” feminine attributes. Vasari’s written homage to Leonardo’s portrait of a lady is matched by a number of paintings which pay visual homage, mostly produced in Florence. Of  these, Vasari’s Vasari’s fellow court artist, Agnolo Bronzino, created the t he one most relevant to the concerns of this essay. This is his 1545 portrait of Eleonora di Toledo, consort to the incumbent Medici duke, Cosimo I (Fig. (Fig. 7.2). 7.2). The image of Eleonora expands on Leonardo’s use of external referents to bolster the near-hyperbolic phlegmatic femininity of the sitter. Like Leonardo, and arguably with better reason, Bronzino meant to portray the duchess as the epitome of decorous womanhood, and brought together both literal and symbolic signifiers in pursuit of this aim. Apart from their sleekness and pallor, the most striking similarity between Leonardo’ss lady and Bronzino’s Eleonora is that both are seated on a high balcony Leonardo’ overlooking a landscape. The device may have been mediated to Bronzino through Raphael’s portrait of Maddalena Doni, now in the Palazzo Pitti, and 52

executed when the artist was intermittently based in Florence in 1506–8. The images of Maddalena and Eleonora share an anodyne and relatively unobtrusive landscape background. This actually sets them apart from Leonardo’ Leonardo’ss lady, who is backed not with gently rolling hills, but with an awe-inspiring array of crags and precipices, the horizon bisecting the panel raggedly more or less at her eye level. There is, however, an important common landscape element in all three images – a large body of water. Bronzino, like Leonardo, was at pains to emphasize this, though he did so by rather different means. The mountains in Leonardo’s picture do not only provide visual interest in themselves, but also describe and delimit the watery element, both still and moving. There is a lake in the middle ground to the lady’s left, as we see her, and another in the far background to the right. right. A river river,, whose presence is stressed stressed by a many-arched bridge, flows down beside her shoulder on the right side. In Bronzino’s panel, a lake is the only readily discernible landscape element, since the painting is a nocturne. Bronzino actually uses the darkness to increase the prominence of this lake: we are almost bound to notice it because it reflects the light of the moon, whose orb is carefully obscured from us by the duchess’s head. This concealment creates another effect which was clearly not inadvertent: the moon’s glow gives Duchess Eleonora a nimbus.53 Water is the element linked in ancient and medieval science with the Reproduced (after conservation) in De Vecchi,  Raphael, 219. 53 The halo effect is also noted in Lorne Campbell,  Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th, and 16th Centuries (New Haven: Yale Yale University Universit y Press, 1990), 25; but Campbell does not associate the luminescence with the moon. For a very differentt reading of the treatment of light in this image, differen image, see Gabrielle Langdon, Langdon, “A Laura for Cosimo: Bronzino’s Eleonora di Toledo Toledo with her son Giovanni Giovanni,” in The Cultural World  of Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and Siena, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 56–61. 52

 

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7.2

Agnolo Bronzino. Eleonora of Toledo Toledo with her son Giovanni de’ Medici. Oil on panel, 115 x 96 cm. 1544–5. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Photo courtesy of Scala/Art Resource, NY

 

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phlegmatic humor.54 During the Middle Ages a relationship between the humors and four of the planets was also codified, and phlegm became associated with the moon.55 Both water and moon are also connected with the menstrual cycle. All this is suggestive in relation to a topic which was clearly of the greatest importance for Bronzino and his princely patrons, namely the duchess’s fertility. Duchess Eleonora is not only shown with one of the fruits of her own waters, in the form of the strapping young Giovanni de’ Medici, but also wears a robe decorated with a conventionalized pomegranate motif, which could be understood as an emblem of fecundity.56 These associations may even extend to her jewelry. True, the assortment of pearls with which she is copiously decked could simply be a reflection of her personal predilection for these gems, which is recorded by the 57

goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. On the other hand, it should be noted in this context that they are jewels with a watery origin, and also proper to Margaret of Antioch, a saint closely associated with childbirth.58 Bronzino clearly thought carefully about how to maximize the viewer’s sense that Eleonora was a paragon of femininity. Her Madonna-like posture and the “attribute” of her son are reciprocal with the lunar halo around her head, and

contemporary viewers will surely have noticed these Marian overtones.59 Yet it must be emphasized that all these objectified “badges” of Eleonora’s excellence as a woman are only adjuncts to her physiognomic traits. Like Leonardo’s  Mona  Lisa, Bronzino’s duchess is well fleshed with heavy-lidded almond eyes and a pacific expression, all of which suggest the settled and unemotional phlegmatic state of proper femininity. In short, her accessories – son, moon, lake, and pomegranate motif – underscore the gender norm that Bronzino evoked primarily through physiognomy physiognomy..

On the correlations between humors and elements, see Klibansky et al., Saturn and   Melancholyy, 10–11; see also J. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval  Melanchol Medieval Writing Writing and  Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 12–15 and Elizabet Elizabeth h Sears, The Ages of   Man: Medieval Interpr Interpretations etations of the Life Cycle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 12–18. 55 Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy, 129–30. 56 Janet Cox-Rearick, Bronzi  Bronzino’ no’ss Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Palazzo Vecchio Vecchio (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 37. 57 See Benvenuto Cellini,  La vita , in Opere di Benvenuto Cellini , ed. Giuseppe Guido 54

Ferrero (Turin: Unione Tuena, Tipografico-editrice Torinese, 531–5, and and AnnaHudson, Maria Massinelli and Filippo Treasures of the Medici 1971), (London: Thames 1992), 61. 58 Louis Réau,  Iconographi  Iconographiee de l’Art Chrétien, 3 vols (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955–59), vol. 3, 880. 59 Compare the image with, inter alia, Michelangelo’s Tondo Pitti (Florence, Bargello), and also the Madonna del del Prato (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) and The Madonna of  the Goldfinch (Florence, Uffizi) by Raphael, in all of which a relatively mature Christ-child stands at his mother’s side. For the Michelangelo tondo, see Umberto Baldini, The Sculpture of Michelangelo (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), plate 52; and for the Raphael images, see De Vecchi,  Raphael, 93 and 94.

 

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The Four Humors as a “Set”: Dürer Dürer,, Pontormo, Luini (and (and Leonardo?) In the images I have considered so far in this essay, the evocation of a particular humoral type was a function of decorum. Characterizations stemmed from the subjects’ status within the prevailing worldview worldview rather than being imposed as an arbitrary aesthetic choice. The ascription of phlegmatic qualities to a Madonna or female saint, or the depiction of Saints Jerome and Joseph as melancholic, was probably a virtual reflex for well-informed painters. The same could be argued for the choleric characterizations in monuments to princes and condottieri, and the portrayal of young lovers as sanguine in images of dalliance. This pattern of overdetermined use is patently not applicable to images in which all four humoral types appear together a unit. Here, an element of calculation almost certain to have entered in: theasodds do not favor representatives of eachistype happening to converge in, say, the quartet of saints flanking the Virgin in a sacra conversazione. Yet there are paintings and graphic images from the period that seem clearly to evoke the whole humoral fourfold system, and disparate though these images are,

certain patterns of intent and ideation do readily emerge. The common conceptual thread which runs through all portrayals of the four humors together is that the group seems meant to represent humanity at large, in a more or less favorable light depending on the context. Often, though not invariably, the humoral types as a collective synecdoche for humanity are juxtaposed with an embodiment of the divine, usually Christ. Images of the humoral tetrad divide into two basic categories: paintings which merely deploy the humoral schema, my main concern here; and representations, generally in books, which are inherently schematic. The four humors are represented as figures or nodal points on a diagram in an assortment of texts from the later quattrocento and cinquecento, most of them in some way cosmological or medical. The only Italian painting of the subject which could be called primarily schematic is Vasari’s Vasari’s portrayal of the four humors within the decoration of the Studiolo of Francesco de’ Medici, in the Palazzo Vecchio, Vecchio, Florence.60 The closest precedents for the Studiolo’s program, which is a densely woven tissue of  allegorical imagery relating to the minerals and other treasures in Francesco’s Wunderkammer, are illustrations from volumes of natural science and arcana. Book or broadsheet illustrations of the four humors in their cosmological context seem to inform paintings in certain clear ways. For example, figures representing the four humors in book illustration sometimes double up as ages of  life, elements, or other quaternaries. A good example is Dürer’s Dürer’s frontispiece for the 1502 Quatuor libri amorum by Conrad Celtis. In this woodcut, the four winds surrounding the central figure of Philosophia are labeled to indicate that they

For reproductions, see Marco Dezzi Bardeschi,  Lo Stanzino del principe in Palazzo Vecchio: I concetti, le immagini, il desiderio (Florence: Le Lettere, 1980). 60

 

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simultaneously represent the four elements and humors. As well as disgorging appropriate climatic or seasonal attributes – thus  Eurus/Ignis/Colericus spits lightning and  Zephirus/Aer/Sanguineus flowers – all of these have nicely characterized physiognomies: Auster/Aqua/Flecmaticus, for example, is corpulent and flaccid, while Boreas/T  Boreas/Terra/Melancolicus erra/Melancolicus is lean and bony.61 As a rider, it should be noted that Dürer’s woodcut shares an important feature with other, near-contemporary illustrations which may have informed painting practice during the early cinquecento. This is the presence of a central figure around which the four humors “revolve.” In Dürer’s illustration for Celtis’s book, this figure is an enthroned Philosophia; in Simon Vostre’s frontispiece to a Parisian Book of Hours, dated to the same year, it is a skeleton; and in the Guild62

book of thethe Barber-Surgeons of thetoCity of York, York, itorisa the head ofwhich Christdefines Christ. . In each case, then, humors are related an archetype principle the human condition. Some of the cosmological overtones of these illustrations are implied in two painted images which palpably show the four humors – though both these representations are far removed in formal terms from any print image or

illumination. One is a set of portraits of the Four Evangelists by Jacopo Pontormo and his then-assistant Bronzino, in individual tondi executed around 1525–6 for the pendentives of the Capponi Chapel in Saint Felicità, Florence. They are, respectively, a sanguine Matthew, a choleric Luke, a melancholic Mark, and a phlegmatic John.63 The other is Michelangelo’s quartet of “oversize” seers – Daniel (choleric), Libica (sanguine), Jeremiah (melancholic), and Persicha 64

(phlegmatic) – in the easternmost bays of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The fact that Michelangelo’s four seers surround images from Genesis of God creating the world seems to provide a basic explanation explanati on of the humoral conceit. As the Celtis frontispiece and a host of other prints, non-figurative diagrams, and texts show, the four humors were firmly associated with the four elements believed to constitute all universal matter. The reciprocity of the images is therefore clear: the four humoral types resonate with God’s creative deed, while God functions like the lynchpin figure of Philosophia in the Celtis illustration or the head of Christ in the Barber-Surgeons’ Guild-book. Pontormo’s evangelists also originally clustered around an image of the deity in the vault of the Capponi chapel. 65 By virtue of their association with the On this image see Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy, 279–80. For a reproduction, see The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, ed. Willi Kurth (New York: Dover, 1963), plate 146. 62 On the Simon de Vostre Book of Hours and the Guild-book of the York BarberSurgeons see Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy, 296 and 368, and relevant plates. 63 For reproductions, see John Shearman, Pontormo’s Altarpiece in S. Felicita (Newcastle upon Tyne: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971), 23. 64 For a good reproduction of the four seers in context, see Pietrangeli et al., The Sistine Chapel, 42–3 (foldout). 65 Shearman, Pontormo’s Altarpiece, 17–20. 61

 

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“apocalyptic beasts” (shown by Pontormo and Bronzino in two of the four tondi), the evangelists also had cosmological connotations. As attested by at least one text of the early sixteenth century, the Occulta philosophia of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, which was first circulated in manuscript around 1510, they could be related to the various other fourfold systems.66 In a chapel whose decoration is so heavily concerned with the incarnate God and the redemptive power of his body, the thoroughgoing insistence on the somatic, encompassing the evangelists, is perfectly logical.67 Michelangelo and Pontormo were emphatic in evoking the traits and associations of each humoral type. Their aim, presumably, was to make sure that the system revealed itself to the viewer, in spite of the fact that its components were physically dislocated from one another. painters types used clearly some ofonthe standard associations: for example, they mappedBoth the humoral to the four stages of life. Pose could also help to evoke temperament: we have already seen that Michelangelo’s Jeremiah has the classic pose of the melancholic; and the prophet’s saturnine weight is counterbalanced by the levity of his sanguine opposite number, the blond and smiling Libyan sibyl (sanguinity being connected

in the medieval worldview with air and spring).68 Light and shade and physiognomic expression were also used to telling effect by each painter. The shadow which shrouds the haunted, deep-set eyes of  Pontormo’s melancholic Saint Mark is especially evocative; and the bulging neck muscles and eyes of his choleric Saint Luke, as he turns up his eyes fervently to the divine light of the Godhead, are no less telling. Michelangelo even co-opted the wingless putti who accompany his seers to underscore their temperaments, the dynamic vigor of the choleric Daniel, for example, being matched by the straining attendant spirit who holds up one of his books. books.69 Not all representations of the four humors were so clear-cut, or so strongly pinpointed within a larger conceptual framework. For example, Dürer’s diptych of  Four Apostles, dated 1526 and now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, might well have gone unnoticed as a depiction of the four types, were it not for important near-contemporary testimony. In a biography of Dürer by Johann Neudörffer, the calligrapher who provided inscriptions for the apostles at the time that the panels were made, it is clearly stated that the diptych represents the four humors. Erwin Panofsky was surely right in saying that we should take this seriously, given the calligrapher’s professional involvement with the painting in question. Using the indices of age and complexion, Panofsky came up with a perfectly reasonable allocation of the humors among Dürer’s apostles: he identified the blond, youthful John and the bulky, aged Peter on the left panel as, respectively, sanguine and Samuel K. Heninger, Jr, Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and   Renaissance Poetics Poetics (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1974), 154–5. 67 Shearman, Pontormo’ Pontormo’ss Altarpiece Alta rpiece, 22. 68 See Pietrangeli et al., The Sistine Chapel, 155. 69 Pietrangeli et al., The Sistine Chapel, 149. 66

 

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phlegmatic; and he recognized the choleric and the melancholic in the fiery Mark and the shadowy-faced Paul on the right panel. 70 It is worth emphasizing that, apart from the choleric Mark, with his “gnashing teeth and rolling eyes,” none of the apostles in Dürer’s diptych exhibits the behavioral traits clearly associated with his temperament.71 For example, if  Dürer’s Saint John possesses the gaiety of the sanguine person, he has put it aside here for the purpose of earnestly discoursing on sacred text with his companion, Saint Peter. Similarly, Saint Paul embodies intensity and gravitas rather than the introspective gloom of the traditional melancholic. That Dürer should have overridden the decorum of pathology with the decorum of spirituality ought to come as no great surprise. His restrained characterizations certainly do not constitute of an anomaly to castofdoubt on approach Neudörffer’s (or four Panofsky’s) claims. Onenough the contrary, the flexibility Dürer’s to the humors should encourage a similarly fluid response on the part of the modern exegete. This approach is helpful when one comes to examine Raphael’s Saint Cecilia  Altarpiece (Fig. 7.3). 7.3). Here too, the four humoral types seem unequivocally evoked through physiognomic traits and some ancillary devices, but their moods are not

always obviously consistent with physical characteristics. The two framing saints are the most emphatically defined. Although the meditative Paul is upright rather than sitting, his melancholia is beyond question. Mary Magdalene, who balances him on the right side of the image, is, unsurprisingly, phlegmatic. Apart from her placid demeanor and rounded face, Raphael found other means to evoke Mary’s temperament. In discussing Leonardo’s  Mona Lisa, Martin Kemp noted the “watery” quality to the lady’s hair and even to her clothing: in his72 nice formulation, they are “animated by myriad motions of ripple and flow.” The notion of visually affirming the water – phlegm – woman axis through dress seems to have occurred to Raphael, too. The Magdalen wears an ostensibly silver-grey garment, actually of subtle, shimmering color, which falls in aqueous ripples about her gently moving form.73 Since she is a saint with a liquid attribute, namely the jar of spikenard oil that she holds up in this image, the visual pun of fluid drapery is doubly apt. The other two saints in the altarpiece, partially obscured by their fellows, show somewhat modified temperamental characteristics. Saint John has both the pinkblond complexion and youth proper to the sanguine, as in Dürer’ Dürer ’s diptych; and the mature Augustine has the tawny skin tone and craggy features of the choleric. Furthermore, these two “active” temperaments are differentiated from the two Panofsky,  Dürer, 234–5. For a particularly large, clear reproduction, including Neudörffer’s inscriptions, see The Age of the Renaissance, ed. Denys Hay (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), 299. 71 Panofsky, Dürer, 235. 72 Kemp,  Leonar  Leonardo do, 265. 73 On Raphael’s localized use of “color change” or cangiante color for the Magdalen’s dress in this image, see Hall, Color and Meaning, 113. 70

 

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7.3

Raphael. St Cecilia with Sts Paul, John Evangelist, Augustine, and Mary  Magdalene. Oil on canvas (transferred from panel), 238 x 150 cm. Ca. 1513–16. Pinacoteca, Bologna. Photo courtesy of Scala/Art Resource, NY

 

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“passive” ones by their vigorous dialogue, which contrasts with Saint Paul’s introspection and Mary’s calm stare at the viewer. Yet their mode of discourse does not wholly confirm the behavioral traits proper to their respective humors: Augustine is, to modern eyes, an unusually relaxed choleric, and his Saint John is a correspondingly intense sanguine. It would seem that Raphael, like Dürer, thought it better to balance out some of the more problematic aspects of the temperaments – in this case, the excesses of sanguine frivolity and choleric vehemence. The fact that Raphael’s saints exhibit no extremes of temperamental behavior could specifically relate to one of the overt themes of his image, namely harmony and the ineffable perfection of heavenly music. music.74 The centrality of these ideas may quite naturally have led to Raphael’s invention of the humoral conceit. The four types are brought into balance by the same force that causes St Cecilia to abandon the organs of earthly music in favor of spiritual. In his De concordantia concordantia catholica, written for the Council of Basel in the early 1430s, Nicholas Cusanus had used the metaphor of the king as a lute player who must bring the humors into consort with one another in the body politic.75 This obvious metaphor need not have been

confined to the rarefied circles within which Nicholas moved. There is another point to be made apropos the behavior modification of  Raphael’s and Dürer’s saints: it highlights a dichotomy within the popular theory of the humors. On the one hand, possession of one of the four temperamental conditions was believed natural to all human beings; but on the other, this natural state was de facto seen as a deviation from the perfectly healthy ideal. There is a corollary to this. Two physiognomic texts of the period, Michele da Savonarola’s Speculum phisionomiae, written in Padua ca. 1442, and Pomponio Gaurico’s chapter on physiognomy in his  De sculptura, which was published in 1504, claimed that only Christ (and perhaps also the Madonna) partook of human perfection, uncontaminated by any moral or humoral excess. 76 Again, I think we may assume that this was a widely understood view. The presence of Christ or God the Father in several of the images discussed here should almost certainly be understood as providing a balanced point of convergence between the four extremes, the perfect quintessence of humanity. In practice, group representations of the humoral types vary a good deal in tone, and deviancy was richly evoked in images where humanity’s capacity for frailty or vice was an important part of the subject. One such is the Christ Mocked  in London’s National Gallery by the Flemish painter Jerome Bosch, currently 74

The theme of music in Raphael’s image is exhaustively discussed in Thomas Connolly,  Mourning into Joy: Music, Raphael, and Saint Cecilia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). 75 Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy, 119–20. 76 See Anne Denieul-Cormier, “La Très Ancienne Physiognomonie et Michel Savonarole,” La Biologie Médicale, Hors Série (April 1956), 74; and L. Defradas, “De la physiognomonie,” physiognomon ie,” in Pomponius Gauricus, De Sculptura, ed. and trans. André André Chastel and Robert Klein (Geneva: Droz, 1969), 122.

 

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dated to around 1495.77 Here the four humors are damningly portrayed as his torturers. The choleric at upper right, ri ght, a lean, cruel-faced soldier, presses the crown of thorns on Christ’s head. The phlegmatic at lower left and melancholic at lower right are also brutalizing figures, reaching up to violate him. Even the superficial bonhomie of the suave sanguine figure at top right is sinister, offset as it is by his spiked dog collar.78 The other clear-cut example of negative portrayal of the humors, Leonardo’s caricatural image of the Five Grotesque Heads at Windsor, is still more extreme. Here the central figure is not Christ but a pitiful old man being tempted or tormented by monstrous amplifications of each humoral extreme – a sanguine procuress at left propels him towards a bovine phlegmatic woman at right, while the choleric and melancholic, in the rear, deride him, respectively, with screaming hilarity and a sly sneer.79 The Christ Teaching of around 1520 by the Milanese painter Bernardino Luini, now in the National Gallery, London, is more ambiguous than the Leonardo or the Bosch, even though the central figure of Christ is strongly contrasted with his companions (Fig. (Fig. 7.4). 7.4). In compositional terms, Luini’s image is similar to the Five Grotesque Heads: its five protagonists are shown half-length, and, therefore,

attention is focused on their faces and hand gestures. Luini exploited these to create variety – his evocation of the various skin tones of the humoral types is near hyperbolical. The pale phlegmatic at extreme right is offset by the grim, ultra-swarthy melancholic, emerging from the shadows, and the vigorously gesturing choleric, at extreme left, by the roseate sanguine. The sanguine figure’s pink clothing may be meant to underscore his humoral type. The same could be true also for the orangehooded choleric on the left, since choler was variously called yellow and red bile, and perhaps even for the melancholic figure to the right of Christ, with his murky, greenish garb. If so, Luini obviously felt that contrast rather than congruence was effective for the phlegmatic: the scarlet apparel certainly heightens his ghastly pallor. Part of the reason for his emphatic treatment of skin color is, perhaps, that Luini was unable to vary his figures much in terms of age, and they are all one sex. These

77

Reproduced in Jill Dunkerton, Susan Foister, Dillian Gordon, and Nicholas Penny, Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in The National Gallery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 349. 78 The idea that Christ’s tormentors are embodiments of the four humors was first suggested in Richard Foster and Pamela Tudor-Craig, The Secret Life of Paintings (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986), 64–8; the identification of the types proposed by Foster and Tudor-Craig seems to me sensible, and I follow it here. 79 The drawing is widely reproduced: see, for example, Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: Haywar Haywardd Gallery Gallery,, London: 26 January to 16 April, 1989 (London: South Bank Centre, 1989), 165, cat. 60 with discursive text, 164. I have more fully discussed this image and its relationship with Leonardo’s stated ideas on complexion and physiognomy in “The Signs of Faces: Leonardo on Physiognomic Science and the ‘Four Universal States of Man,’”  Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 143–62. For another interpretation drawing on humoral theory, see Gloria Vallese, “Leonardo’s  Malinchonia,”  Achademia Leonardi Vinci: Vinci: Journal of Leonar Leonardo do Studies and Bibliograph Bibliographyy of Vinciana 5 (1992): 44–51.

 

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7.4

Bernardino Luini. Christ Teaching [generally called Christ Among the  Doctors]. Oil on panel, 72.4 x 85.7 cm. Ca. 1515–30. National Gallery, London. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery Picture Library

men are usually identified as doctors of the Temple in Jerusalem, and are clearly elders of some kind, for all are either middle-aged or venerable.80 Yet their moral status is not altogether easy to determine. They are less exaggeratedly pernicious than the ghouls in Leonardo’s burlesque drawing of Five Grotesque Heads or Bosch’s Christ Mocked , but they are also far from beatific. How we understand Luini’s invocation of the four humors will in large measure be determined by how we understand the overall theme of his image. This is problematic. For all its strong similarities to Cima da Conegliano’s Christ among the Doctors of about 1505, now in the National Museum, Warsaw, Luini’s painting is implausible as a portrayal of  this subject, because of the treatment of the central figure. figure.81 While Cima’s Christ is appropriately juvenile, Luini’s is not: he is unquestionably a grown man. 80

The National Gallery Illustrated General Catalogue, 2nd edn (London: National

Gallery, 1986), 338. 81 Peter Humfrey, Cima da Conegliano (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 164–5.

 

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There seems no good basis for supposing that Luini botched or arbitrarily modified his representation of the youthful Christ: we know from other images that he was perfectly well aware of the conventions for showing Jesus as a child or adolescent. In 1525, Luini represented the miraculous discourse with the doctors in a fresco at Saronno, with an appropriately stocky and cherubic child Jesus.82 At some stage he also produced a panel showing a bust-length Young Christ, again plausibly pre-pubescent, which is now in the Ambrosiana, Milan. 83 One other visual detail seems to tell against the idea that the London picture represents the twelve-year-old Christ, namely his crossed stole or orarium. This is an attribute never shown, to my knowledge, in representations representati ons of Christ’s youthful disputation with the doctors of the Temple. In the rites of the Roman Church, the stole was worn only by the priest, being donned for the administration of the sacraments and in some localities for preaching.84 Within Luini’s Luini’s picture this latter function may be paramount: his stole establishes Christ as a bona fide preacher. Since he is adult but clearly not as mature as in most representations of the events leading up to the Passion (that is, he lacks a full beard), a logical inference is that the painting shows one of Christ’s early encounters with the hostile ecclesiastical 85

authorities in the synagogues of Galilee, described in Luke: 4:14 44. If his protagonists are scribes or Pharisees rather than Temple elders, Luini’s use of the humoral conceit is almost certainly negative. That his figures are retrograde, even atavistic, is further suggested by the fact that they are physically placed behind the Savior. The “pedestrian” arrangement has been explained in terms of Luini’s want of compositional flair, but this style-based assessment is 86

surely of the mark.talkLuini clearly meant the form a discrete, isolatedwide group, for they among themselves andPharisees ignore thetopreaching Christ. John Shearman once pointed out the “transitive” properties of the Christ Teaching, noting that the onlooker is notionally included in the group of Christ’s listeners.87 This observation can be further refined. Luini designates us, the spectators, as the only attentive listeners to the Word. Word. The Pharisees’ oblivion and posterior location in the picture space might be said to emphasize their role as representatives of the Old Dispensation, whereas the spectator is implicitly embraced by the New. Whether they are doctors or Pharisees, the notion almost certainly holds good

Luini’s  Disputa nel tempio fresco in Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Saronno, is reproduced as cat. 146 in Angela Ottino della Chiesa,  Bernar  Bernardino dino Luini (Novara: Istituto Geografico de Agostini, 1956). 83 Reproduced in G. C. Williamson,  Bernar  Bernardino dino Luini (London: Bell, 1900), 39. 84 William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, Catholic Dictionary (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960), 774–5. 85 For the idea that Luini’s theme was Christ disputing with the Pharisees, see Williamson, Bernar  Bernardino dino Luini, 39–40 and also the Illustrated General Catalogue Catalogue (London: National Gallery, 1973), 338. 86 Panofsky, Dürer, 115. 87 John Shearman, Only Connect … Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton Princeton University Press, 1992), 36. 82

 

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that Luini’s quartet represents a humanity that is in need of healing by Christ: his role as redeemer will always have been self-evident to spectators, whatever the context. Nor is it inexplicit in this image. The Jesus of the London painting recalls copies of Leonardo’s now-lost Salvator Mundi, and the similarity, which extends to dress, is unlikely to be coincidence. 88 This raises an important question: what was the nature and extent of Luini’s debt to Leonardo in this work, which was once attributed to the latter? We know from more than one other work that Luini developed or adapted Leonardo’s designs in his own paintings. For example, his Saint Mary Magdalene in the National Gallery, Washington, palpably depends on drawings by Leonardo,89 and the Holy Family with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist in the Ambrosiana, Milan, is derived from the Leonardo cartoon of the same subject (sans Joseph) in the National Gallery, London.90 It has also been suggested that Luini’s Young Christ  in the Ambrosiana reflects Leonardo’s intentions for an image of Jesus “at the age at which he disputed in the Temple,” demanded by the tirelessly importunate Isabella d’Este between 1504 and 1506. 91 The London Christ Teaching has also been proposed as a realization of Leonardo’s design for the apparently uncompleted Este commission.92 Whatever the truth, the chances

that Leonardo is in some sense the éminence grise of the design seem strong, especially given his avowed interest in representing the different human temperaments. In conclusion, I should like to address the possibility that Luini was not the only artist mentioned in this essay whose work was touched by Leonardo’s enthusiasm the small number of group portrayals offor thehumoral/complexion four humors which theory. can be Given assembled, it seems a remarkable coincidence that all but one of their makers knew Leonardo: Michelangelo, Raphael, Pontormo, and Luini all worked alongside him or in his sphere of  influence at one time or another, and Dürer may conceivably have encountered him.93 Of course, the proposition that Leonardo’s fascination was solely responsible On this image see L. Heydenreich, “Leonardo’s «Salvator Mundi»,”  Raccolta Vinciana 20 (1964): 83–109. 89 For a discussion of the image and the Leonardo drawing from which it is derived, see Shearman, Only Connect , 36–7; and for a good color reproduction, see John Walker,  National Gallery of Art, Art, Washington Washington (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1984), 227 (no. 282). 90 I know of no printed reproduction of this image (Inv 92), which was part of the collection of Federico Borromeo. 91 Kemp,  Leonar  Leonardo do, 218. 92 Kenneth Clark,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci Vinci (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1989), 187–8. 93 For the possibility of an interchange of ideas between Dürer and Leonardo, relating specifically to the former’s Christ among the Doctors in the Thyssen–Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, see I. Lübbeke, The Thyssen–Bornemisza Collection: Early German Painting 1350–1550 (London: Sotheby’s Publications, 1991), 232–8; see also, J. Bialostocki, “‘Opus Quinque Dierum’: Dürer’s “Christ among the Doctors” and its sources,” Journal of the Warburg Warburg and Courtauld Courtauld Institutes 22 (1979): 17–34, esp. 26–31. 88

 

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for sparking off a comparable interest in certain colleagues is far from unassailable. For one thing, the fact that Leonardo’s writings record an engagement with humoral theory clearly does not mean that he was the source of  all such engagement among early-sixteenth-century painters. The possibility that Leonardo merely set down in writing a concern that was widespread among artists during his lifetime must be acknowledged. There is another objection, which addresses a larger problem than Leonardo’s influence. More than once in this essay I have noted that representations of the humors may not necessarily be self-evident today. It should not be forgotten that the authors of the richly evocative portrayals of the fourfold system discussed above were exceedingly able and astute professionals; the fact that most of them assiduously courted celebrity during their own lifetimes has undoubtedly played a major part in their being enshrined by art history in the European mainstream. Other evocations of the four humors, by artists whose visual idiom is not so tractable to latter-day interpretation (or at least my interpretation), may be hiding in full view. Nevertheless, it is appealing on several counts to think that Leonardo indirectly spawned a short series of virtuoso renderings of the four humors by his acolytes

and rivals. He seems to have been one of the great enthusiasts of cinquecento art, as well as being one of its most flamboyant self-promoters. One cannot help but be struck by the number of images by Raphael and Luini alone that seem to testify test ify to his generosity in allowing younger artists access to his drawings and uncompleted works. Surely he was just as free in verbally airing the ideas that were at one stage or another in his notes. Thedate factfrom that the all the group representations of the humors codified mentioned in this essay period of  Leonardo’s maturity and international fame seems telling. To be more specific still, it is suggestive that Michelangelo, Raphael and Luini made their group portrayals of the four humors within a very few of years of, or during, a period in which they lived in close proximity to Leonardo. In her important book Leonardo and Central Italian Art, 1515–1550, Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt argued that Leonardo’s impact on formal and expressive aspects of cinquecento art in Florence and Rome, including Michelangelo’s, was much greater than has generally been supposed.94 The widespread influence of his physiognomic observations and experiments in Milan, Venice, and north of the Alps has never been doubted. Why, Why, then, should we not believe that Leonardo put a new complexion on the representation of small figure groups?

Kathleen Weil-Garris Posner,  Leonar  Leonardo do and Central Italian Art, 1515–1550 (New York: New York University Press, 1974). 94

 

Chapter 8

Leonardo da Vinci and Botanical Illustratio Illust ration: n: Natu Nature re Print Prints, s, Drawi Drawings, ngs, and Woodcuts ca. 1500 Karen M. Reeds* Reeds*

Scanning the contents of the precious volumes known collectively as the Codex Atlanticus, the eye stops short at the image of a single sage leaf (Fig. ( Fig. 8.1). 8.1). The leaf’s stem, midrib, veins, and curved edge stand out as dense black lines against the paler ink of the surrounding manuscript text and the paper itself.1 That crisp

*  I gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from those who heard pieces of this research over the past decade as well as stimulating conversations with Cynthia Pyle, Sandra Raphael, Diane Voss, Voss, and the late Phyllis Bober. Special thanks are also due to those colleagues who so generously offered their time, resources, and expertise, especially Beatrice Koll, Bruce Bradley, Giulia Bartrum, Roderick Cave, Martin Marti n Clayton, J. V. V. Field, Jean Givens, Cathleen Hoeniger, Renata Sadlova, Sergio Toresella, Toresella, Crystal Hall, and Alain Touwaide. I am deeply grateful to Professor Margaret Schleissner for the extended loan of  a microfilm of the Prague manuscript and to Mr Lawrence J. Schoenberg for generously permitting me to examine the Schoenberg herbal and to reproduce its images here. 1 Unless otherwise cited, texts and translations from Leonardo’s notebooks are from Jean Paul Richter, ed., The Literary Literar y Works Works of Leonardo Le onardo da Vinci, Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts, 2nd edn, enlarged and rev. by Jean Paul Richter and Irma A. Richter, 2 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), hereafter cited solely by Richter’s numbering system (as R. #). I also use the Richter numbering in citing Carlo Pedretti’s indispensable commentary on Richter: Carlo Pedretti, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter; comm. by Carlo Pedretti, 2 vols (Oxford: Phaidon, 1977) – hereafter Pedretti,  Richter Commentary. References to Leonardo’s manuscripts follow the bibliography in  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Master Draftsman, ed. Carmen Bambach (New York: Metropolitan Museum of  Art, 2003), 723. For Leonardo’s notebook sheets collected into the 12-volume manuscript known as the Codex Atlanticus (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex Atlanticus) – hereafter, Leonardo da Vinci, C.A. – I first give the chronological foliation used in  Il Codice atlantico della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano , ed. Augusto Marinoni and intro. Carlo Pedretti, 3 vols (Firenze: Giunti, 2000; hereafter Marinoni,  Il Codice atlantico), the reduced-format version of the 12-volume facsimile/edition: Leonardo da Vinci,  Il Codice atlantico della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, ed. Augusto Marinoni (Florence: GiuntiBarbèra, 1975–80); I also give the foliation formerly used in the Leonardo literature. For the Codex Urbinas,  Libro di Pittura, or Trattato della pittura (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Codex Urbinas Latinus 1270, hereafter C. Urb.), which Leonardo’s heir, Francesco Melzi, compiled and transcribed after Leonardo’s death from a number of  Leonardo’s manuscripts with the aim of fulfilling Leonardo’s own plan of a treatise on 205

 

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8.1

Leonardo da Vinci and Francesco Melzi. Salvia (sage). Nature print and notes (in hypothesized original orientation). Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Codex Atlanticus, fol. 197v, formerly fol. 72v–a. After 1507. Photo copyright Biblioteca Ambrosiana-Auth. No. F 82/05

 

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contrast – so characteristic of a printed page – signals the uniqueness of this image. Moreover, as a print, it is unusual: it is not a woodcut or intaglio, but a nature print, made from the leaf l eaf of a sage plant, inked and stamped onto the page.2 The text framing the nature print has its unusual features as well. Written in two languages in two different hands, it comments on at least three unrelated topics. An elegant humanist italic hand has inscribed two Latin headings immediately above and below the nature print, and then two more lines of Latin just below the second heading. But most of the text is in Italian. Located to the left and right of  the nature print and filling the bottom half of the page, the text forms short blocks of notes, written back to front in a distinctive, mirror hand. If we had not suspected it already, the script reveals at once that the page comes from one of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks – our first clue that there are several very good reasons for us to give this page our full attention. First of all, there is the interest of the technique itself. Beyond that, this singular image raises a set of  issues that range from its connections with other forms of printing and book illustration to its place in Leonardo’s thinking about art and science. For obvious reasons, scholars have frequently attributed this nature print to the hand of Leonardo himself; but, as this essay will show, that attribution is

problematic. Nor can claims for the uniqueness of the image and Leonardo’s invention of the technique be sustained. As we shall see, this is neither the first fi rst nor the only nature print in this period. That, in fact, makes it all the more interesting. By putting the Codex Atlanticus sage leaf alongside other examples of nature prints as well as other kinds of plant illustrations, a richer story emerges, one that permits us to use the very obscurity of nature printing as a tool for understanding the functions of plant images more generally.3 painting, see Leonar  Leonardo do on Painting Painting, ed. Martin Kemp, with Margaret Walker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). See also: Leonardo da Vinci, Tre reatis atisee on Painting Painting (Code (Codexx Urbinas Latinus 1270), trans. and annot. A. Philip McMahon, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956); and Leonardo da Vinci, Libro di pittura: edizione edizione in facsimile del Codice Urbinate lat. 1270 nella Biblioteca apostolica vaticana , ed. Carlo Pedretti and Carlo Vecce, 2 vols (Florence: Giunti, 1995). I use the Windsor number (W. #) to refer to the Royal Library collection of Leonardo drawings and texts unless a source uses the alternative abbreviation RL RL – the numbers are identical. 2 For the sage leaf and text, see: Leonardo da Vinci, C.A., fol. 197v, 197v, formerly fol. 72v–a; Marinoni,  Il Codice atlantico, vol. 3, 272, 274; R. 616; translation and notes in Pedretti,  Richter Commentary, R. 616. The notebook page is partially reproduced in William A.  Leonardo do da Vinci on Plants and Garde Gardens ns (Portland, OR: Dioscorides Press, Emboden,  Leonar 1987), 155, fig. 90, with a slightly inaccurate transcription; and in full in Roderick Cave and Geoffrey Wakeman, Typographia naturalis, pl. 1. The contrast of inks is particularly striking in the Giunti edition photographs, Marinoni, Il Codice atlantico, vol. 3, 273, foglio 197v. 3 Pedretti alludes to “another experiment with an actual leaf, foiled by smudged fingerprints (Leonardo’s?) … on the newly revealed verso of the Codice atlantico fol. 114v–a [i.e. fol. 317v], a sheet of architectural studies from the French period, c. 1518”: Pedretti, “Icarus at Fiesole,” Achademia Leonardi Leonardi Vinci Vinci (ALV (ALV Journal) 5 (1992): 178, n. 1. In Il Codice blank fol. 317v, 317v, formerly Codice atlantico, Marinoni does not reproduce the otherwise blank

 

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The Codex Atlanticus Nature Print

Up to now, nature printing has been at best a marginal part of the discussion of  fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century approaches to the representation of the plant world. In part, that is because so few examples of this technique of plant representation survive from the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries – although even that handful is more than previously recognized.4 In part, it is because the process is literally so artless. Making a nature print is child’s play: a leaf (or less commonly, a flower or whole plant) is inked on its underside and pressed directly onto the page to illustrate itself. Its imprint preserves the specimen’s individual irregularities of outline, surface texture, and venation. Unlike illuminating a manuscript or cutting a woodblock, making a nature print takes no special training, talent, or equipment – only a certain deftness of hand. There is no way to ascertain the beginnings of a technique so easily invented and re-invented. The imprinted materials and stamping tools preserved today in the collection of the Musée Cluny, Paris, show us that, well before Gutenberg, medieval artisans were pressing designs and words into coins, wax seals, tiles, book-bindings, and Eucharist wafers. Other methods for transcribing or projecting

a complex shape onto a flat surface could have prompted early experiments in nature printing: the use of stencils, for example, is taken for granted by the fifteenth-century writer, Cennino Cennini.5 Or the idea could have stemmed from observations of nature itself: fossil fossi l imprints, say, or the mark of a leaf leached onto a flat stone. In the same vein, to teach the art of tracking deer – Gaston III of Foix (Gaston Phoebus) urged in his  Livre de la chasse  – the master huntsman should fol. 114v–a, and dismisses it as having no drawings or writing. From the reproduction in Carlo Pedretti, The Codex Atlanticus Atlanticus of Leonardo Leonardo da da Vinci: Vinci: A Catalogue of its its Newly  Restored  Restor ed Sheets: Part One and Two (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), I believe this image was produced by stenciling; that is, a grape leaf (rather than the maple leaf Pedretti proposes) was placed on the page and brushed or pounced with black pigment, yielding a white leaf against a dark background, entirely lacking a nature print’s characteristic details. 4 For nature printing see Cave and Wakeman, Typographia naturalis (Wymondham: Brewhouse Press, 1967); Elizabeth Harris, The Art of the Nature Print  (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1989); F. G. Hochberg, “Impressions of Nature,” Terra 23 (1984): 21–9; Armin Geus, ed., Natur im Druck: Eine Ausstellung Ausstellung zur Geschichte Geschichte und Technik Technik des  Naturselbstdrucks  Naturselbstdru cks (Marburg an der Lahn: Basilisken-Presse, 1995); Geus, “Nature SelfPrints as a Methodical Instrument in the History of Botany,” in  Natura-Cultura:  L’interpret  L’inte rpretazione azione del mondo fisico nei testi e nelle immagini, ed. Giuseppe Olmi, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, and Attilio Zanca (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000), 245–53; Gill Saunders, Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995); Sergio Toresella and Marisa Battini, “Gli erbari a impressione e l’origine del disegno scientifico,”  Le Scienze (Italian edition of  Scientific American) 41 (1988): 64–78. 5 On stencils and linens block-printed with leaves and animals, see Cennino D’Andrea Cennini, The Craftsman’s Craftsman’s Handbook: The Italian “Il Libro Dell’ Arte,” trans. Daniel V. Thompson, Jr (1933; reprint, New York: Dover, 1954), 65, 115.

 

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create impressions with a stag’s hoof in soft earth. 6 And the fourteenth-century bibliophile Richard de Bury condemned the practice of pressing flowers in books: “Then the scholar we are speaking of, a neglecter rather than an inspecter [sic] of  books, will stuff his volume with violets, and primroses, with roses and quatrefoil.”7 Otto Pächt and Felix Andreas Baumann remark on the flattened appearance of  the plants in some drawings in the innovative herbals of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century – the Tractatis de herbis (London, British Library Library,, Egerton MS 747) and the Carrara Herbal (London, British Library, Egerton MS 2020). Baumann notes Pandolfo Collenuccio’s gift of dried plants to his fellow humanist, Angelo Poliziano, at the end of the fifteenth century (a transaction that hints at a very early hortus siccus or herbarium, that is, a collection of plant specimens preserved for study by pressing, drying, and attaching them to labeled paper sheets). From such pressed plants, it would have been a small step to the notion of  nature printing.8 The arrangement of the Codex Atlanticus print and the writing on the page suggests that the sage leaf print at the top of the sheet was made first. It was printed slightly to the right of the page’s vertical midline, as if to allow a left-hand gutter for binding. The Latin labels in the humanist hand were then

written above and just below the print: SALVIA (sage) at the top, and Caput  CCCCXXXIII : (Chapter 433) beneath.9 Below that, stretching across the width of  the page, a brief account in Latin, again in the humanist italics, provided the habitat and medicinal properties of this familiar herb: “It grows in harsh places. A drink of a decoction from its leaves [and] twigs provokes urine and expels the 10

menstrua and [unborn] infants. It darkens hair.” The lower halfprint of the page was originally left blank, perhaps to leavethe room for another nature and its accompanying herbal text. 6

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 616, fol. 56 verso. See The Hunting  Book of Gaston Phébus, intro. Marcel Thomas and François Avril, comm. by Wilhelm Schlag (London: Harvey Miller, 1998), fols 56 verso and 57 recto, and p. 41. 7 Richard de Bury, The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, Treasurer and Chancellor of Edward III , ed. and trans. Ernest C. Thomas (London: K. Paul, Trench and Co., 1888), ch. 17. 8 Otto Pächt, “Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950): 13–47, esp. 29–30; Felix Andreas Baumann,  Das Erbario Carrare Carrarese se und Die Bildtraditi Bildtradition on des Tractatus de herbis (Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1974), 21–2, 91–2, and Taf. 6, 10, 16, 35, 36, 41, 42, 51. See Fig. 5.3 in 5.3 in Jean Givens’s essay (Chapter (Chapter 5) 5) in this volume, “Reading and Writing the Illustrated Tractatus de herbis, 1280–1526,” for the Tractatus de herbis manuscript discussed by Pächt. 9 Marinoni’ Marinoni’ss transcription ( Il  Il Codice atlantico atlantico, vol. 1, 272) reads “ Caput CCCCXXXII ” (i.e. Chapter 432); a glance at the facsimile page, p. 273, shows that number must be a typographical error. Pedretti’s citation reads “Capite” rather than “Caput CCCCXXXIII ,” ,” Pedretti,  Richter Commentary Commentary, vol. 1, 360, R. 616. 10 Leonardo, C.A. fol. 197v, formerly fol. 72 v–a, Marinoni, Il Cod Codice ice atl atlant antico ico, vol. 1, 272; Pedretti,  Ric  Richte hterr Comment Commentary ary, vol. 1, 360, R. 616:  Nas  Nascit citur ur in locis locis asperis: asperis: huius huius decoct decoctum um cum folijs ramulis vrinam provocat potum/ Menstrua et infantes euellit Crines demorat [.] Emboden, Leo  Leonar nardo do on on Plant Plantss, 32, incorrectly gives denigrat for the final demorat .

 

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Carlo Pedretti identifies the italic hand of the Latin passages as that of  Francesco Melzi (1491/93–ca. 1570), Leonard’s student, friend, heir, and a talented artist in his own right.11 Melzi and Leonardo met in 1507 in Milan, and Melzi probably joined Leonardo’s household the following year. 12 Melzi’s own interest in plants is conspicuous in the floral themes in his surviving paintings; several drawings of plants now attributed to Melzi are skillful enough to have once been ascribed to Leonardo.13 Immediately to the top left of the nature print, Leonardo wrote a short note of  his own, proposing a variation on the process of nature printing: This paper should be painted over with candle soot tempered with thin glue, then smear the leaf thinly with white lead, in oil, as is done to the letters in printing, and then print 14 in theinordinary way. Thus the leaf willout appear the hollows and lighted on the parts relief; which however comes here shaded just the in contrary.

Still later, Leonardo turned the page around (so that the print, Melzi’s Latin inscriptions, and his own comment on the print were all upside-down) and filled up both sides of the sheet with conjectures about an entirely different subject: the relative weights of the four elements.

To sum up this proposed reconstruction of Codex Atlanticus, fol. 197v, formerly 72v–a: Melzi was responsible for the sage leaf print, which he made in the course of compiling a book of herbal remedies which was to be illustrated by nature prints. Judging by the chapter number for Salvia, the book would have been sizeable – more than 400 plants – and may have been arranged alphabetically.15 The sageinto leafthe print was formargin, some reason putbecause aside – the perhaps because note crossed implied perhaps leaf had beenMelzi’s too heavily inked. Leonardo’s attention was caught by the print; a method for reversing the 11

See reproductions of Melzi’s handwriting in Leonardo,  Libro de pittura, figs 13–15 and cat. 120, 640–2, in Bambach, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Vinci, Master Draftsman. 12 Bambach, “Documented Chronology of Leonardo’s Life and Work,”  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Master Draftsman, 236–7, n. 7. 13 Martin Kemp, “Leonardo and the t he Idea of Naturalism: Naturali sm: Leonardo’s Hypernaturalism,” in Andrea Bayer, ed., Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in  Lombardyy (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), 64–73. Melzi’s Flora and   Lombard Pomona and Vertumnus were painted during Leonardo’s last years, perhaps using his compositions: see Peter Hohenstatt,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: 1452–1519, trans. Fiona Hulse (Cologne: Könemann, 1998), 122–5, pls 127–9. Clark and Pedretti ascribe a drawing of  columbine,  Aquilegia (formerly, Windsor; now lost) to Melzi; Clark,  A Catalogue of the  Drawings of Leonard Leonardo o da Vinci in the Collectio Collection n of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, rev. 2nd edn; with Carlo Pedretti, 3 vols (London: Phaidon, 1968), vol. 1, 188–9

(unnumbered drawing). 14 Marioni, Il Codici atlantico atlantico, vol. 1, 273–4: “Questa carta si debbe tignere di fumo di candela temperato con colla dolce, e poi imbrattare sottilmente la foglia di biacca a olio, come si fa alle lettere in istampa, e poi stampire nel modo commune. E così tal foglia parrà aombrata ne’ cavi e alluminata nelli rilievi. rilievi. Il che interv ene qui il contrario.” R. 616. Pedretti,  Richter Commentary Commentary, vol. 1, 360, R. 616. 15

Melzi’s precise Latin source has not been identified.

 

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blacks and whites of nature prints occurred to him; and he added the note about it. 16 Leonardo then recycled the page for other notes.

Nature Printing in Three Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts

The sage leaf in the Codex Atlanticus has often been described as the first nature print on record, and, in turn, Leonardo (1452–1519) often has been credited with both the idea and earliest account of the process. Emboden’s 1987 monograph,  Leo  Leonar nardo do da Vinci on Plants and Gardens, for example, speaks of “this invention of Leonardo.”17 Cave and Wakeman’s history of nature printing, Typographia Naturalis, comments: “It is appropriate that the earliest description of the original technique of nature printing and the oldest extant nature print should both be by Leonardo da Vinci.” 18 However tempting it is to ascribe yet another technological discovery and remarkable image to Leonardo, the evidence of the page about the nature print’s maker is ambiguous at best and points to Melzi rather than Leonardo. It therefore seems prudent to call it the “Codex Atlanticus nature print.” In any case, the claim of priority is moot: neither Leonardo nor Melzi was the first to employ the

technique. Nature prints show up in at least three manuscripts that predate the Codex Atlanticus nature print:19 16

Robert Zwijnenberg, The Writings and Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci: Order and  1999), ch. 4. 4. Chaos in Early Modern Thought  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch. 17 Emboden, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci on Plants, 155 and the more cautious caption to fig. 90: “Nature printing may have been invented by Leonardo … .” 18 Cave and Wakeman, Typographia Naturalis, 2 and pl. 1. (A (A revise revisedd and update updatedd edition, in progress, will correct this point; Cave, personal communication.) Others who give or imply Leonardo’s priority for the process include: Ludwig Goldschneider, “Foreword,”  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Landscapes and Plants (London: Phaidon, 1952), 6; Saunders, Picturing Plants, 144; Giambattista Giambattist a de Toni, Le piante e gli animali in Leonardo Leonardo da Vinci (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1922), 24; and the catalogue record for fol. 99v of the manuscript, Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419 (hereafter, the Schoenberg herbal), on the website of the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image, University of Pennsylvania. A Leonardo drawing in red chalk of a leaf  (identified as mulberry mulberry,,  Morus, by Emboden,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci on Plants, 209) has been described incorrectly as a nature print in André Chastel, ed., The Genius of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. Ellen Callmann (New York: Orion Press, 1961), 173, no. 296. That drawing appears in Leonardo’s “Codex on the flight fli ght of birds” (Turin, Biblioteca reale di Torino, MS Cod. Varia 95, fol. 15 verso); see Augusto Marinoni, ed.,  Il codice sul volo degli uccelli: nella Biblioteca reale di Torino (Firenze: Giunti-Barbèra, 1976). 19 Sergio Toresella Toresella (personal communication) kindly shared with me his discovery of nature nat ure prints of a poplar leaf in an Italian illustrated herbal without text that pre-dates all of these: Matthaeus Platearius, Compendium Salernitanum, 1350–75 (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library,, MS M. 873, fols 75 verso and 76 recto.) The leaf prints were deliberately put alongside Library the late-fourteenth-century drawing of the poplar tree, pop  populu uluss, on fol. 75 verso. However, the faint prints cannot be dated, and their ink seems to match the much later French plant labels (cf. the Morgan Library’s notes on the manuscript). Some of the nature prints in Toresella and Battini, “Gli erbari a impressione,” may well have been done in the fifteenth century.

 

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1. Salzburg, Salzburg, Univers University ity Library Library Salzbu Salzburg, rg, MS MS M I 36: a medica medical–astro l–astrological logical miscellany in German and Latin on parchment and paper (1425?) (Fig. ( Fig. 8.2). 8.2).20 2. Prag Prague, ue, Národn Národnii knihova knihova,, MS XXIII XXIII F 129. 129. A late late-fift -fifteent eenth-ce h-centur nturyy miscella miscellany ny of astrology, magic, and medicine, medicine , in German and Latin, Lat in, compiled by Wenzeslaus Brack, a physician who was rector of the school at Constance (Fig. (Fig. 8.3). 8.3).2121   3. Paris Paris,, Bibliothèq Bibliothèque ue du Muséu Muséum m d’Histoire d’Histoire natur naturelle, elle, MS 326, 326, Italian, Italian, completed 19 April 1487.22 An incomplete herbal with nature prints, pen drawings, and watercolors, by several hands, mostly in Italian, partly in Latin. The best known of the three, the Salzburg manuscript, has 84 nature prints of  leaves, flowers, or whole plants, representing 81 different kinds of plants. The prints are, with one exception, grouped together on 14 paper folios. There is no obvious principle of organization, but occasionally leaves with similar shapes have been set next to each other – for example, virga pastorum and the two sage leaves (elifagus and pilifagus i[d est ] salvia) on fol. 155r (Fig. (Fig. 8.2). 8.2). The prints, in a dark brown-green ink or tempera (one in red), are laid out quite quit e deliberately onto paper pages, which have also been lightly tinted green. 23 Nearly all are labeled

20

The nature prints are on fol. 145 verso and on fols 154 verso through 177 verso. Hermann Fischer, Mittelalt  Mittelalterliche erliche Pflanzenkunde Pflanzenkunde (1929; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967), 125–6 and pl. XIX, reproducing the four leaf-prints on fol. 173 recto (with a typographical error in the old shelfmark, V. I. H. 166). See also John E. Murdoch,  Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984), 221, no. 197 and note on p. 382. Fischer, “Naturselbstdrucke von Pflanzen aus dem 15.  Bericht der Oberhessi Oberhessischen schen Gesellschaft für Natur- und Heilkunde zu Jahrhundert,” Giessen ( Neue  Neue Folge: Folge: Naturwissenschaf Naturwissenschaftliche tliche Abteilung), 13 (1930): 27–30, transcribes the plant names and identifies most of them. I have followed identifications for the leaf prints in Fig. 8.2. 8.2. The manuscript itself identifies  pilifagus and salvia (sage) as synonyms; for elifagus as a synonym for salvia, see Tony Hunt, Plant Names of Medieval England  (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), 331. For color photographs, see Toresella and Battini, “Gli erbari a impressione” (three prints on fol. 170 verso). Anna Jungreithmayr, ed.,  Die  Deutschen Handschrifte Handschriften n des Mittelalte Mittelalters rs der Universitätsbi Universitätsbibliothek bliothek Salzbur Salzburg g (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988), 8–19. 21 Hartmut Beckers describes the manuscript, but not the nature prints in “Eine Spätmittelalterliche Deutsche Anleitung zur Teufelsbeschwörung mit Runenschriftverwendung,”  Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertums 1132 (1984): 136–5. Margaret Rose Schleissner, “Pseudo-Albertus Magnus, Secreta Mulierum Cum Commento: Deutsch, Critical Text and Commentary” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1987), 97, n. 22. See also Nina Pleuger,  Der Vocabularius rerum von Wenzeslaus Brack: Untersuchun Untersuchung g und   Edition eines spätmittelalterlichen spätmittelalterlichen Kompendiums (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005). The Prague manuscript under discussion here should be added to Pleuger’s list of seven surviving manuscripts once owned by Brack. 22 The manuscript is described for the first time in Elisabeth Antoine, ed., Sur la terre comme au ciel: Jardins d’occident à la fin du moyen âge (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2002), cat. 101, Sauge, 225; entry by Antoine, 228–9. I have not seen the manuscript nor any other images from it. 23 I have only seen the black-and-white microfilm lent by Professor Schleissner and the color digital images provided by the University Library, Salzburg, through the kindness of  Beatrix Koll.

 

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8.2

Attributed to Konrad von Butzenbach. Elifagus (sage), pilifagus i[d est] salvia (sage), herba virga pastorum (teasel), siriaca i[d est] malva (mallow) [identified from top left]. Nature prints and mantic text. German and Latin medical–astrological miscellany. Salzburg, University Library Salzburg MS M I 36, fol. 155 recto. 1425 or later. Photo courtesy of the University Library, Salzburg

 

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8.3

Wenzeslaus Brack. Celidonia? (celandine?). German and Latin miscellany of magic, astrology, and medicine. Nature print and line-drawing. Prague, Národni knihova, MS XXIII F 129, fol. 213 verso. Late fifteenth century. Photo courtesy of the National Library of the Czech Republic

 

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neatly in black ink with Latin, Italian and, occasionally, German names. Some pages also have medicinal recipes, but not obviously tied to the plants portrayed; on two folios, a mantic text is written over the prints (see Fig. 8.2). 8.2). The identity of the prints’ maker is uncertain – perhaps the physician who signed and dated the opening parchment segment of the miscellany:  Ego Conradus de Boutzenbach medicus … Anno Domini 1425. The manuscript was later owned by Konrad von Butzenbach’s patron, Johann Graf zu Solms (d. 1457), and in 1470 by an astrologer, Johannes Lichtenberger Lichtenberger..24 The one published page of the Paris manuscript (fol. 19 [53]) reveals a taste t aste for trompe l’oeil effects on the part of its nature-printer. The maker of the prints carefully swabbed four sage branches, bearing nearly 20 leaves in all, with graygreen ink and arranged them gracefully on the page. Two leaves rested between the paper and the stems of the neighboring sprig. The overlapping of leaf and stem counteracts the flatness that usually characterizes nature prints. After making the prints, the maker delicately brushed in the stems, petioles, terminal buds, and added darker veins on young leaves that happened to print uniformly gray-green. As a final touch, the maker added a set of vestigial roots. The Prague miscellany (whose nature prints are described for the first time here) seems to have incorporated the prints much more spontaneously. The four

nature prints amid the collection of German herbal remedies r emedies look like spur-of-themoment efforts. The compilation’s hasty handwriting, the occasional grotesque faces in initials, the handful of small diagrammatic drawings of plants and body parts, and the extensive use of runes as a substitution cipher in charms to conjure up the devil suggest a set of medical, astronomical, and magical notes assembled for Wenzeslaus Wenzeslaus Brack’s private use. These blotchy impressions are probably the result of a water-based ink or paint that did not adhere well to the waxy surface of the leaf or to the paper. Brack clearly felt that the prints left something to be desired and so drew in the missing 24

On the basis of an owner’s signature and date at the t he start of the miscellany’s opening section written on parchment, Hermann Fischer, Mittelalte  Mittelalterliche rliche Pflanzenkunde Pflanzenkunde, wrote that the prints were made in 1425 by the scribe/compiler, a self-described physician, Konrad von Butzenbach (or Butzbach). Fischer argued that, because some plant names are Northern Italian, the German doctor had traveled to the northern Adriatic and used nature prints to create a permanent memorandum of plants he encountered. Several later studies (such as: Geus, ed.,  Natur im Druck ; Hochberg, “Impressions of Nature”; and Murdoch,  Album of Science) adopted 1425 as the date of the earliest extant nature prints and Konrad von Butzenbach as their maker. However, in “Naturselbstdrucke von Pflanzen,” Fischer acknowledged that the nature prints are printed on paper in a separate section of the miscellany, that the paper’s watermark required a later – but undetermined – date, and that Butzenbach could not be reliably identified as the maker of the prints. However, Sergio Toresella and Marisa Battini, “Gli erbari a impressione,” 75, 78 (color photograph of fol. 70 verso on 76), believe that the watermark is indeed contemporary with the 1425 owner’s inscription and that the spelling of plant names reflects a German’s rendering of north Italian dialect. For other owners and possible dates, see Jungreithmayr, ed., Die Deutschen Deutschen  Handschriften  Handschrifte n, 8.

 

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parts of the plants. Beneath a text about the virtues of the juice of celidonia, the unlabeled print of a single palmate leaf (possibly celandine, celidonia) has been finished off with lines connecting the ends of the printed veins to a drawn leafstalk (fol. 213 verso; Fig. 8.3). 8.3). For the two full-page images labeled figwurtz (fol. 63 recto) and guaney [?] (fol. 63 verso), prints of leaves from a single plant have been arranged in the same positions they would have on the living plant. For guaney, pen-lines roughly indicate stem, root, and a daisy-like flower; for  figwurtz, stem and roots have been drawn drawn in. A fourth print print of an unlabeled leaf  has been squeezed sideways below a recipe at the bottom of fol. 31 recto, and a stalk, two tiny flowers on long stems, and a round root added by pen. Even this small set of fifteenth-century nature prints print s reveals marked differences in skill and motivation. While both the Prague and Salzburg manuscripts were compiled by German physicians apparently for their own use, the Prague manuscript’s nature prints (like its drawings of plants) look like quick, informal memoranda, clumsily executed as if the maker were trying out the method for the first time, using whatever materials were to hand. The Salzburg manuscript’s prints, by contrast, manifest considerable previous experimentation and skill with inking and printing the leaves; the large number of plants and their tidy arrangement on the Salzburg pages bespeak a deliberate, systematic approach to

collecting and studying medicinal plants. The elegant, illusionistic combination combi nation of  nature print and watercolor in the Paris manuscript suggests that the artist (or commissioner) of the page valued aesthetics at least as much as medical content – comparable in intent to the Tacuinum sanitatis illustrations discussed by Cathleen Hoeniger in this volume (Chapter (Chapter 3). 3).

Nature Printing and the “Book of Secrets” Tradition

The three examples of fifteenth-century nature prints demonstrate that the technique was known in both Italy and German-speaking lands well before the Codex Atlanticus sage print was made, but it is not clear whether they represent cases of independent invention or of a shared craft tradition. For the Codex Atlanticus print, however, we do have documentary evidence that, for Leonardo and Melzi, instructions for nature printing were close at hand. Leonardo’s friend and mathematics teacher, Fra Luca Pacioli (1445–1517?), described the technique in his  De viribus quantitatis  – “On the Forces of  Quantity” or “On the Powers of Number.” For all Pacioli’s renown as a mathematician, he was also a man who loved a joke. Masquerading behind the serious Latin title is a book written in Italian, bursting with entertaining problems in practical and recreational mathematics, word-games, proverbs, anecdotes, magic tricks, useful recipes (for removing spots from paper, for making clothes smell good), and simple science experiments, many with food – perhaps to amuse fellow banqueters between courses. In the section on “Documents and Proverbs

 

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Useful to Merchants,” we find this (somewhat incoherent) account of nature printing: How to represent any leaf, particularly those that are veined: That is, ones that have ribs, such as leaves of violets, figs, grapevine, sage, borage, ox-tongue, roses and whole violets etc. Take finely ground charcoal, or the lampblack with which books are printed, which will be much better. And mix it in well with ordinary oil to make a liquid; then with a sponge or brush, spread it rather thickly onto a very clean tablet. Then you take your leaf, very clean, and lay it ribbed-side-down onto the said paper [i.e. the inked surface], flattening it [i.e. the leaf] out carefully, and on top of the said leaf you shall put a piece of clean white paper to hold it in place. And then with your hand or fingers you rub the said paper, not too heavily, so that the leaf is not damaged. Then, when it has taken up the black, you put it [the leaf] onto another piece of perfectly white paper, in such a way that out of as plac place. e. Then, in theThe same way,will youremain put another paperit does on topnotofmove it, rubbing you did before. black on thepiece pageofaswhite you wished; it will work very well but only the lines will be shown. Then you may shade it in with verdigris or another green, as watercolor, and it will appear very natural, as you will see.25

Pacioli probably compiled his collection of pastimes in 1496, but internal references to people and events show that he continued to add material to the

manuscript at least until 1509. In 1508 he applied for an official privilege to print the book, but the project fell through (although his  De divina proporti proportione one did appear in Venice in 1509, with woodcuts of geometric solids from Leonardo’s designs).26 In the only surviving manuscript of De viribus quantitatis – copied by a scribe with a beautiful hand and careless eye – the two paragraphs about nature printing are inserted as an unnumbered chapter between chapter LXXXVI and LXXXII of  25 “ A sapere retrar retraree ogni foglia, maxime quelle che sonno nerbose. Cioé che hanno

coste, comme sonno foglie de viole, ficara, panpane de vitte, salvia, borraci, lengua bovina, rose et viole etc., in tutte. Recipe carbone [n. 748: MS: carpone] pesto sotilmente, o vero nero de fume con che se stampa libri et sia molto meglio. Et quello stempera bene incorporando con oglio comune liquidamente, poi con la spogna, o vero penello, stendelo in s’una taula ben netta alquanto grossamente. Et poi habbi la tua foglia ben netta et  quella, dal canto de soi nerbi, destendi in su ditta carta tenta con dextrezza, et sopra ditta  foglia porrai una carta bianca ben netta, che sia ferma. Et tu poi con mano, o ver dete,  fregarai  frega rai ditta carta non tropp troppo o gravando, che la foglia non se guastasse; poi preso che l’arà el negro, porrala in un’altra carta bianchissima, in modo che non si mova de luogo.  Et poi medesimament medesimamentee porrali sopra ditta carta bianca, strucinando comme prima festi: restarà el nero sul foglio che volevi. Starà benissimo, ma se vederà solo li profili; et tu poi con verderame, o vero altro verde a modo aquarella, l’ombrarai et pararà naturalissima, como vederai etc.” Luca Pacioli,  De viribus quantitati quantitatis, s, Trascrizione di Maria Garlaschi Peirani dal Codice N. 250 della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna , ed. Augusto Marinoni

(Milano: Ente Raccolta Vinciana, 1997), 368–9 (fol. 259 verso). See the digitized facsimile at the website, Matematica ricreativa; for this chapter, see JPGs 547 and 548. 26 See Marinoni’s introduction to Pacioli,  De viribus quantitatis, v–xxxiii; Marinoni, “ De viribus quantitatis,” Raccolta Vinciana Vinciana 22 (1987): 115–36; and Carlo Pedretti, “Il  De viribus quantitatis di Luca Pacioli,” Studi Vinciani (Geneva: Droz, 1957), 43–53.

 

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part 2.27 The manuscript’s table of contents also omits the topic in its list of  chapters. These two points suggest that the chapter was a late addition. If so, the date would mesh conveniently with Melzi’s first years with Leonardo. Considering the long give-and-take between Pacioli and Leonardo, it is of course possible that Pacioli learned nature printing from Leonardo. However, the odds are good Pacioli would have said so since he names Leonardo twice elsewhere in the manuscript and underscores his friendship with Leonardo in  De divina  proportione  proportio ne.28 Pacioli’s chapter on nature printing pre-dates the earliest printed account by roughly half a century. Secreti del Reverendo Alessio Piemontese, published in Venice in 1555, is usually regarded as the beginning of the popular printed genre of “the book of secrets.”29 Where Pacioli presents the nature print as a pleasant diversion for polite company, Alessio Piemontese (generally regarded as a pseudonym for Girolamo Ruscelli, who was something of a hack writer) turns it into a home-decorating project: To counterfeite all maner of greene leaves which shall seeme naturall. Take greene leaves of what sort you will, and skrape or bruse the biggest strekes that be like ribbes upon the leafe the contrarie waie, with a knife. Take common oile or oil of line [i.e. linseed], or other licours that make smoke and burne them in a lampe, and

sette over them a yot [sic, for pot] for all the smoke will stick and cleave round about it: This done gather togither the same smoke, and temper in a dishe with a little oile or Vernishe, and incorporate it well togither. Then with the saide colour you shall blacke the leafe on the side where you have brused and skraped the great ribbes with a linen cloth or cotton, and turne the leafe upon the Paper double and with your hande or with a piece of Clothe press doune somewhat lightly the saide leafe, untill you be assured that it hath least [sic] the colour upon the Paper. Then take it of handsomely, and you shall finde all the print and devise of the saide leafe to bee as it were natural, yea, and even unto the least vaine or ribbe, so that you shall think it faire, and with all the naturall signes and markes, and if you will make ma ke it greene according to his nature: take Vinaigre Vinaigre very strong, verdegrise, gomme arabick, bladder past, called in French panne de verre, and put all together and seeth it, and it will be greene as we have before saide, and with the said water you maie make al these leaves greene, and it will be faire to see, for to make a painting frysed or rough about your chamber, ye specially in winter time. 30 27 28

Pacioli, De viribus quantitatis, 325: Documenti et proverbii proverbii mercanteschi mercanteschi utilissimi utilissimi. See the dedication to an unnamed nobleman; part 2, ch. XI, for references to “nostro  Leonardo  Leonar do da Vinci” and his habit of writing backwards with his left hand: Pacioli,  De viribus quantitatis. (The chapter follows an unnumbered chapter which – like the chapter on nature printing – does not appear in the table of contents.) See also Pedretti, “Il  De viribus quantitatis.” Pedretti notes a later record in Melzi’s hand (ca. 1517) of a botanical riddle found in  De viribus quantitatis, see  Richter Commentary, vol. 1, 361, R. 616; and

vol. 2, section XX, 260. 29 For Alessio Piemontese and this genre, see William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), esp.  esp. ch. 4. 4. Eamon does not discuss Leonardo or nature printing and he had not known about Pacioli’s  De viribus quantitatis (personal communication). 30 Within five years, the work appeared in French and English. The English of The seconde part of the Secretes of Master Alexis of Piemont, by him collected out of divers excellent aucthours, and newely translated out of Frenche into Englishe … by William

 

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The natural appearance of the leaf prints is clearly an essential part of their appeal to both Pacioli and Alessio Piemontese. That naturalness lay, lay, first, in the print’ss exact imitation – a “counterfeite” – of the leaf’ print’ leaf ’s “devise” formed by its shape, ribs, veins, “signes and markes.”31 Even more important to achieving a “very natural” effect, however, was the extra step of making the leaf print green, “according to [the leaf’s] nature” – accomplished by adding a green wash over the black print. In this, they were either re-inventing or consciously adapting the practice of using colored inks seen in the Salzburg and Paris prints.

Leonardo’ss Drawing of Rushes and his Treatise Leonardo’ Treatise on Plants for Painters

Although Leonardo scholars have noted many parallel passages in Leonardo’s notebooks and Pacioli’s De viribus viribus quantitatis quantitatis, and although they have long linked the Codex Atlanticus nature print to Alessio Piemontese and the printed books of  secrets, historians of books of secrets have not yet mapped out the place of  Leonardo and Pacioli in the early history of that genre.32 I would argue, however, that Leonardo’s reaction to the Codex Atlanticus nature print seems to belong

more to the genre of artists artists handb handbooks. ooks. Artists handb handbooks ooks are closely closely related related to books of secrets, to be sure, but they do not promise to reveal arcane methods for Ward  (London: Jhon [sic] Kyngston, for Nicholas England, 1560), fols 102–3, is a very  La secunda parte de’ secreti secre ti del close translation the earliest Italian edition have seen: reuerendo donnoofAlessio Piemontese (Pesaro:I Heirs of Bartolomeo Cesano, 1562),  Libro sesto, 216 [i.e. 226]–227: “ A contrafar d’ogni sorte frond frondii verdi che pareran pareranno no naturali. Piglia foglie verdi di qualunque sorte ti piace, & dal riuerso gli ammacherai le costole piu grosse con un legnetto, poi farai questa tinta. Piglia oglio commune ouer di linosa, ouero altri liquori che [p. 227] facciano fumo, & falli bruciare nella lucerna, & metti sopra una  pignatta, che tutto il fumo vi si attacci intorno, poi raccogli quel fumo, & distemperalo in una scodella con un poco d’oglio, o vernice, & incorpora bene, poi con la detta tinta imbratterai la foglia da quel lato doue hai ammaccate le costole con vna pezzetta, ouero bambagio, poi riuoltela sopra la carta doppia sopra alla foglia, & con la tua mano, ouero con vna pezza in mano va calcando sopra la detta foglia leggiermente tanto c’habbia lasciato la tinta su la carta, poi leuala con destrezza, & trouerai tutto il disegno naturale della detta foglia per insino alla minima venarella, di sorte tale che ti parerà bella, & con tutti i segni naturali, & se tu la vorrai far verde secondo la sua natura, piglia aceto forte, verderame, gomma arabica, pasta di vesica, metti insieme, & falla bollire, al fuoco, & sara verde come s’è detto nel suo capitolo, & con la detta acquarella farai verdi tutte quelle  foglie, & faratti faratti un bel bel vedere, vedere, per farne farne un un fregio fregio intorno alla camera, camera, anco nel tempo tempo dell’ inverno.” (For a somewhat different English rendering a century later, see Cave and Wakeman, Typographia Naturalis, 4.) 31 The word “counterfeit,” contrafactum, originally signified “portrayal, imitation.” See David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print: 1470–1550 (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1994), 237–59; and Parshall, “Imago Contrafacta: Images and Facts Fact s in the Northern Renaissance,” Art History 16 (1993): 554–79. 32 See Pedretti,  Richter Commentary, vol. 1, 360, R. 616; Pedretti, “Il  De viribus quantitatis,” 47.

 

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producing supernatural marvels. Instead, their ultimate aim is, as Cennini wrote a century before Leonardo, “copying and imitating things from nature.”33 The words nature and natural reverberate throughout Leonardo’s writings, from his early inventory of his own work which included molti fiori ritratti al naturale, “many flowers portrayed from nature,” to the late drafts for a treatise on the principles of painting.34 To observe and render correctly all the complex effects of light falling onto or passing through objects in nature and capture thereby the illusion of relief was, Leonardo believed, the painter’s highest art.35 Although Leonardo’ss comment in Codex Atlanticus about the sage leaf print does not invoke Leonardo’ the words nature or natural, his proposal to reverse lights and darks in the printed image falls in line with his much larger program to teach painters how to achieve the imitation of nature. When Leonardo looked at the sage leaf print, he would have immediately thought that the black central rib and the burst of white alongside its thickest point were far from natural. In nature, when the underside of a strongly ribbed leaf is turned uppermost, its edges, raised ribs, and veins catch the light. An accurate image would present these lines as brighter – not darker – than the rest of the leaf’ leaf ’s surface or the background. By the same token, the pockets in the angles of the ribs should be deep shadows: “Thus the leaf will appear shaded in the hollows and 36

lighted on the parts in relief. A red-chalk drawing of a mulberry leaf in the notebook containing Leonardo’s Leonardo’s treatise on the flight of birds captures this effect of relief with great subtlety.37 33

The life-casts Craftsm an’s Craftsman’ Handbook  Cennini, , 123. Cennini uses this phrase in introducing the process of making ofshuman bodies – the three-dimensional equivalent of nature prints. See Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific  Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 97–8. 34 Leonardo’ Leonardo’ss inventory (ca. 1483–5) appears in C.A., fol. 888r, formerly 324r. 324r. R. 680. In a tally of the eighty-odd passages, mostly from C. Urb., arranged by Kemp under the heading, “The Science of Art” ( Leonardo  Leonardo on Painting, 14–46, nn. 9–93), I noted at least fifty uses of nature and natural. 35 Martin Kemp, “Leonardo and the Idea of Naturalism,” 70, discusses Leonardo’s “uncompromising, even obsessive” preoccupation with most minute effects of light and shadow and their particular manifestations in plants. See also  Leonar  Leonardo do on Painting, ed. Kemp, 15, translation of Leonardo, C. Urb., fol. 133 recto–verso. 36 Pedretti,  Richter Commentary Commentary, R. 616. Pedretti, in his brief note “Icarus at Fiesole,” 177–8, offers an alternative reading of Leonardo’s account of the “physiotypic process of  … having the actual leaf used as a rubber rubber stamp”: “the ‘rubber-stamp ‘rubber-stamp leaf’ is wet with white

lead to removePedretti its ownseems impression from the surface sheet –up an the unusual experiment.” to envision theblack-prepared white lead on the leaf of as apicking soot from the page and leaving the white surface of the paper as the leaf’s “impression” – much as an artist working in charcoal might use a lump of kneaded bread or eraser to lift off the charcoal to create white highlights. This interpretation ignores Leonardo’s explicit comparison of the process to inking and printing type. Pedretti’s example was, I believe, produced by using a leaf as a stencil (see note 3 above). 37 Leonardo da Vinci,  Il codice sul volo degli uccelli, fol. 15 verso (and a smaller outlined leaf, fol. 11 verso). Emboden,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci on Plants, Appendix IV, 209, identifies both as Morus nigra. Pedretti (who gives alternative identifications) believes that

 

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Indeed, perhaps through a black-and-white reproduction, it seems38to have misled one expert on Leonardo into describing it as another nature print. The concern with light and shadow expressed in Leonardo’s note about the sage leaf print accords with his general plans to write a set of treatises that would encompass everything that a painter needed to know, and in particular with his plan to write a book for painters about plants.39 In both subject and chronology chronology,, the comment connects particularly closely to a dozen notes on painting the effects of  light and shade falling on and through leaves, in his Manuscript G (Paris, Institut de France), dated by Pedretti ca. 1510–11.40 These notes, coupled with nearly a hundred other passages and drawings about trees and landscapes in various notebooks, were preparatory to a book for painters about plants.41 Leonardo’s plans for such a treatise emerge from these fragments, from his outlines for a parallel work on anatomy for painters, and from the heading for one section: “Discourse on herbs, some of which have the first blossom placed at the upper end of the stem, others have it in the lower part.” 42 Putting these together, we can conclude that Leonardo would have discussed the plant growth from seedling to fruition, distinctive patterns of branching and flowering, the way light lands on and passes through branches and leaves, plants associated with particular habitats, seasonal changes in the appearance of plants

and landscapes, and the differences both obvious and subtle among similar kinds of plants.43 One tantalizing page from Leonardo’s notebooks reveals what part of that treatise might have looked like. The Windsor Castle sheet (W. 12427) labeled by Melzi heightened the outlines of the larger leaf; see Leonardo da Vinci, Natur  Naturee Studies Studies from from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, Carlo Pedretti and Kenneth Clark ([New York?]: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1980), 1980), cat. entry 17 for RL 12421, p. 37. 38 See Chastel, The Genius of Leonardo da Vinci, 173, n. 296, and notes 25 and 48 above. 39 For attempts to reconstruct Leonardo’s treatise on painting, see Pedretti’s introduction to Leonardo, Libro di Pittura. Carlo Pedretti,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci Vinci on Painting:  A Lost Book (Libro (Libro A), Reassembled Reassembled from from the Codex Vaticanus Vaticanus Urbinas 1270 1270 and from the Codex Leicester (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), 151–4,

summarizes the extant sources for C. Urb., Part 6, on trees and verdure; he dates dat es Leonardo’s Leonardo’s most intensive work on this as 1510–15. 40 R. 421–34; Pedretti,  Richter Commentary, vol. 1, 300–1, R. 421–34; Pedretti,  Leonardo  Leonar do da Vinci Vinci on Painting, 151–4. 41 See Richter,  Literary Works of Leonar Leonardo do da Vinci, vol. 1, ch. viii, viii, “Botany for  Richter er Painters and Elements of Landscape Painting,” R. 393–481A; Pedretti,  Richt Commentary, vol. 1, 291–323, R. 393–481A. 42 The passage on W. W. 9121a (dated by Pedretti as ca. 1510) immediately follows a note for a treatise on rendering drapery. drapery. Pedretti, Richter Commentary Commentary, vol. 1, 287–8, R. 392: “e in pittura fa djsscorso de panni e altre vestige – djscorso dellerbe delle quali alcune anno il primo fiore posto nella somma alteza del fussto alcunj lanno nella piu bassa parte .” 43 Francis Ames-Lewis, “Leonardo’s Botanical Drawings,”  Achademia Leonar Leonardo do da Vinci (AL (ALV V Jour Journal) nal) 10 (1997), 117–24; reprinted in Claire J. Farago, ed.,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci: Selected Scholarship, 5 vols – vol. 5,  Leonar  Leonardo’ do’ss Science and Technology (New

York: Garland, 1999), 275–82.

 

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Clark and Pedretti as “Heads of two different types of rushes” depicts the flowering heads of two plants commonly found in marshy places (Fig. ( Fig. 8.4). 8.4). The text accompanying these pen-and-ink drawings distinguishes between the flowers of two kinds of common rushes: This is the flower of the fourth species of the rush and is the principal of the kind because it may grow about three to four braccia high, and near the ground it is one finger thick. It is of clean and simple roundness and beautifully green and its flowers are somewhat fawn-coloured. Such a rush grows in marshes, etc. and the small flowers which hang out of its seeds are yellow. This is the flower of the third kind, that is, species of the rush, and its height is about one braccio and its thickness is one third of a finger. But such thickness is triangular, with equal angles, and the colour of the plant and the flowers is the same as in the rush above.44

Leonardo’s descriptions address the host of details that a truly skilled painter, striving “to imitate with [his] art every kind of natural form,” would need to know for each kind of plant.45 How big is it – where will it fit into the composition? Where does it grow, and when does it bloom – will its presence emphasize the setting of the painting? What are its natural colors – how will they accord with other colors planned for the painting?46 What are the proportions of the various

parts of the plant? What aspects of the plant s form make it recognizable to the eye? What sets it apart from similar plants? Despite some points of overlap (size, color, habitat), this set of questions is fundamentally different from those a contemporary physician or pharmacist would have asked. In the extant observations of plants, Leonardo says nothing 44

Pedretti,  Richter Commentary, vol. 1, 321–2, R. 481: “Quesstossto [sic] e il fiore

della 4a delgiuncho e decquel chettiene il principato della loro alteza la quale ecciede la lungheza dj 3 in 4 .br. ella grossezza dundjto nella nel suo nasscimento ede djpulita essenplijcie. retondjta de dj bello colore verde ellj sua fiori participano dj colore leonjno . e quessto tale giuncho nasscie ne padulj ecc ellj picholi fiori che pendano fori della sua semenza sono giallj. Quessto e il fiore della 3a sorte overo spetie dj giunchi . ella sua alteza e circha vno . br. [emezo] ella sua grosseza he vno terzo djdjto . malla detta grosseza e trianghulare cone quali angholj e il cholore del giuncho e de fiori essimjle al giuncho dj  sopra.” Clark, Catalogue of Drawings, vol. 1, 68, RL 12427. Emboden, Emboden, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci Vinci on Plants, 148, identifies the first rush as Scirpus lacustri. Emboden and Clark repeat de Toni’ oni’ss typographical error in identifying the second rush as Cyperus sertonius [sic], that is, C. serotinus. In “The Plant Illustrations of Leonardo da Vinci,”  Burlington Magazine 121 Cyperus rotundus. (1979): Brian Morley identifies ittuas pittor 45 R.553–62, 506: “ Adunque cosnosciendo pittoree non poter poteree esser bono se non sei vniversale maestro d contrafare colla tua arte tutte le qualità delle forme che produce la Paris, Manuscript A (2172, 2185), natura.”  Leonar  Leonardo do on Painting, ed. Kemp, 202, n. 524, Paris,

(formerly Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS It. 2038), fol. 2 recto; also transcribed in Leonardo, C. Urb., fol. 32r–v. Quoted by Kemp, “Leonardo and the Idea of  Naturalism,” 65. 46 Cf. Leonardo’s shortcut for “duplicating the true colors of leaves” by using a leaf  both as color swatch and palette, in C. Urb. 268r. Leonardo, Libro de pittura, Part Six, No. 981, 325.

 

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8.4

Leonardo da Vinci. Two “rushes”: Scirpus (top) and Cyperus. Pen and ink over traces of black chalk. Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, W. 12427. ca. 1510–14. 1510–14. Photo courtesy courtesy of The Royal Royal Collection Collection © 2005, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

 

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about the roots of plants and nothing about smells orproperties, juices (except in artists’ materials or food); he ignores medicinal timesasofingredients gathering, modes of preparation, and humoral qualities. He is also silent about the symbolic or religious associations of the plants. The art historian James S. Ackerman regards Leonardo’s two rushes as “the first attempts to initiate a botanical taxonomy” with the “triangular section [of the bottom drawing] graphically exaggerated as it would not be in one of the nonscientific drawings.”47 Similarly, the botanist William Emboden takes the view that Leonardo’s impulse “was to characterize plants in the manner of a botanist, that is, to reveal their qualities to no specific end.”48 Even so, Leonardo’s notes and drawings on this sheet omit major morphological features that a botanist would have taken pains to set down: the form of the roots and fruit, the whole stalk, and leaves. The Schoenberg Herbal and Nature Print

The “graphically exaggerated” detail of the triangular stem cross-section unmistakably flags Leonardo’s second kind of “rush” as a member of the genus Cyperus and quite distinct from the round-stemmed Scirpus in the upper drawing.

Leonardo’s description and drawing both highlight it so neatly that it is tempting to credit him as the first person to notice this key character for distinguishing the two groups in the field. However, a late-fifteenth-century Italian artist – although not at all in Leonardo’s league – seems to convey the distinctively angled stem through a sharp contrast of bright green and dark green in a watercolor of Ciperj (Fig. 8.5). 8.5).49 The artist’s standard technique is to outline stems, roots, and leaves in a narrow gray-brown line, add a colored wash rather roughly, and then model stems and roots with single confident brushstrokes of a darker tone or hue. For Ciperj , the contrast is particularly crisp, as if the first light-green wash had been allowed time to dry on the paper and the brush had then been heavily loaded l oaded with the dark green pigment so as to lay down a very dark edge down the center of the stem. Indeed, this watercolor portrays the characteristic tripartite structure of the whole plant more forcefully than Leonardo’s drawing by showing six flower-heads, three leaves, and three roots. The manuscript (Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419, hereafter the Schoenberg herbal) in which the Ciperj watercolor appears is a remarkable record of several generations of users augmenting their knowledge 47

James S. Ackerman, “The Involvement of Artists in Renaissance Science,” in Science and the Arts in the Renaissance, ed. John W. Shirley and F. David Hoeniger (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1985), 110–1. 48 Emboden, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci Vinci on Plants, 148. 49 Schoenberg herbal, fol. 33 verso.

 

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8.5

Ciperj (Cyperus). Erbario [Herbal containing 192 drawings of plants].

Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419, fol. 33 verso. Late-fifteenth-century drawing. Photo courtesy of the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection

 

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of herbs. early fifteenth century intopen-and-ink the sixteenth, several hands added newFrom labels,thetext, watercolors of morewell plants, embellishments, corrections – and a nature print. The manuscript started out as a set of about 70 brightly colored paintings of  plants on the rectos only. These illustrations – captioned with Italian names – are outlined in ink, and highly stylized and strongly symmetrical. Many incorporate patterns, faces, and fantastic animals that reflect the pictorial traditions of the Pseudo-Apuleius herbal and alchemical herbals.51 The figure of angales is a good example of these early-fifteenth-century images (Fig. (Fig. 8.6). 8.6). Late in the fifteenth century, the bound manuscript of 100 folios was, in effect, interleaved: watercolors of still more plants were painted on many of the versos and on both sides of the folios previously left blank. At the same time, labels and some herbal texts in Italian, written mostly in sepia ink, were added. In technique, in descriptive detail, and choice of colors, these watercolor illustrations contrast strongly with the Pseudo-Apuleius figures on the facing rectos, as the  juxtaposition of Ciperj  (33 verso) and angales (34 recto) demonstrates (Fig. (Fig. 8.5 and Fig. 8.6). 8.6). This second set of images includes several that are markedly more naturalistic than the rest, even though the brushwork and colors in the artist’s palette look the same throughout the “versos.” This subset gives the impression of reproducing

drawings done directly from living plants or from very good illustrations.52 The Schoenberg herbal ends with the nature print: a single leaf labeled Salvia salvaticha, on the verso of the last folio (Fig. ( Fig. 8.7). 8.7). A brief note note in the same hand hand as the label explains the process: “dal roverso acognoscerla | hoc modo: – est ,” ,” “It is understood to be from the reverse [i.e. of the leaf]; in this fashion.”53 The hand matches the late-fifteenth-century “verso” labels and herbal texts. The crenate–dentate border and roughly triangular shape of the printed leaf  immediately set it apart from the simple elongated oval leaf of common sage, 50

I am grateful to Mr Schoenberg for putting digital scans of the entire manuscript on line in association with the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI), University of Pennsylvania Libraries. I have relied heavily on the detailed description, dating, and plant identifications in the catalogue record at the SCETI website: however, I read: ciperj  [i.e. cyperus] for its cipari, and angales [i.e. anagallis] for abgeles (fol. 34 recto, Fig. 8.6) 8.6) and angeles (fol. 44 recto). The names “Refael Gomes” and “Semuel [illegible]”–possibly of Spanish or Portuguese Converso origin–appear as a paste-down on fol. 1 recto. 51

The Schoenberg herbal warrants closeFondo comparison with other contemporary herbals: for example, Fermo, Biblioteca Comunale, manoscritti, codice n. 18, ed. Salvatore Pezzella, Un erbario inedito inedito (sec. XV) dell’ Italia centrale centrale svela i segreti segreti delle piante piante medicinali (Perugia: Orior, 2000). Many figures in the first part of the Fermo manuscript (including herba Angales, fol. 20 recto; color illustration, p. 79) are very similar to the Schoenberg herbal’s herbal’s opening rectos. 52 Examples of this group (identifications from catalogue record) include: fols 4 verso, Paralesis (Primula vulgaris); 21 verso, Ciclamenes panporcini (Cyclamen neapolitanum); 24 verso, Peonia (Paeonia officinalis); 92 verso, Cauda equina ( Equisetum  Equisetum arvense). 53 Schoenberg herbal, 99 verso, my translation.

 

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8.6  Angales (anagallis, pimpernel). Erbario [Herbal containing 192 drawings of plants]. Drawing. Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419, fol. 34 recto. Early-fifteenth-century drawing. Photo courtesy of the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection

 

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8.7

Salvia salvaticha (clary (clary,, catnip?). Erbario [Herbal containing 192

drawings of plants]. Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419, fol. 99 verso. Late-fifteenth-century nature print. Photo courtesy of the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection

 

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Salvia officinalis L., used in the nature prints of the Paris manuscript and Codex Atlanticus.54

It is possible to imagine the late-fifteenth-century annotator of the Schoenberg herbal as an activist editor in the midst of revising and updating a standard reference work: by increasing the number of entries, checking data, relying on more sources, commissioning more and better pictures – and trying to decide whether to incorporate a new eye-catching kind of image. That kind of activity and the scientific curiosity it engendered, Cynthia Pyle has recently argued, was the hallmark of the work of fifteenth-century Renaissance humanists in fields as diverse as architecture, ancient history, and zoology.55 As William M. Ivins, Jr observed, the prologue of the printed herbal, Gart der Gesundheit  (Mainz: Peter Schöffer, 1485) describes such an editorial process; he regarded its “handsome and well-drawn illustrations” as “epoch-making in the history of prints as a medium for the conveyance of information in invariant form.”56 However, only a subset of the Gart ’s ’s illustrations deserves Ivins’s praise; by and large, the Gart ’s ’s illustrations do not live up to its Prologue’s claim to portray the “true … form” of plants.57 Whether or not the Schoenberg herbal represents such a concerted editorial plan (I am inclined to doubt it), it does suggest a way to make sense of the inconsistencies evident in the illustrations of the Gart der Gesundheit  and many other medieval herbals. The printed herbal might be the

end-result of taking a composite manuscript like the Schoenberg herbal and carefully reproducing all of its accumulated “upgrades” without benefit of the critical methods being worked out by Renaissance humanists in the very same period.

54

Cf.  Herbolario volgare (Venice: Alessandro de Bindoni, 1522), Cap. XX, fol. c iiii recto, Salvia salvatica ouer Ambrosiana, ed. Erminio Caprotti and W. T. Stearn, Herbarium  Apulei/Herbolario  Apulei/He rbolario volgare volgare, 2 vols (Milan: Edizioni Il Polifilio), vol. 2. Stearn identified identi fied the plant in the stylized woodcut as Salvia pratense L., salvia dei prati, meadow clary cl ary (Tavola, p. xc–xci). Catnip,  Nepeta cataria L., is another possibility. The catalogue record for the Schoenberg herbal tentatively identifies two other plants as kinds of Salvia: fol. 10 verso:  Erba follo, “possibly Salvia sclarea, clary,” in a late rough pen sketch, and fol. 62 recto, Salva [sic] stela overo Sanguisorbula (“Salvia horminum?”). 55 Cynthia Pyle, “The Renaissance Rediscovery of the Classical Approaches to the World: Reflections on History and Science, Then and Now,” in  Build  Building ing the Past/Konstruktion der eigenen Vergangenheit, ed. R. Suntrup and J. R. Veenstra, Veenstra, Medieval to Early Modern Culture/Kultureller vomalso Mittelalter zur Frühen Neuzeit,and7 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006),Wandel 3–31. See my “Renaissance Humanism Botany,” Annals of Science 33 (1976): 519–42. 56 William M. Ivins, Jr, Prints and Visual Communication (Ca (Cambr mbridg idge: e: MIT MIT Pre Press, ss, 1953), 34–6. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe , 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), vol. 1, 265–6. 57 Gart der Gesundheit  [also known as  Hortus sanitatis zu Deutsch and the German  Herbarius] (Mainz: Peter Schöffer, 1485), fol. a ii verso: “in irer rechten farwe und  .” gestalt .”

 

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Nature Prints ca. 1500: Assessing the Process

From even this small assemblage of nature prints and comments about them, several quite different, albeit overlapping, motives for using the technique emerge in the period between 1450 and 1550. At the very least, the nature prints in the Codex Atlanticus, and in the Prague, Salzburg, Paris, and Schoenberg manuscripts testify to the desire to record hands-on experience with the plants. As collectors of “secrets,” Pacioli and Alessio Piemontese delighted in the ingenuity of the technique itself; and the Schoenberg herbal’s comment may also hint at greater interest in the process than in the image or in the plant itself. it self. Pacioli, Alessio Piemontese, and the artist of the Paris herbal also took pleasure in the unexpectedly lifelike images obtained by nature printing and enhanced the “counterfeit” effect by compilers adding color, painting stems and roots, printing leaves on walls. For the of the Prague,inSalzburg, Paris, andand Schoenberg manuscripts, and the Codex Atlanticus sheet, nature prints provided an alternative or auxiliary to traditional drawings of medicinal plants. The maker of the Schoenberg nature print may have seen it as an improvement on the hand-drawn images in the manuscript. The variety of motives is reflected in the variety of practitioners: practiti oners: this is a group that cuts across the social divisions of late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century

Europe. Among the people whose names or positions can be linked to these nature prints, we can count: a German physician/schoolmaster; two Germans with an interest in medicine, magic, and astrology; two Italian owners of herbals; Melzi, a young nobleman and artist with an interest in medicinal plants; Leonardo, the artist/engineer with a deep curiosity about everything he saw; Fra Pacioli, the merchant turned Franciscan and mathematician; and the courtly and bourgeois wonder-loving audiences of Pacioli’s entertainments and Alessio Piemontese’s book of secrets. Part of nature printing’s appeal lay in its simplicity. Unlike other forms of plant illustration, it required no special equipment, materials, intermediaries, or assistants. The plant’s collector could be its illustrator, independently and directly translating firsthand experience into a durable record. By contrast, to illustrate an herbal with colored drawings of plants assumed the availability of at least one person who knew the tedious procedures of grinding, mixing, and applying the colors. As the famous trio of portraits at the end of Leonhart Fuchs’s  De historia stirpium (Basel: Michael Isingrin, 1542) reminds us, the naturalistic woodcuts of  plants in that herbal depended on the talents of three expert craftsmen, working under the close supervision of the botanist–author, as well as the printer’s skills and workshop (Fig. (Fig. 9.1). 9.1).58 Nature prints appealed to the eye in many of the same ways plants themselves 58

See Brigitte Baumann, Helmut Baumann and S. Baumann-Schleihauf,  Die Kräuterbuchhandschrift des Leonhart Fuchs (Stuttgart: Verlag Eugen Ulmer, 2001), esp. chs 10–13. See also Claudia Swan’s comments in this volume Chapter 9. 9.

 

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did: through the decorative symmetries, and surface texturesnot captured exquisite detail. Above all,shapes, the nature print carried an authority sharedwith by drawings, woodcuts, or engravings. Like a seal stamped into wax, the nature print authenticated itself. Although the word “counterfeit” had suffered connotations of  fraud and deceit for a century or more by the time Alessio Piemontese used it to describe nature prints, in this context the counterfeit was the closest possible representation of truth. It was a life-size map that faithfully captured idiosyncratic details of the individual specimen. Only ink intervened between it and the real thing. For Leonardo, however, the print was an unsatisfactory representation of an object in the world. Fond though he was of ingenious tricks, to him the Codex Atlanticus print served primarily as a demonstration of an irritating flaw in the process. having seen the problem, he immediately the drawings solution: print withTypically, white pigment onto a black background. Like so manysaw of the in his notebooks, his improvement on the technique at once posed a “visual hypothesis” and acted as a “graphic experiment.”59 But, even so, it was at best a simple-minded model of one small aspect of the complex play of light and dark on leaves that he detected, described, and strove to portray.60 As my reconstruction of the Codex Atlanticus sage leaf implies, I doubt that Leonardo made the nature print. Apart from the evidence of the sheet itself, there

are good reasons to believe that Leonardo would have had strong reservations about the value of nature printing as an effective method for portraying plants. As a purely practical matter, he would have recognized drawbacks to nature printing that went beyond the disconcerting reversal of lights and darks. Prints are life-size, so the process does not work for very big or very small plants. Many parts of plants (fruits, nuts, thick roots, delicate flowers) cannot be printed effectively. Leaves by themselves have too few unambiguous characteristics to make identification certain. All coloring is lost. Flattening the plant distorts or destroys the distinctive “drape” of a living plant – so hard to describe in words, so hard to capture in lines, yet so essential to a naturalistic portrayal.61 At best, only a few prints can be made from a single specimen. The generically important features of the plant risk being overwhelmed by the features peculiar to the individual specimen. If Leonardo even momentarily considered using nature printing to illustrate his 59

 Linear For “visual hypothesis,” see Kim H. ofVeltman, D. Keele, Deutscher Perspective and the Visual Dimensions Sciencewith and Kenneth Art  (Munich:

Kunstverlag, 1986), chs 2 and 4, esp. 226. For “graphic experiment,” see Martin Kemp,  Leonardo  Leonar do (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 50, 172. 60 For examples and analysis of Leonardo’s use of light and shade, see Veltman and Keele, Linear Perspective Perspective, 344–5; figs 19.1, 2; 20.1–5; 21.1–5. 61 On the importance of both real and metaphorical flattening of reality to the development of modern scientific culture, see Bruno Latour, “Drawing Things Together,” in Scientific Practice, ed. Michael Michael Lynch Lynch and Steve Woolgar Woolgar (Cambridge: (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 19–68, esp. 39–58.

 

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treatise on plants, .any one of these inconveniences would have ruled out the notion immediately i mmediately.

Leonardo and Printing

At a deeper level, the deficiencies of nature prints would have reinforced Leonardo’s own ambivalence about the new technology of printing. 62 Leonardo had no objection to printed books in general. His reminders to himself show how energetically he sought out books, no matter whether they were manuscript or print, no matter who owned them. As Monica Azzolini’s essay in this volume notes (Chapter (Chapter 6), 6), his connections in the Milanese medical community can be tracked through his lists of books he wanted to t o see (including a “fine herbal,” bello erbolaro, owned by Master Giuliano da Marliani).63 Indeed, his quick reminders to himself about who owned a particular part icular title also show that both he and the bookowners took it for granted that books were community property. Most of the authors and titles on Leonardo’s booklists were available in print, often in several editions. Reti and others have assumed that the erbolaio grande that Leonardo listed among his books ca. 1503–4 was a printed herbal and offer the 1491 Italian herbal, the Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum [ Herbarius  Herbarius latinus ], as one possibility.64 It would not have taken much Latin Lati n to read that herbal’s confirmation

of what he already knew: “Ciperus … is a triangular herb” (Fig. (Fig. 8.8). 8.8).65 Leonardo’s disdain for the multiple casts produced by sculptors and the replication of printed books is famous. By producing “infinite offspring” through copying, such works sacrificed the nobility that belonged to the unique and irreproducible original (in this he shows his bias as a painter).66 Nonetheless, it is also clear that he wanted his own treatises to be printed. As a tangible sign of this intention, he calculated the total number of characters in a book of 160 pages (50 letters per line, 52 lines per page) – the indispensable preliminary to estimating typesetting costs.67 62 63

Zwijnenberg, Writings and Drawings, ch. 4. 4. R. 1386; Pedretti,  Richter Commentary, vol. 2, 328, R. 1386. Monica Azzolini, “Leonardo “Leona rdo da Vinci’ Vinci’ss Anatomical Anatomical Studies in Milan: A Re-ex Re-examinati amination on of Sites and Sources,” 170–3. 64 Ladislao Reti, “The Two Unpublished Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid – II,”  Burlington Magazine Magazine 110 (1968): 81–9, esp. 82, item 15; and Carlo Maccagni, “Leonardo’s List of Books,”  Burlington Magazine 110 (1968): 406 + 409–10, 15. Reti and Maccagni are (Madrid, perhaps Biblioteca too quick Nacional, to assumeMS that the erbolaio grande item mentioned in Leonardo’s booklist 8936, Codex Madrid II, fol. 2 verso) was a printed herbal. As far as I can determine, all the illustrated herbals that had been printed in Italy as of 1503–4 were octavos. 65 Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum (Vicenza: Leonardus (Achates) de Basilea and Gulielmus de Papia, 1491), C. XLIII. 66  Leonar  Leonardo do on Painting, ed. Kemp, 19; Leonardo, C. Urb. 2v–3v. 67 Carlo Pedretti, “L’arte della stampa in Leonardo da Vinci,” esp. 111–12, citing Leonardo, C.A., 259v–a in the former foliation. As an editor at scholarly presses, I recall doing such calculations by hand well into the 1980s.

 

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8.8

Ciperus (Cyperus). Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum [ Herbarius  Herbarius Latinus].

Vicenza: Leonardus (Achates) de Basilea and Gulielmus de Papia, 1491, C. XLIII. Photo courtesy courtesy of the College College of Physicians Physicians of Philadelphia Philadelphia

 

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Whilecolumnar Leonardo’s most composed pages clearly written, carefully aligned blocks of formally text and drawings – like theofsheet of two rushes – seem to represent layouts for a printed book, it also is likely that Leonardo envisioned them as printed from full-page engraved plates rather than from type and woodblocks.68 We have independent contemporary testimony for his plans for publishing his anatomical drawings as copperplate engravings.69 Although printers were better prepared to deal with Leonardo’s right-to-left script than most people, the potential for confusion was great. If Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum, with its simple layout, could be published with an upside-down woodcut (see Cicorea, Fig. 8.9), 8.9), who knew what disasters awaited Leonardo’s intricate combination of  words and pictures? But, for writing directly onto the metal plate, Leonardo’s mirror-writing would have been ideal. On into the sheet of two rushes, thewith top only drawing of Scirpus could have translated easily a rectangular woodcut a minor distortion of the lowest head of flowers. But not so the drawing of Cyperus. The exuberant sweep of its leaf up from the stem and arching over the words breaks into the space that would have been reserved for type. Conceived as a graphic and intellectual whole, the page was impossible to translate into print except as a single, large engraving. Leonardo did not oppose woodcuts on principle: his stunning diagrams for Pacioli’s books and for his own mysterious  Achademia were created with woodcuts in mind. However, these were images of solid geometry and elaborate

knots; for highly skilled craftsmen, the tasks of transferring their straight lines and symmetric curves to the block and cutting them would have been challenging but straightforward. When it came to t o plants or anatomy, though, Leonardo could only have had scorn for the woodcut illustrations he saw in contemporary printed books. Woodcuts could not begin to express the subtlety of his drawings or the acuity of his observations: the Ciperus woodcut in Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum did not even show the triangularity remarked upon in the text (Fig. ( Fig. 8.8). 8.8). His passionate opposition to printing his anatomical illustrations as woodcuts (even though woodcuts would be cheaper than engravings) applied equally well to botany.70 What painters needed to know about plants, woodcuts could not show. A short passage in the Codex Madrid II (Madrid, Biblioteca National, M 8936, fol. 119 recto, ca. 1504) indicates that Leonardo had devised a method of  engraving that would wed the advantages of the woodcut and the engraving. 71 The 68 69

Zwijnenberg, Writings and Drawings, 85. Paolo Giovio,  Leonar  Leonardi di Vincii Vita, first published in Tiraboschi, Storia della  Letteratura Italiana (Venice, 1796), vol. 7, 16412. See Azzolini, “Leonardo da Vinci’s Anatomical Studies in Milan,” 155, n. 26. 70 On a sheet at the Royal Library, Windsor W. 19007v, Leonardo explicitly rejects woodcuts as the medium for publishing his anatomical work. Pedretti,  Richt  Richter er Commentary, vol. 2, 94. Martin Clayton,  Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci – The Anatomy of Man,  Drawings from the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II  (Houston: Museum of  Fine Arts, 1992), 22, 22, 84 (cat. 13A, RL 19007 verso). 71 Ladislao Reti, The Madrid Codices, 5 vols (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), vol. 2,

 

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8.9

Cicorea (chicory). Woodcut [printed upside down]. Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum [ Herbarius  Herbarius Latinus]. Vicenza: Leonardus (Achates) de Basilea

and Gulielmus Gulielmus de Papia, 1491, 1491, C. XXXII. Photo courtesy courtesy of the College College of Physicians of Philadelphia

 

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process allowed him to write and draw directly onto the coated surface of the metal plate and then, through a tricky series of resists, to protect those lines while etching away everything else. The relief engravings could then (like woodblocks) be printed together with typeset text using usi ng an ordinary printing press. He may have had some relief engravings printed, but in practice this thi s ingenious technique did not enable him to publish the long series of treatises he had in mind.72 What is accomplished by adding nature prints to the assortment of plant images generated in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries? They were at best a minor form of illustration; and by themselves, t hemselves, nature prints cannot explain the gulf  between Leonardo’ Leonardo’ss Cyperus and the images of the same plant in the Schoenberg herbal and Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum. They can, however, make us look more closely at the criterion by which those differences are chiefly judged: fidelity to nature.recourse What, after all, tools couldofimitate nature more faithfully these than acarbon nature copies print? Without to the geometry and perspective, reproduced the exact size, shape, and proportion of the natural objects they represented. Yet, even within this tiny sample of makers and users of nature prints, there is no single standard of fidelity to nature. For Pacioli and Alessio Piemontese, all that the prints lacked was a wash of verdigris to make them “seeme naturall.” Of  the two physicians using nature prints in their medical miscellanies, Brack was not bothered by the sloppiness of his own technique, but he could not be happy until

he had sketched in stems, roots, and flowers. The maker of the t he Salzburg collection arranged and inked the leaves with great care, but did not worry that the prints represented only fragments of the whole plant. To the maker of the Paris album, the appearance of nature depended as much on the gray-green coloring and the disposition of the entire sage plant on the page as on the shapes and textures of  individual leaf prints. To the late-fifteenth-century annotator of the Schoenberg herbal, the convenience of having as much information, old or new, as possible in one book seems to have outweighed any desire for visual consistency. This range of contexts for nature prints should warn us to set aside our preconceptions about any kind of plant illustration – either about its usefulness or about its faithfulness to the thing portrayed. For any given image, we have always to ask: utility to whom? Fidelity to what end? That leaves the Codex Atlanticus nature print. Melzi’s Latin passages put facsim, fol. 119 recto; vol. 3, comm. Reti, ed., The Unknown Leonardo (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), 272. 72 Since the discovery of Leonardo’s passage about relief engraving (see note 71), two engravings (long thought to be drawings) of horse heads in the Windsor collection, RL 12287–88, have been taken as examples. See, e.g., Martin Clayton, Leonar  Leonardo do da Vinci, Vinci, The  Anatomy of Man, 22. In a personal communication about these images (24 March 2005), Clayton was more cautious, feeling that the evidence from the page itself for relief  engraving, as opposed to intaglio, was by no means clear. Clelia Alberici,  Leonar  Leonardo do e l’incisione: Stampe Stampe derivate da Leonardo Leonardo e Bramante dal XV al XIX secolo (Milan: Electa, 1984), 15–27.

 

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Salvia in the familiar context of a large illustrated manuscript herbal. Yet

Leonardo ignores all that. His eye goes straight to “the parts in relief.” It is the impossibility of the nature print imitating the natural highlights hi ghlights and shadows of an upturned leaf that captures his attention. For us, this singular response should be a reminder that, whenever we discuss Leonardo as a scientist, we must accept that his first instincts are those of the artist.

Postscript

“Bad,” malae  – that is what the great eighteenth-century botanist Carolus Linnaeus had to say about the woodcuts in the 1485 Gart der Gesundheit .73 Gill Saunders tempers the language but speaksimages for three centuries ofand historians of art and science in regarding the schematized in manuscript early printed herbals ca. 1500 as “crude, generalized to the point of inaccuracy, decorative qualities … emphasized over specifics of identity.” 74 Such herbal illustrations and their publishers’ seeming lack of concern concern for fidelity to nature suggest a further point of comparison for the nature prints described here. Anyone studying the images of plants in circulation in this period must be struck by the range of visual solutions to the problem of how to picture plants – from seemingly unidentifiable plants in the Gart der Gesundheit  to the elegant

flower-strewn borders of Books of Hours, from the Schoenberg herbal’s Ciperj to Leonardo’s beautiful “third kind … of rush”; from the Salzburg manuscript’s nature prints to the Codex Atlanticus sage leaf print.75 If we are ever to have a full account of the intersections of art, science, and medicine at the end of the Middle Ages, then we must continue to ask why all these very different ways of  illustrating plants found takers. 73

Carolus Linnaeus, Philosophia Botanica (1751; reprint, London: Wheldon and Wesley, 1966), 6, refers to the Gart der Gesundheit as “Cuba,” that is, the herbal ascribed to Johann von Cube. See note 57. 74 Saunders, Picturing Plants, 18. Historians of botany agree that the systematic use of  naturalistic woodcut illustrations of plants commences with Otto Brunfels, Herbarum vivae eicones (Strassburg: Joannes Schott, 1530). 75 See: James S. Acker Ackerman, man, “Early “Early Renaissance Renaissance ‘Natural ‘Naturalism’ ism’ and Scientific Scientific Illustration,” in his  Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and   Architectur  Arch itecturee (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 185–207; Agnes Arber, Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, Botany, 1470–1670, 3rd rev. edn, with intro. and annot. by William T. T. Stearn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; 1st edn 1912); Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change; Celia Fisher, “The Development of  Flower Borders in Ghent–Bruges Manuscripts 1470–1490” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1996); Jean A. Givens, Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Saunders, Picturing Plants; George Sarton, Appre  Appreciation ciation of Ancient and Medieval Medieval Science during the Renaissance Renaissance (1450–1600) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955); Sarton, Six Wings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957), and Claudia Swan’s essay in this volume: “The Uses of  Realism in Early Modern Illustrated Botany” (Chapter ( Chapter 9). 9).

 

Chapter 9

The Uses of Realism in Early Modern Illustrated Botany Claudia Swan

By way of providing an epilogue – both chronological and thematic – to this volume, this essay tackles a single, deceptively simple question: why were earlymodern botanical treatises illustrated? This issue has been touched upon by several of the chapters here, and the question in turn exposes larger issues related to the products and processes that the editors of this volume call “visualizing medicine and natural history.” One of the hallmark features of early modern botanical culture is the widespread production of copiously illustrated publications. The period that stretches from the last decades of the fifteenth century and the introduction of the

movable type press through to the middle of the seventeenth century was, in northern and southern Europe alike, an era of illustrated natural history. Some of  its most familiar products products are encyclopedic herbals—botanical publications laden with generally in theand form woodcuts, among them, for example, the ones pictures, in the Herbarius latinus theofGrete Herball pictured in this volume (Fig. (Fig. 8.8,, Fig. 8.9, 8.8 8.9, and Fig. 5.8) 5.8) and, later, l ater, engravings. Various Various historical narratives have been developed to account for these pictorial encyclopedias. What is less frequently asked – or explained – is why these publications were illustrated in the first place. Art history and the history of science have both, and in some cases together, called attention to the profusion of herbals replete with staggering numbers of  illustrations – often in the hundreds. The early modern era has come to be synonymous with the “Botanical Renaissance,” whose chronology and paternity have been well charted.1 The prologue to the “Botanical Renaissance” dates to the end of the fifteenth century, when a number of printed and illustrated works took over from manuscript production; by the early sixteenth century the so-called 1

See, inter alia, Agnes Arber,  Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution, A Chapter in the  History of Botany Botany,, 1470–1670, 3rd rev. edn, with intro. and annot. by William T. Stearn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; 1st edn 1912); William T. Stearn, The Art  of Botanical Illustration, An Illustrated History (New York: Antiquarian Society, 1994; 1st edn 1950); and David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print 1470–1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), esp. “Printed Herbals and Descriptive Botany,” 245–59. 239

 

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“German Fathers of Botany” began producing printed herbals. Publications authored by Otto Brunfels, Hieronymus Bock, and Leonhart Fuchs introduced a new mode of botanical study characterized most markedly by its occasionally defiant relation to classical authority and by an amplified naturalism in the illustrations for which their books are renowned. After mid-century, the lineage moved west and the three “Fathers of Netherlandish Botany”—Rembertus Dodonaeus, Carolus Clusius, and Matthias Lobelius—assumed the mantle of what by 1600 was a fully fledged tradition of illustrated botany. To a significant degree, the “fathers of early modern botany” themselves provided the cues according to which they have come to be studied and celebrated. Consider the example of Leonhart Fuchs and the impact his own self-presentation has had on accounts of his efforts. Fuchs published The History of Plants (De historia stirpium) in 1542, and 2the following year a German edition – the  New Kreüterbuch  – was brought out. In the first edition, Fuchs proudly announced to his readers by way of a lengthy descriptive title that his book comprised “Remarkable Commentaries on the History of Plants, produced at great expense and with utmost vigilance, to which are added more than five hundred lifelike images of plants, expressed as never before, imitated from the life and very artfully rendered.” The title of the 1543 German edition also calls attention to its illustrations: it reads, “New Herbal, in which not only the entire history, which is to say the names, form, location, and schedule of growth, nature, power, and effect

of the better part of the plants that t hat grow in Germany and in other lands is described with the utmost effort, but also the roots, stalks, leaves, flowers, seeds, fruits, and in summa the entire gestalt of all of these is specifically and artfully represented and portrayed as well – such as has never before been seen or brought to light.” 3 Many authors have followed Fuchs’s lead and estimated the value of such herbals on the basis of the scope of their descriptions, both verbal and pictorial, of  the plant world. The Latin edition of Fuchs’s herbal comprised 896 pages and 512 woodcuts; while the German edition is less bulky – at 680 pages – it contains six additional illustrations, for a total of 518 woodcuts. Both editions also, quite famously,, at least within the history of botanical illustration, contain four portraits: famously of Leonhart Fuchs himself and of the three artists who produced the woodcuts

2

For Fuchs and his publications, see Frederick G. Meyer, Emily Emmart Trueblood, and John L. Heller, eds, The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, 1542 (Notable Commentaries on the History of Plants), 2 vols (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), and Brigitte Baumann, Helmut Baumann, and S. Baumann-Schleihauf,  Die Kräuterbuchha Kräuterbuchhandschrift ndschrift des Leonhart Fuchs (Stuttgart: Verlag Eugen Ulmer, 2001). 3 The title page reads: “ New Kreüterbuch/ in welchem nit allein die gantz histori/ das ist/ na men gestalt/ statt und zeit der wachsung/ natur/ krafft und würckung/ des meysten theyls der Kreüter so in Teütschen unnd andern Landen wachsen … .” Fuchs’s personal copy of  New Kreü Kreüterbuch terbuch (today in the Municipal Library of Ulm) is reproduced in Leonhart Fuchs, The New Herbal of 1543 (Cologne: Taschen, 2001).

 

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(Fig. 9.1). 9.1).4 Here too, scholars have tended to follow Fuchs’s lead and to study, or at least cite, these portraits as Fuchs’s means of underscoring the importance of  the illustrations and honoring the skills of the craftsmen who produced them (Füllmaurer the draftsman; Meyer the craftsman responsible for transferring the forms of the drawing to a woodblock; and the blockcutter, Speckle). 5 These three men, busy forever in the service of the flowers preserved in the vase before them, are representative of the professionalization of image production and, also, of the division of labor according to which scientific efforts were authored by medical professionals such as Fuchs and illustrated by artisans such as these three men. (A separate, full-length portrait of Fuchs holding a botanical specimen also graced these volumes.) Such pictures and the tradition of their production are often discussed in light of concerns about the epistemological and aesthetic divide between science and art. But, as Sachiko Kusukawa has suggested, this offers a relatively limited interpretive horizon.6 Scholars have tended to judge images and text separately. Thus they generally conclude that – in keeping with broader art historical developments – the images over the course of time shed the schematism characteristic of the late-fifteenth-century woodcuts and manifest an increasing naturalism and accuracy, while at the same time the texts are a mire (from the perspective of Linnaean botany) of names and properties. In other words, the images are judged according to the criteria of the fine arts and ranked by degrees

of naturalism (which is generally found to increase over time) while the texts are viewed as scientific documents lacking in taxonomic drive. This disjunction between the modernity – the naturalism – of the pictures and the archaism, or conventionality, of the texts informs numerous accounts of early modern illustrated botany botany..7 Texts such as Fuchs’s do not instantiate a systematic taxonomy; 4

In the  Historia stirpium of 1542, Fuchs’s portrait “at the age of 42” is on the reverse of the title page, and the illustrators are pictured at the end of the volume on the last leaf  following leaf 895. Both are reproduced in Meyer, Trueblood, and Heller, eds.,  De historia stirpium, vol. 2, along with the colored plate in the New Kreüterbuch Kreüterbuch, pl. 1. 5 See Landau and Parshall,  Renaissance Print , 253–5. James Ackerman suggests that Fuchs “allowed or encouraged” the three illustrators to include their self-portraits “in compensation” for restraining “the urge … to express themselves at the cost of accuracy”; see his 1985 article, article, “Early Renaissance Renaissance ‘Naturalism’ ‘Naturalism’ and Scientific Scientific Illustration,” Illustration,” 200, reprinted in his  Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Arc Architectur hitecturee (Cambridge:: MIT Press, 1991), 185–207. On the division of labor, (Cambridge labor, see the essay by Karen Reeds in this volume: “Leonardo da Vinci and Botanical Illustration: Nature Prints, Drawings, and Woodcuts ca. 1500,” Chapter 8. 8. 6 Sachiko Kusukawa, “Illustrating Nature,” in Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine, eds,  Books and the Sciences in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 90–113. 7 See, for example, Frank Anderson, Anderson,  An Illustrated History of the Herbals (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977) 121–9, on Brunfels’s herbal. For a very frequently cited argument based on the relative naturalism of medieval herbal illustrations as an indication of scientific knowledge, see Charles Singer, “The Herbal in Antiquity and its Transmission to Later Ages,” in  Journal of Hellenic Studies 47 (1927): 1–52; and Otto Pächt, “Early

 

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9.1

Self-portraits of the artists, Heinricus Füllmaurer and Albertus Meyer, and of the blockcutter, Vitus Rodolph Speckle. Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium. Basel: Michael Isingrin, 1542 [897]. Photo courtesy of Octavo

 

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Fuchs used the alphabet to arrange the contents of his herbals. To follow Fuchs’s lead, however, and emphasize the production and presence of images in early modern botanical publications may obscure an important point – a complicated point, to be sure, and a point I can hardly hope to exhaust. That point is that these treatises were illustrated in the first place. That early modern botany was illustrated, and amply so, is generally taken to be self-evident. Within the discipline of art history, a fairly consistent argument has been made since Panofsky that “the rise of those particular branches of natural science which may be called observational or descriptive – zoology, botany, paleontology,, several aspects of physics and, first and foremost, anatomy – was … paleontology directly predicated upon the rise of the representational techniques … .” 8 Later authors, James Ackerman and Martin Kemp especially, have tendered subtle analyses of the relations between artistic naturalism and scientific empiricism according to which art enabled or assisted scientific discovery.9 The central line of  argument in such accounts holds that early modern botany benefited from Renaissance techniques of and interest in naturalism. Another approach to this is offered by, by, for example, William Ivins, who argued famously that print technology buttressed scientific progress precisely because printed images are multiple and identical. Multiple and identical pictures were disseminated, gathered, compared  – in ways that amounted to scientific disciplines. disci plines. According to Ivins, virtually all modern science and technology relies on the assumption that printed pictures, maps, diagrams, and other images are “exactly repeatable.”10 So while Panofsky,

Ackerman, and Kemp, for example, tend to view early modern botanical illustration as a close cousin of developments in the fine arts, Ivins offers a more epistemologically and socially grounded model of how such pictures helped to manufacture science. But is it self-evident that early modern natural history – and botany in particular – had to be illustrated? Why did the fathers of early modern botany go Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape,” in  Journal of the Warburg Warburg and  Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950): 13–47. For a recent account of verbal and visual description of plants, see Jean A. Givens, Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 82–105. 8 Erwin Panofsky, “Artist, Scientist, Genius: Notes on the Renaissance- Dämmerung,” in The Renaissance: Six Essays by Wallace K. Ferguson [and others] , rev. edn (New York: York: Harper, 1962), 140. 9 See, for example, James Ackerman, “Early “Early Renaissance ‘Naturalism’ ‘Naturalism’ and Scientific Illustration,” and Martin Kemp, “‘The Mark of Truth’: Looking and Learning in Some Anatomical Illustrations from the Renaissance and Eighteenth Century,” in W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, eds,  Medicine and the Five Senses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 85–121. 10 William M. Ivins, Jr, Prints and Visual Communication (1953; reprint, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969), 3. Without Without prints, Ivins writes, writes, “we should have very few of our modern sciences, technologies, archaeologies, or ethnologies – for all of these are dependent, first or last, upon information conveyed by exactly repeatable visual or pictorial statements.” Cf. the section, “Printed Herbals and Descriptive Botany,” in Landau and Parshall,  Renaissance Print  Print , 245–9.

 

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to such lengths and expense to illustrate their published works? One way to account for the centrality of images to these efforts is to emphasize their value to users, that is, to give a functional account of these works. Where more-or-less naturalistic images of plants were available, they closed the gap between textual knowledge of nature and the experience of it. This functional account could be applied to sixteenth-century botany in the following way: the century opens with a few illustrated herbals available to readers: the  Herbarius latinus of 1484 and later editions; the  Hortus sanitatis (Gart der Gesundheit ) of 1485; and the volumes printed in Kuilenberg in 1483, Louvain in 1484, and in Antwerp in 1500 and 1511 that are known as the  Herbarius in Dyetsch, for example; within four decades, Otto Brunfels’s and Leonhart Fuchs’s herbals appear. The difference between the books produced in the 1480s and the t he 1530s is most readily evident in the nature of the illustrations: as Fuchs’s titles imply, attention to morphological detail becomes emphatic. As scholars are quick to point out, and as I have already mentioned, the texts lag behind the images at this stage insofar as they tend to depend on classical authority rather than striking out and proposing new modes of describing the plant world. They tend, that is, to repeat the qualities of plants long familiar to students of Dioscorides, Galen, Theophrastus, and Pliny – the “classical Fathers of medical botany.”11 To some extent, the lag here between text and image is a function of the disciplinary rubric under which botany was studied: medicine. Medical knowledge and practice tended, in the early sixteenth century especially, to lean

on classical precedent. Many of the plants described by Fuchs are analyzed in relation to the Galenic conception of the humors. At the same time, however, the actual practice of studying medicine came to depend increasingly on empirical evidence, on eyewitness and firsthand experience of the natural world. As a renowned doctor and a professor of medicine, Fuchs would have been keenly aware of the shifts his discipline was undergoing. 12 Karen Meier Reeds and Andrew Cunningham, writing about early modern botany and anatomy, respectively, each describe the subtle interplay between the humanist culture devoted to the revival of classical texts in the sixteenth century and the new practices of observation and demonstration. 13 In the realm of anatomy, Andreas Vesalius represents the critical shift in mode of instruction. Formerly, it had involved a triangulated practice, where a professor (who presided ex cathedra), a demonstrator, and an ostensor together – or separately, really – performed anatomical dissections; in Vesalius’s hands, these various functions

11

On this point, see Karen Meier Reeds, “Renaissance Humanism and Botany,” Annals of Science 33 (1976): 519–42, reprinted in her  Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York: Garland, 1991). 12 For a brief chronology of Fuchs’s career, see Arber,  Herbals, 4. 13 Karen Meier Reeds,  Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Renaissance Universities, an and d An Andr drew ew Cunningham, The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997).

 

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were carried out by the demonstrator/anatomist alone. Teaching became a function of observation. Similarly, botanical study came to involve direct and sensory study of its objects. Simples (the makings of medicines) were gathered for and by professors of medicine and their students, and were cultivated in the gardens newly attached to universities; the plants and their properties were demonstrated in the course of lectures. Given the new emphasis on direct sensory observation (autopsia), the ample illustrations that figure in so many botanical and, indeed, anatomical, publications in the early modern period could well be explained as the result and the means of new functional demands within their respective disciplines. Early modern illustrated botany could, that is, be said to respond to a new interest in the visually apprehensible, to the immediately present forms of the subjects of study. This functional model – presented here very schematically indeed – works well to explain a frequently overlooked by-product of early modern illustrated botany, the field guide edition. Several great herbals originally published in folio format  – by Fuchs, Pierandreas Mattiolus, and the late-sixteenth-century Netherlandish authors, for example – were also issued in reduced format.14 These editions feature the images even more prominently than in the “originals” from which they are derived: the woodcuts are accompanied by minimal identifying text, and the size of the volumes would have permitted students of the plant world to carry them outdoors when “botanizing,” or wandering around the fields. Although historical accounts of early modern botany have favored treatises t reatises that

are illustrated, Euricius Cordus’s Botanologicon, a treatise that was not illustrated, provides insight into the question of why such texts often were. Published in Cologne in 1534, Cordus’s  Botanologicon is a lovely and largely ignored source of incisive commentary on how medical botany was practiced and what was at stake in its practice. Much of the text is a description of a botanical expedition and describes individual study of plants and the particular form of attention “good botany” should cultivate. Throughout the text, Cordus is viciously critical both of  arrogant medical doctors and of unlearned medical practitioners. In addition, the  Botanologicon contains a number of references – both explicit and implicit – to the role of images in the practice of botany. 15 Cordus’s text is composed as a colloquy between the author and four fellow medical students. It is distinct in structure and voice from Brunfels, Fuchs et al., but it was produced in their immediate context and addresses their projects both by name and in subtler ways as well. The colloquy begins at Cordus’s home and, after some general discussion, the 14

For the long reach, geographically and chronologically, of Fuchs in smaller formats, see the bibliography in Meyer, Trueblood, and Heller, eds., Great Herbal of Leonhart  Fuchs. For later herbals in smaller formats, see Arber,  Herbals, chs 4 and 7. See also note 2, above, for more recent bibliography. 15 Peter Dilg,  Das Botanologic Botanologicon on des Euricius Cordu Cordus; s; ein Beitrag zur botanischen  Literatur des Humanismus (Marburg: Erich Mauersberger, 1969).

 

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team of friends sets out to “botanize.” Cordus encourages them outdoors, noting that he will follow my usual practice, just as if none of you were here, and take along a book or two. I take great pleasure in going into the countryside, and in comparing all sorts of  herbs and plants that grow in various locales and about which I have read at home, with the images stored in my memory and observing them; and sometimes I am able to ask their properties or their names from the old wives I meet along the way. On this basis – after comparing all of them with their descriptions – I am the better able to judge them clearly and come to as accurate a conclusion as possible about them. 16

“Botanizing” or “herborizing” – was crucial for sixteenth-century naturalists. natural ists. It came to be practiced in botanical gardens and in the presence of herbaria (dried collections of plants) as well. At its heart lay the autoptic experience of nature, and the process of learning it i t by collating one’s experience with one’s prior knowledge  – and images – of the plants at hand. Cordus offers one account of the techniques. In this case, the books he refers to would likely have been versions of classical texts on the plant world; these texts were juxtaposed with fresh herbs, images of  plants, and information gleaned from those who plied their trade in the woods and fields (herb women, shepherds and so on). By assimilating and processing this information, the assiduous botanist worked to identify the specimens he encountered.17 The ends of such identification were first and foremost medical, which is to say

pharmaceutical. One needed, in his view as in the views of many of his contemporaries, to know the makings of medicine in order to practice it. Cordus is not alone in railing against apothecaries – in some cases the critique is directed at doctors – who, quite literally, do not know their stuff. 18 In the pursuit of  knowledge of the natural world and the ability to distinguish its elements and their properties, images such as were featured in so many publications of the time would have played a crucial role, to which Cordus alludes. Indeed, Cordus and his friends take along a “Dioscorides minor” and two volumes of Brunfels – which must be the first two volumes of Otto Brunfels’s  Herbarum vivae eicones, published in Strasbourg in 1530–36.19 16

Cordus 1534, 26–7; adapted from Dilg,  Das Botanologic Botanologicon on, 147; cf. Edward Lee Greene,  Landmarks of Botanical History, 2 vols (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), vol. 1, 366–7. 17 For further discussion of learning botany from books and botanizing, see Reeds,  Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Renaissance Universities Universities, especially ch. 4. 4. 18 Euricius Cordus’s son, Valerius, may have provided a model of a medical student for the colloquy. colloquy. A precocious botanist botanist who died tragically young, Valerius Valerius used the new botanical learning to produce the first official city pharmacopoeia: Nuremberg’s Pharmacorum … Dispensatorium (1546). See Arber, Herbals, 75–6. 19 Brunfels,  Her  Herbar barum um viv vivae ae eic eicone oness ad nat natura uraee imi imitat tation ionem, em, sum summa ma cum dil dilige igenti ntia a et  artificio effigiatae, ana cum effectibus earundem, in gratiam veteris illius, & jamjam renascentis renascentis herbariae medicinae. Quibus adjecta ad calcem, Appendix isagogica de usu & administratione simplicium (Strassburg: Joannes Schott, 1532–36), 3 vols sometimes bound as one.

 

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Cordus’s description provides yet another way of accounting for the vast numbers of pictures in early modern botanical publications and early modern botany in general. Alongside the functional explanation for why this science was illustrated in the first place, we might consider a cognitive explanation. Cordus refers to actual illustrated books in his description of botanizing; but he also speaks of images stored mnemonically and refers to their role in the process of  identification. He says, “I take great pleasure in going into the countryside, and in comparing all sorts of herbs and plants that grow in various locales and about which I have read at home, with the images stored in my memory … .” 20 Reading Cordus closely, it becomes clear that the cognitive dimensions of early modern natural history and of empiricism were evident even to its practitioners. The role of images within cognition, as construed by Aristotle and his scholastic followers in particular, may well have informed the use of images in early modern botany. In a recent article on the Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Fernández Oviedo’s travels to the New World and the rhetorical structure of his accounts thereof, art historian Jesus Carrillo has called attention to the role of  metaphorical imagery and of actual printed images in early modern natural history. The author of such illustrated accounts as the  Historia General y Natural de las Indias (1535–49) mediates, Carrillo argues, the reader’s cognition of what is described by presenting, in text and image, the particulars that fuel Aristotelian cognition. That is, according to Aristotelian theories of how the thinking mind operates, nothing can be understood unless presented to the mind as an image.

These images, which enable cognition, are built of the particulars of sense impression. This is not the place to provide a detailed account; suffice to say that well the early had modern historians, artists,without poets, and others held, into as Aristotle put period, it, that natural “the soul never thinks an image ( phantasm  phantasm ).” 21 Such images, which were food for the internal senses of  intellection, cognition, judgment, and memory, were processed out of the data received by the external senses. As Carrillo points out, the rhetorical dependence on close description of particulars, especially by way of images, corresponds well to the notion that the internal senses, indeed the whole process of cognition, remained dependent on a “sustained relationship with the phenomenal world … the kind of knowledge they provided required continuous experience and the participation of memory.”22 When Cordus speaks of images stored in his memory and illustrated texts, both of which he adduces during the process of experiencing and identifying new plants, he is effectively working working both ends of the Aristotelian Aristotelian stick. The mediation of cognition by way of images – images filtered out of  sensory data, for the purposes of cognition (Aristotle’s “phantasms”) – offers, I 20

Dilg, Botanologic  Botanologicon on, 147. Aristotle, De anima, 3.7, in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 685, col. 431. 22 Jesus Carrillo, “Taming the Visible: Word and Image in Oviedo’s  Historia General General y  Natural de las Indias,” Viator 31 (2000): 399–431. 21

 

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believe, a useful model for understanding the presence of so many images in early modern botany – and, more generally, natural history. Did early modern botany have to be illustrated? The simple answer is, no. As numerous authors have pointed out, it cost a small fortune to do so.23 And some authors – Brunfels and Bock among them – were not personally inclined to include pictures in their publications, but were impelled to do so by publishers eager to participate in what was evidently a lucrative trend.24 Disputes were frequent and fiery, even, on the necessity and role of pictures. Fuchs goes to some length in the prefaces to his books to defend his use of images – and to criticize other authors’ images as well. He writes, for example, in the preface to the  De historia stirpium, that: “Those things that are presented to the eyes and depicted on panels or paper become fixed more firmly in the mind than those that are described in bare words.”25 Here, he invokes Horace, of course, who so famously wrote in the  Ars poetica that: “The mind is less vividly stirred by what finds entrance through the ears than by what is brought before the trusty eyes, and what the spectator can see for himself.”26 Fuchs cites Horace in defense of the use of images for didactic ends. Did he need to defend it? Yes, actually, as it was a practice both Pliny and Galen had condemned on the grounds that nature was too mutable to fix in images and in the conviction that images were less reliable than text in any case. case .27 The essential mutability of plants as they grow, flower, bear fruit, seed, and wither with the seasons posed a pressing challenge to representational description. But, as

Brunfels points out in his preface, print technology was well suited to meet this challenge, provided that the images so reproduced were drawn from the life in the 28

firstBrunfels place. and Fuchs adduce respectively convenient arguments; as I mentioned earlier, Brunfels was not the instigator of the illustrations ill ustrations for which his books have 23 24 25

See Baumann et al., Kräuterbuchha Kräuterbuchhandschrift ndschrift des Leonhart Fuchs, 112. See Landau and Parshall, Renaissance Print  Print , 252–5. Fuchs 1542, fols x–xi. 26 Horace, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 464–5. Pliny refers to the use of illustrations in natural historical accounts as “a most attractive method, though one which makes clear little else except the difficulty of employing it … not only is a picture misleading when the colours are so many, particularly as the aim is to copy Nature, but besides this, much imperfection arises from the manifold hazards in the accuracy of  copyists. In addition, it is not enough for each plant to be painted at one period only of its life, since it alters its appearance with the fourfold changes of the year.” Pliny,  Natural  History 24–27) , ed.1992), and trans. S. Jones, Classical Harvard (Books University Press, 25.8,W. pp.H.140–1. To Loeb the first two ofLibrary Pliny’s(Cambridge: complaints, woodcuts and engravings offered a remedy. Cf. David Freedberg, “The Failure of Colour,” in John Onians, ed., Sight and Insight: Essays on Art and Culture in Honour of E. H. Gombrich at 85 (London: Phaidon, 1994), esp. 245–8. 27 Galen,  De simp simplicib licibus us medi medicamen camentoru torum m tempe temperame ramentis ntis et facul facultatib tatibus, us, VI:  proemium;  proemi um; vol. 11 (1826), 796-7, in Claudii Galeni Opera omnia, 20 vols, ed. Karl Gottlob Kühn (Leipzig: Knobloch, 1821-33). See also Reeds, “Renaissance Humanism and Botany,” 530–31. 28 See Freedberg, “Failure of Colour,” 246–7.

 

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become so renowned.29 Of course, much remains to be said about the specific conditions under which individual products of early modern botany came to be illustrated. Kusukawa has untangled the complex history of Fuchs’s debate with his contemporary Montuus on the use of pictures; likewise, the history of the Schott–Egenolff lawsuit regarding copyright in pictures of nature offers vital information regarding the market value of such images – another crucial motivation for including them.30 The market value of illustrated natural history may indeed prove to have been as great a motivating factor in its production as its cultural capital. In this latter connection, it should be recalled that Fuchs was not  just a medical doctor, but a court doctor, and that the expense and format of many of the books cited here would have made them virtually inaccessible to those without disposable income. These are considerations for further study. As, of  course, is my suggestion that the cognitive role of images be explored, if we are to continue to ask and answer the question of why early modern botanical treatises were illustrated.

29

See T. A. Sprague, “The Herbal of Otto Brunfels,”  Journal of the Linnean Society Society..  Botany 48 (1928): 79–124. 30 Sachiko Kusukawa, “Leonhart Fuchs on the Importance of Pictures,”  Journal of the  History of Ideas 58 (1997): 403–27; and Kusukawa, “Illustrating Nature,” 90–113.

 

Index

Page numbers of figures are given in italics.

 Abarimons, 102 102,, 103, 104

abortifacient, 209 Abrahams, N. C. L., 27 absinthium, 119 119,, 139 Abu al-H. asan al-Mukhta-r Ibn Sa‘du-n Ibn But.la-n, see Ibn But.la-n acanthus, 97 acatia (blackthorn), 120, 124 Ackerman, James S., 224 224,, 241 241,, 243 acorns, 69 action figures, 131 adiantos vel politricum (maidenhair), 31 31,,

alchemical herbals, 226 Aldobrandino da Siena,  Li livres dou sante (London, British Library, Sloane MS 2435), 23 23,, 57 Alessio Piemontese (Alexis of Piemont; ps. of Girolamo Ruscelli), 218 –  –19 19,, 230 –  –31 31,, 236 Alexander, Jonathan, 78 Alexis de Piemontese, see Alessio Piemontese Alexis of Piemont, see Alessio Piemontese algebra, 172

32, 33  Adiantum capillus-veneris capillus-veneris L., maidenhair

alimentary system, 149 139,, 143 allium (garlic), 139

adiantos (41 31,, 32, 33, 34 34,, 41, , 43 , politricum), 31  Adoration of the Magi, see Angelico, Fra aesthetics, 65 65,, 112 112,, 113 113,, 216 216,, 241 241;; see also naturalism Aetius of Amida, 47 affrodille (asphodel), 29 Africa, 78 78,, 98 ages of man, 72 72,, 196 agnus castus, 127 agnus dei, 19 agriculture, 56 , 64, 68 68,, 69 69,, 76 –  –77 77,, 88 agrimonia de jardin, 41 41,, 43 29,, 139 agrimonia, 29 agrimonie, 29

almshouse, (Dorset), 18, 139 aloe lignumSherborne (aloe wood), 127,, 135 127 135, aloe, 137 137,, 139, 140, 141 141,, 143 aloen, 119 119,, 120, 127 127,, 128 aloes, 138 138,, 139 alphabetic order, see articulation systems altarpieces, 17 –  –19 19,, 26 26,, 184 184,, 186 186,, 195 –  –97 97 alterity, 104 Altichiero, 57 alum, 127 127,, 139  Amaranthus blitum L., blite, 42 amber (lynx stone), 132 ambrosiana, 139, 229 America, discovery of, 75 amidum (starch), 124, 129, 131 131,, 139

Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, Occulta , 196  philosophia Alberti, Leon Battista,  Della pittura, 178 –  –81 81 Alberto of Bologna, 153 Albertus Magnus, 85 Albucasis, 57 albums, 27 27,, 32, 36 , 38, 41 –  –49 49,, 212 212,, 215 215,, 236;; see also Thott 190 236

amigdales (almonds), 121 amulets, 15 15,, 17 17,, 19 19,, 22 –23  –23

anagallis (pimpernel), 227  Anatomia, see see  Mondino anatomies, see see   anatomists anatomists,, anatomy anatomy,, dissections anatomists; see also della Torre, Marcantonio;; Leonardo da Vinci Marcantonio Benivieni, Antonio, 166 251

 

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INDEX

Berengario da Carpi, Jacopo, 160 Henri de Mondeville, Marliani, Giovanni and23family, 138 138,, 172 anatomy, 135 135,, 138 138,, 147 –  –76 76,, 168 168,, 170 –  –77 77,, 221,, 234 221 234,, 243 –  –45 45;; see also dissections;; Leonardo de Vinci dissections anatomical education, 23 23,, 151 –  –55 55,, 158 –  –63 63,, 166 –  –68 68,, 170 –  –76 76,, 244 –  –45 45 anatomical illustration, 2, 23 23,, 138 138,, 148 148,, 155,, 156  – 57   –63 63,, 164 – 65 149, 155 57 , 162 – 65, 167 –  –68 68,, 169, 234 234,, 236 236,, 243 –  –44 44 animals, of, 55 55,, 155 ancient history, Renaissance study of, 229 229,, 243 Andalusian Spain, 75 Andrewe, Laurence, 143  Androgen  Andro gen, 103, 104  Anemone hortensis L., garden anemone, 41,, 43 41 226,, 227  angales (anagallis, pimpernel), 226 Angelico, Fra, 189  Adoration of the Magi, fresco (Venice, San Marco, Dominican convent, Cosimoo de’ Medici Cosim Medici’’s cell) 96 96   Anicia Juliana, Princess, 40 animals and animal images, 21 21,, 53 53,, 155 155,, 226;; see also 226 also name namess of specific specific animals

appium risus (celery-leaved buttercup),

119, 119 , 121 121,, 122,28 128,, 139 128 Apt (in Vaucluse), aqua (leaue, water), 137  Aquilegia (columbine), 210 Arabia, 7 Arabic science and medicine, xviii xviii,, 26 26,, 48 48,, 73,, 121 73 121,, 170 and Byzantine learning, 26 26,, 31 31,, 33, 37 , 48 –  –49 49,, 51 –  –55 55 Arber, Agnes, 136  Arbolayree, 136 –  Arbolayr  –38 38 architecture and architectural motifs, 59 59,, 66,, 72 66 72,, 84 84,, 90 90,, 92 92,, 93 93,, 94, 161 161,, 175 175,, 207,, 229 207 of hospitals, 17 17,, 161 161,, 175 Archivio Notarile, Florence, 17 argentum vivum (vif argent , quicksilver), 127,, 128 127 128,, 138 138,, 143 aristolongia, 120, 121 Aristotle, 29 29,, 96 96,, 104 104,, 189 189,, 247 247;; see also Pseudo-Aristotle armillary sphere, 96 Armstrong, Lilian, 87 –  –88 88,, 97 97,,106 Arnold of Villanova, 57 ), see Galen  Ars medica (Technê iatrikê ), art and science, xvii –xx  –xx,, 241 –  –33 art, artists, artists, and artists’ materia materials; ls; see also

block-prints of, 208 images by Giovaninno dei Grassi workshop, 58 –  –59 59 in herbals, 27 –  –30 30,, 32, 35 35,, 36 , 38, 41 41,, 226 in Pliny, 83 –  –87 87 anise, 77  Anonimo Gaddiano, 153 119,, 125  Antidotarium  Antidotari um Nicolai, 119 antimonium (antimony, sulphide of  antimony), 120, 123 123,, 124, 130 antimony, 123 123,, 124, 130 antiquarian and pagan motifs, 89 89,, 93 93,, 97 Antoninus, St, Summa, 179 aphrodisiacs, 72 –  –73 73 137;; see also appium apium, 137 apothecaries, see see  pharmacists apotropaic images and objects, 17 17;; see also

techniques and materials; materials; workshop practice;;  artisans and craftsmen; practice craftsmen; artists and illuminators Pliny the Elder on, 83 83,, 95 95,, 112 –  –114 114 articulation systems in manuscripts and early printed books, xix xix,, 5, 9, 15 15,, 16 , 116,, 120, 125 116 125,, 128 128,, 137 –  –38 38,, 139, 141 141,, 144;; see also initials 144 initials,, labels on images alphabetical order order,, 27 27,, 30 30,, 35 35,, 41 –  –43 43,, 49,, 119 49 119,, 123 123,, 127 127,, 135 135,, 137 137,, 138 138,, 210,, 243 210 chapter numbering, 138 138,, 139 color used for emphasis, 128 128,, 144 foliation, 137 –  –38 38 glossary, 134 134,, 137 137,, 139 indexes and index signs, 15 15,, 16 , 30 30,, 134 134,,

Coventry Ring appium (celery?), 119,, 120, 121 119 121,, 122, 131 131,, 139 119,, 121 121,, 122, appium commune (celery), 119 124 appium emoroidarum (lesser celandine), 119,, 121 119 121,, 124, 128 128,, 129, 131 131,, 139 119,, 121 121,, appium raninum (buttercup), 119 122, 139

141 123 letterforms, look-up tables 127 127,, 134 134,, 136 –  –38 38,, 139, 142

page layout, 28 28,, 33 33,, 34 34,, 144  paraph symbol, 123 123,, 128 printing and, 136 –  –37 37 table of contents, 123 123,, 127 127,, 137 –  –38 38,, 139 textual hierarchy hierarchy,, 141 141,, 144

 

INDEX

253

artisans and craft traditions, xvii xvii,, 134 134,, 170 170,,

Bartholomeus Mini of Siena, 118

174  –75  – 75,, 208 208,, 230 216,,, 234 216 220,,, 241 220 234, 242 blockcutters, 230, 234, 241, artists and illuminators, 7, 65 65,, 87 87,, 109 –  –13 13,, 116,, 133 133,, 134 134,, 152 –  –55 55,, 175 175,, 240 240,, 111, 116 242; see also names of individual patronage; artists; patrons and patronage; techniques and materials; materials; workshop practice artists’ handbooks and books books of secrets, 219;; see also Cennini, Cennino 219 138,, 139 asa as a fe feti tida da, 138 ascetics and asceticism, 101 101,, 183 183,, 188 –  –89 89;; see also hermits asmatique, 135 aspaltum (bitumen), 119 asparagus, 55 55,, 56 , 72 asphodel, 29 29,, 43  Asplenium scolopendrium scolopendrium L., hart’s-tongue fern, 41 assa fetida, 127  Astragalus (astragalus), 41 astrology and astronomy astronomy,, 2, 9 –  –11 11,, 19 19,, 96 –  –97 97,, 173 173,, 212 –  –15 15 Pliny the Elder portrayed as astronomer, 94, 96 atristito, see see  humoral/complexion types (phlegmatics)

Bartimaeus, Basel, 230 18 bathing, 23 Battini, Marisa, 215 Baumann, Felix Andreas, 127 127,, 135 135,, 209 beans (Vicia faba L., feves), 34 34,, 38, 39, 43 beasts of the Apocalypse, 195 Beatrix de Savoie, 23 beaver and beaver glands, 131 beet, sugar, 77 Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2 bellicum veneris, 42 Bellini, Giovanni, St Jerome in the Desert  (Florence, Uffizi), 188 –  –89 89 bells, 21 Benedetti, Alessandro, Historia corporis humani sive Anatomice, libri v, 173 Benivieni, Antonio, De abditis nonnullis ac mirandis morborum et sanationem causis, 166 berbena femelle, 42

Berengario da Carpi, Jacopo, 160 –  –61 61 Bergamo sketchbook, of Giovannino dei Grassi, 65 65,, 67 Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli, 147 Berry, Jean, Duc de, Très Riches Heures,

Augustine, St, 17 17,, 85 85,, 150 127,, 128 128,, 138 138,, 139, 143 aurum (gold), 120, 127  Auster/Aqua/Flecmatic  Auster/Aqua /Flecmaticus us, 195 authenticity of image, 231 231;; see also “counterfeit” autopsia, 245 –  –46 46;; see also observation of  nature;; dissections nature autopsies, 148 148,, 151 151,, 158 –  –59 59,, 166 –  –67 67;; see also dissections  Autumpnus (autumn), 64 Averlino, Antonio (Il Filarete), 161 Averroes, 57 Avicenna, Canon medicinae, 57 57,, 77 77,, 137 137,, 138,, 170 138 Avignon, 28 Avril, François, 127 Azzolini, Monica, 232

69, 78 69, 78,, 87 87,, 89 89,, 133 Bertiz, Agnes A., 52 52,, 80 Besançon, 136 bestiaries, 87 betony, 43 Biagoli, Mario, 175 97,, 98 98,, 105, 106 106,, 109 bianchi girari, 97 bifolia, 43 biota, Eastern Mediterranean, 35 35,, 43 birds, 35 35,, 110, 112 112,, 113 Bithynia, 92 bitumen (aspaltum), 119 black bile, see see  humoral/complexion types, types, (melancholics and melancholy) melancholy) Black Death, 80 80;; see also plague blackthorn (acatia), 124 blacte bisancie (a mollusk from

Baghdad, 52 52,, 53 Bagliano, Paravicini, 150 balm of Gilead, 131 Bambach, Carmen, 175 Barbaro, Ermolao, 89 barber-surgeons, 11 Barbieri, G., 61 barley, 77

Byzantium), , 102 118  Blemmyae bleton, 42 blite, 42 bloodletting man, 9 boar, wild, 69 Boccaccio, 95 Bock, Hieronymus, 240 240,, 248 bole armeniac, 131

 

254

INDEX

Bologna, 87 87,, 89 89,, 159 159;; see also universities bombax, 143 bones, see skeleton and bones Boniface VIII, Pope, Detestande feritati feritati,

148 book collectors, see see  book owners, readers, and users book owners, readers, and users, 1, 84 84,, 96 96,, 120, 143 143,, 144 144;; see also books Beatrix de Savoie, 23 Berry, Jean, Duc de, 87 87   Boccaccio, 95 Brack, Wenzeslaus, 212 Capelli, Pasquino, 58 58,, 87 Carafa, Cardinal Olivero, 97 Carrara, Francesco II, Lord of Padua, 67 Cordus, Euricius, 246 –  –47 47 Cosimoo de’ Medici Cosim Medici,, 86 Company of Barber-Surgeons of York, Guild-Book, 11 11,, 12 della Croce, Niccolò, 172 Dominican house, Lubeck, 86 Fuchs, Leonhart, 240 George of Lichtenstein, Bishop of Trent, 61 Gomes, Refael, 226 Grimani, Cardinal Domenico, 90 Guarino da Verona, 92

Zeno, Apostolo, 89 bookbinding, 67,, 2135 67 135, , ,208 Books of Hours, , 18 18, 69,, 76 69 76,, 133 133,, 195 195,, 237 books of secrets, 216 –  –19 19,, 230 books, 19 19,, 26 26,, 84 84,, 209 209;; see also book owners, readers, and users; users; libraries libraries;; manuscripts;; printers, early; manuscripts early; incunabula and early printed works; works; see also individual authors and titles

costs and techniques of production, 84 84,, 143,, 230 143 230,, 232 232,, 234 234,, 249 as gifts and symbolic gestures, 1, 11 11,, 23 23,, 61 –  –62 62,, 67 67,, 76 76,, 86 images of, 8, 91, 94, 120, 185 borage, 44 44,, 143 143,, 217 boragine, 143  Borago officinalis officinalis L., borage, 44 borago, 14  Boreas/T  Bore as/Terra/Melanc erra/Melancholicus holicus, 195 Borghini, Vicenzo, 179 Bosch, Jerome, Christ Mocked (London, National Gallery), 199 –  –201 201 botanical gardens, 245 botanical illustration, 208 208,, 231 –  –37 37,, 239 –  –41 41,, 242, 243 –  –49 49;; see also plants, images of 

St Jerome, 185 Johannes le Duerg, 135 Leonardo da Vinci, 170 –  –74 74,, 232 Manfred, King of Sicily Sic ily,, 54 Marliani family family,, 172 172,, 232 Meynerius, Johannes Anthonius, 28 Ourscamp, Cistercian monastery monastery,, Noyon, 5 Petrarch, 95 Piccolomini, Gregorio Lolli, 87 87,, 98 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni,  Giovanni, xx xx,, 84 84,, 86 –  –90 90,, 91 91,, 92 –  –98 98,, 99 99,, 100, 103 Pius II, Pope (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini), 87 Pliny the Younger, 91 Salutati, Coluccio, 92 Sanudo, Leonardo, 84

Botanical Renaissance and humanist culture, 239 –  –49 49 botanizing, 245 245,, 246 see  botanical illustration; botany, see illustration; herbals herbals;; plants Botticelli, 189 189,, 212 Boucicaut Master, 87 Brack, Wenzeslaus, 214, 230 230,, 236 41,, 42 brancha lupina, 41 Brandt, Kathleen Weil-Garris, 204 breast milk and menses, 168 Breton women, 106 106,, 107 , 114 bretonica, 29 brionia blanca, 44 brionia nigra, 44 briony, 43 British Library, London, 2 see   see

Sforza,IV, Bianca Sixtus Pope,Maria, 96 62 Speroni family, 61 Strozzi, Filippo, 84 Urban, Anthoine, 28 Visconti court, 87 Visconti, Giangaleazzo, 73 Visconti, Verde, 59 women, 23 23,, 59 59,, 62

Brolo, hospitals189 – Bronzino, Agnolo,  –91 91,, 192, 193 –  –96 96  Eleonora of Toledo Toledo with her Son Giovanni de’ Medici (Florence, Uffizi), 191 191,, 192, 193

Brothers of San Antonio di Castello, 90 Brunfels, Otto, Herbarum vivae eicones eicones, 237,, 240 237 240,, 244 244,, 245 245,, 246 Bruni, Antonio, 166

 

INDEX Brunschwig, Hieronymus, The Vertuose

caules, 123

 Boke of Distyllacyon Distyllacyon, 138 138,, 143 Brussels Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, MS 3714, 30 Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 9559–64, 133  Bryonia dioica Jacq. (white bryony), 44 Bryson, Norman, 112 Budahyliha Byngezla, 53 buttercup, 122; see also apium, appium Byzantine empire, 25 –  –27 27,, 45 –  –50 50 Byzantine medicine, 46 46,, 50

cautery figures, 2211 , 3, 5, 6 , 9 Cave, Roderick,

Ca’ Gra Granda nda,, see see  hospitals Calcar, Jan van, 176 calendar images, 9, 10, 68 –  –69 69 calligrapher, 196 Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.2.44 (Henri de Mondeville, lectures on anatomy), 23 camomille, 44 Campin, Robert, 189 candles, paschal, 19 cannibals, 104 Canon medicinae, see Avicenna Canterbury Cathedral, 22 Capelli, Pasquino, 58 58,, 87 Capsella bursa-pastoris Medik.,

255

Cecilia, St, with Sts Paul, John Evangelist,  Augustine, and Mary, see see  Raphael Raphael,, 197 –  –99 99,, 198 celandine ( Appium  Appium emoroidarum emoroidarum; 131,, 214, 216 Celidonia), 124, 129, 131 celery, 119 119,, 122 celery-leaved buttercup, 122 celidonia, 214, 216

Cellini, Benvenuto, 193 Celtis, Conrad, Quattuor libri amorum, 194 –  –95 95 Cennini, Cennino, 208 208,, 220 centaury, 43 cepe, 143 Cerruti family of Verona, 61 ceterac, 43 Chamaemelum nobile (L.) All., chamomile, 44 Charles V, King, 21 charms and spells, 20 20,, 21 cherries, 55 55,, 67 Chevalier de la charrette, London, British Library,, Additional MS 10293, 73 Library chickpea, 57 Child Carrying Grapes, see Zeuxis childbirth, 193

shepherd’s purse, 41 Cardano, Fazio, 171 –  –72 72 Cardano, Girolamo, 171 carnival song, Il Trionfo Trionfo delle Quattro Quattro Complessioni, 179 –  –80 80 Library,, Carrara Herbal (London, British Library Egerton MS 2020), 23 23,, 58 58,, 61 61,, 67 67,, 69 69,, 70, 209 Carrara, Francesco II, Lord of Padua, 23 23,, 58,, 67 58 Carrillo, Jesus, 247 cartilage, 132 Cassiodorus, 85 cassoni, 112 castanee, 123 Castiglione, Francesco, 151 castle of love, 73 Caterina di Bernabò, 59 cathedrals, 22 22,, 92 92,, 147 catnip, Nepeta cataria L., 229 Cato the Elder, 109 Cauda equina ( Equisetum  Equisetum arvense, arvense, horsetail), 34 34,, 36 , 37 , 226 cauda marina, 41 34,, 36 , 37  cauda vulpina (horsetail), 34

chiromancy and a nd physiognomy, 181 Chirurgia, see Roger Frugardi chivalric culture, 72 72;; see also courtly romances,, hunting romances cholerics and choler, 180 180,, 181 181,, 194 –  –97 97;; see also humoral/complexion types Christ Among the Doctors (Christ  Teaching in the Temple), see Luini, Bernardo;; Cima da Conegliano Bernardo Christ as healer, 13 13,, 19 19,, 20 20;; see also Christus medicus

Christian motifs and pagan texts, 95 Christine de Pisan, 133 Christus medicus, 17 17;; see also Christ as healer church fathers, 96 96;; see also St Jerome cicer, 123 cicerchia (chickpea), 57 ciclamenes panporcini (Cyclamen neapolitanum ), 226 234,, 235 cicorea (chicory), 234 Cigoli, Lodovico, 176 Cima da Conegliano, Christ among the  Doctors (Warsaw, National Library), 201

 

256

INDEX

cimbalaria, 42

Company of Barber-Surgeons of York,

cipari, 226  –26 26,, 225 ciperj (Cyperus), 224 – 232,, 233, 234 Ciperus (Cyperus), 232

Cistercian monastery of Ourscamp, Noyon, 5 citruli, 123 Clement VII, Pope (Giulio de’ Medici), 158 Clagett, Marshall, 172 Clark, Kenneth, 152 152,, 168

Guild-Book, 11,, 12, 195 11 compasses, Pliny holding, 96 Compendium Medicinae, see Gilbertus Anglicus,, Roger de Baron Anglicus compilatio , 125 complexion; see also humoral/complexion types;; humors and humoral medicine; types medicine; tetrads Galenic theory of, 53 53,, 177 conceptual tool, as, 178 178,, 190 women, ideal complexions of, 178 178,, 189 –  –193 193 compound medicines, 118 118,, 119 conch shells, 104 Conradus de Boutzenbach, see see  Konrad von

Clark, Malcolm, 153 clary (catnip? Salvia salvaticha), 228, 229 Claudius Pulcher, 113 Clayton, Martin, 236 Clesippus, 101 101,, 114 climate and health, 53 53,, 69 clothing, 7, 53 53,, 59 59,, 72 72,, 75 75,, 76 76,, 96 96,, 97 97,, 104 104,, 105, 193 193,, 197 197,, 200 academic dress, 7, 97 97,, 119 119,, 120, 125 Clusius, Carolus, 240 coat of arms, 84 84,, 89 89,, 93 93,, 94 Codex Atlanticus nature print, see Leonardo da Vinci; Vinci; Melzi, Francesco; Francesco;

Butzenbach Constance, 212 Constantine the African, 48 48,, 57 57,, 118 118,, 137 Constantinople, 25 –  –27 27,, 40 40,, 45 –  –47 47,, 49 –  –50 50 contrafactum , see counterfeit Conversos, 226 Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek (Copenhagen Royal Library), 27 MS GKS 227 2º ( Livre  Livre des simples simples 115,, 125 125,, 126 , 127 –  –28 28,, médecines ), 115 135,, 138 129, 130, 135 MS NKS 132 4º, 133 133,, 222 MS Thott 190 2º (Thott 190), 26 –  –35 35,, 32,

cipher, runes used as, 215 Circa instans, 57 57,, 118 –  –19 19,, 121 121,, 128 128,, 137 137;; Platearius;; Tractatus de see also Platearius herbis cisergia, 57

nature prints and nature printing Codex on the flight of birds (Codice sul volo degli uccelli), see see  Leonardo da Vinci,, writings Vinci Cogliato Arano, Luisa, 55 cognition and images, 14 14,, 247 –  –49 49 coins, 19 19,, 80 80,, 208 coition, coitus, 61 61,, 73 73,, 74, 168 168,, 169 85,, 102 102,, Collectanea rerum memorabilium, 85 see Solinus college of physicians, 159 –  –60 60 Collins. Minta, 116 colors, 134 134,, 197 197,, 230 articulation systems, used in, 123 123,, 128 128,, 132,, 134 132 134,, 144 of complexions and humoral types, 180 180,, 187 –  –88 88,, 197 197,, 199 –  –200 200 of plants, in herbals, 134 134,, 222 222,, 224 224,, 229 229,, 248 of nature prints, 212 212,, 215 215,, 217 –  –19 19,, 231 skin, 106 106,, 107 , 114 114,, 180 180,, 181 181,, 187 –  –88 88 symbolism, 19 19,, 181 columbine ( Aquilegia  Aquilegia), 210 42,, 43 comin, 42 Como, 92

36 , 38, 41 –  –50 50

MS Thott 191 2º (Thott 191), 28 copperplate engravings (typis aeneis), 155 155,, 234 copying, 2 –  –33, 10 –  –11 11,, 26 –  –27 27,, 31 –  –50 50,, 66 66,, 117,, 127 117 127,, 131 131,, 134 134,, 219 –  –20 20,, 236 236;; see “counterfeit”;; imitation also “counterfeit” Cennini on, 220 Leonardo da Vinci on casts of sculpture, 232 copyists, see artists and illuminators; illuminators; scribes and amanuenses Cordus, Euricius, Botanologic  –47 47  Botanologicon on, 245 – Cordus, Valerius, Pharmacorum…  Dispensatorium, 246 coronary occlusion, 163 corpses and cadavers, 148 148,, 150 150,, 155 155,, 159 159,, 167 Correggio, St Jerome panel, 187 Cortese, Cristoforo, 88 88,, 111 Cosmas, St, 11 cosmology,, concepts and cosmology a nd images, 95 95,, 97 –  –98 98,, 99, 104 104,, 195 –  –96 96 costumes, see see  clothing 41,, 42 Cotyledon umbilicus L., navelwort, 41

 

INDEX

257

Council of Basel, 199

 De animalibus atque eorum virtutibus virtutibus, 27

“counterfeit”  –19 19,, 230 –  –31 31 (contrafactum ), 218 – court culture, 95 95,, 154 154,, 174 174,, 175 175,, 249 249;; see also patrons and patronage and Tacuinum sanitatis, 51 51,, 54 54,, 57 –  –58 58,, 61 –  –63 63,, 65 65,, 68 68,, 72 72,, 76 76,, 80 –  –81 81 courtly love, 68 68,, 72 72,, 76 Coventry Ring (London, British Museum, MME AF 897), 20 20,, 21 Coytus, see coition, coitus craft practice, see artisans and craftsmen; craftsmen; artists and illuminators; illuminators; workshop Cranach, Lucas, 189 cranium, 156 ; see also skull Creation, 97 97,, 104 104,, 195

 De balneis Puteolanis Puteolanis, Rome, Bibliotheca

criminals, 147 –  –48 48,, 155 155,, 158 crows, 113 critical methods and Renaissance humanists, 229 Crusaders, 25 –  –27 27,, 40 40,, 46 46,, 50 cucumbers, 75 cucumeres (cucumbers), 75 cucumeris, 123 42,, 43 Cuminum cyminum L., cumin, 42 cuminum, 42 Cunningham, Andrew, 244 Cusano, Nicolò, 173 Cusanus, Nicholas, De concordantia concordantia

degre, 135

Angelica, MS 1474, 23 de calculatione, see Marliani, Giovanni  De dosibus medicinarum, 119 230,, 240 –  –41 41,,  De historia stirpium (Fuchs), 230 242, 248 248,, 249  De materia medica, see Dioscorides  De simplicium medicamentorum medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus (Galen),

29, 47 29, de Toni, G. B., 222  De viribus herbarum, 27

Dead Sea, 101  Decameron  Decamer on (Boccaccio), 133 decorum, 179 179,, 180 180,, 190 –  –94 94,, 197 della Croce, Niccolò, 172 della Torre, Marcantonio, 152 152,, 155 155,, 173 173,, 174,, 176 174 Demetrius, St, 186 deputati sanitatis (health officers), 159  Deputati sopra le Provvisioni Provvisioni dei Poveri

(Deputies Providing for the Poor), 161  Devastatio Constantinopolitan Constantinopolitana a, 25 diaframe (diaphragm), 135 diagnosis and prognosis, 10 10,, 11 diet, 54 54,, 55 55,, 76 76,, 81 81,, 188 –  –89 89

catholica, 199

Cushing/Whitney Historical Medical Library, Yale University, New Haven, 2 Cushing/Whitney MS 28 28,, see see  New Haven, Haven, Yale University Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, MS 28 (Paneth Codex) cuttlebone, 132 cycle of the months, 63 63,, 69 cymbalion, 42 cymbalium, 42 Cyperus (ciperj , “rush”), 222 222,, 223, 224 224,, 226,, 232 232,, 233, 234 234,, 236 225, 226 Scirpus, compared to, 223, 224 Cyperus rotundus, 222 222,, 223 Cyperus serotinus, 222 Dacians, 128 daisy, 216 Damian, St, 11 database of medicinal plants in ancient works, 33 dates, 77 Dati, Leonardo, La sfera, 180

dietary treatises, 2, 118 –  –19 19,, 121 dill, 63 Dionysios, Ornithiaka, 35  Dioscorides Vindobonensis Vindobonensis (Vienna Dioscorides), see Vienna Vienna,, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Nationalbibliothek, MS Med. gr. 1 Dioscorides, De materia medica, xviii xviii,, 26 26,, 33, 35 35,, 37 , 39, 44 44,, 49 49,, 57 57,, 66 66,, 118 118,, 244 alphabetical Dioscorides, 35 35,, 41  Dioscorides minor, 246 manuscript tradition, 26 26,, 27 27,, 33, 35 35,, 37 , 39, 40 –  –49 49  Dioscorides Vindobonensis Vindobonensis (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Med. gr. 1), 31 31,, 33, 40 –  –41 41,, 43 –  –49 49 Pietro d’Abano, commentary on, 47 plant identifications, 31  Discorso sulla dignità dell’uomo dell’uomo, see see   Pico della Mirandola diseases and conditions, 142, 159 159,, 183 asmatique, 135 baldness, 141

 

258

INDEX

Black Death, 80

Celtis, Conrad, Quattuor libri amorum,

canker, 123 72 constipation, coronary occlusion, 163 dolour de dent , 30 fearfulness, 141 fever, 135 14,, 15 15,, 16   fistula in ano, 14 forgetfulness, 141 hair loss, 141 head, 30 head, broken, 141 head, sickness of, 5 headache, 135 135,, 141 heart damaged, 151 heart ventricle, hardened, 166

frontispiece 194 203 Doctors, Christ among theto, Four Apostles diptych (Münich, Alte

iliaca passio, 14

kidneys, 21 lunacy, 141

maladies de la teste, 134 melancolie , 135

nose bleeds, 123 123,, 135 paralysis, 19 plague, 80 80,, 159 159,, 174 poisoning, 135 polyps, 123 sciatica, 73 shaking of head, 141 signs and symptoms, 13

Pinakothek), 196 196,, 197  –83 83,, 187 187,, 188  Melencolia  Melencoli a I, 182 – Saint Jerome in his Study, 187 –  –88 88 ebrionia , 44

eclipses, 9 ecphrasis, 14 14,, 191 Edward I, King of England, 132 Edward III, King of England, 23 Egenolff, Christian, 246 Egerton MS 747, see see  London, British Library,, Egerton MS 747 ( Library 747 (Tractatus de herbis et plantis) eggplant, 75 75,, 132 El Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, MS R.I.5 (Pliny, (Pliny, Natural  History), 87 electuarium confortivum, 132 elements, four four,, 29 29;; see also humors, four; four; humoral pathology; tetrads Eleonora di Toledo, 191 191,, 192, 193 193;; see also Bronzino, Agnolo elifagus ( pilifagus  pilifagus, sage), 212 212,, 213 Elijah, 183

syphilis, 168 teeth, of, 30  ferite), 168 ulcers ( ferite worms, 141 dissections, 23 23,, 150 150,, 152 –  –53 53,, 155 155,, 161 –  –70 70,, 173,, 174 173 174,, 176 drawings of dissections, 157 , 162 162,, 164, 165, 169 distilling, 125 125,, 126 Dixon, Annette, 65 Doceno (Christofano Gherardi), 178 178,, 188 Dodonaeus, Rembertus, 240 dogs, 80 80,, 113 Dominicans, 86 86,, 96 Donatello, St John the Evangelist  (Florence, S. Lorenzo, Old Sacristy, altar wall relief), 183 –  –84 84,, 186  Dracunculus vulgaris vulgaris L., dragon arum, 43 dragon arum, 43 dreams, 183 183,, 189 ducales conservatores (health officers), 159 Duomo, Siena, 17 Dürer,, Albrecht, 182 – Dürer  –83 83,, 187 –  –89 89,, 194 –  –97 97,, 199,, 203 199

embalming, 166 166,, 167 embellaria , 41 embellicum Veneris , 42 Emboden, William, 211 211,, 222 embryology, 167 –  –68 68 emotions, expression and depiction of, 52 –  –53 53,, 104 104,, 180 –  –82 82,, 184 184,, 193 193;; see also humoral/complexion types encyclopedias, 35 35,, 47 47,, 48 48,, 77 77,, 239 239;; see also Pliny the Elder, Natural History engineers, 175 175,, 230 engravings, 155 155,, 183 183,, 187 –  –88 88,, 231 231,, 234 234,, 236,, 239 236 239,, 248 248;; see also prints and printmaking;; printing and printing printmaking press entertainmen entert ainments ts and pastimes, pastimes, 216  Equisetum arvense arvense L., horsetail, 34 34,, 36 , 37   Erbario [Herbal containing 192 192 drawings  drawings of plants], see Longboat Key, FL, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419 (Schoenberg herbal) erbolaio grande, (herbal owned by Leonardo da Vinci), 232 erbolaro (herbal owned by Giuliano da Marliano), 172 172,, 232

 

INDEX

259

eroticism, 72 72,, 77

fidelity to nature, 112 –  –114 114,, 116 –  –17 17,, 178 178,,

errata , 143 143, Essenes, 98,,, 234 98 101 –  –102 102

also copying 190 190, , 236 –  –37 37; ; see copying; ; experience and observation observation; ; imitation  imitation; ; naturalism;; verisimilitude naturalism field guides, 117 117,, 245 fields and field plants, 62 fig, 217 figural representation, 177  figwurtz, 216 Filarete, Il (Antonio Averlino), 161 filbert, 131 finger rings, 19 –  –21 21 Firenzuola, Agnolo, 189 189,, 190 fish, 106  fistula in ano operation, 14 14,, 15 15,, 16  Five Wounds of Christ, 20

estates, 76 etchings, 236 236;; see also copperplate engravings;; engravings engravings engravings;; prints and printmaking;; printing and printing printmaking press Ethiopian, 102 ethnography, 98 98,, 102 102,, 104 104;; see also Plinian races Eucharist wafers, stamped, 208  Eurus/Ignis/Colericus  Eurus/Ignis/C olericus, 195 evangelists, 196 196;; see also tetrads Evax, King, of Arabia, 7 excretion and secretion, 52 executions, public, 147 147,, 160

 Excellentt and Pleasant Worke,  Excellen Worke, The, see,

Solinus exemplar, see copying copying;; model and copy exercise, 51 –  –54 54 exotic plants, 75 75,, 77 77,, 118 experience and observations, first-hand, 27,, 49 27 49,, 116 –  –17 17,, 180 botanical, 75 –  –77 77,, 208 208,, 222 222,, 230 230,, 240 240,,  –45 45 242, 243 – anatomical, 147 –  –48 48,, 152 –  –53 53,, 165, 167 167,, 240  Experimenta  Experiment a (Pseudo-Galen), 7, 8

flattened appearance of, 67 67,, 217,,specimens, 217 231 fleabane, 132  flor de lis de mer, 43  flor de lis, 43 Florence, 86 86,, 147 147,, 151 151,, 154 154,, 159 159,, 182 182,, 191 Baptistery, north door, St John the  Evangelist (Lorenzo Ghiberti), 183 capitani of Dawn Night, and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, (Michelangelo), S. Lorenzo chapel, New Sacristy, Medici mausoleum), 184 184,, 186 186   Pellegrinaeo murals, Santa Maria

experimentation, 59 59,, 207 207,, 216 216,, 231 231,, 236 Eyck, Jan van, 186 falcons, 77 Fathers of Netherlandish Botany, see Dodonaeus, Rembertus; Rembertus; Clusius, Carolus;; Lobelius, Matthias Carolus Fatio, see Cardano, Fazio fecundity, see fertility, human Federico of Habsburg, 59 females, physiology of, 189 fennel, 77 Ferdinand of Naples, King, 84  ferite, see see  ulcers  ferle, 43 Fermo, Biblioteca Comunale, Fondo manoscritti, manos critti, codic codicee n. 18 18,, 226 Ferragut, 55 fertility, human, 193 fetal positions, images of, 3, 4 feudalism, 68 68,, 76  feves (Vicia faba L., beans), 34 34,, 38, 39 Ficino, Marsilio, Three Books on Life, 89 89,, 183

Nuova hospital, 17 –  –18 18 Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MS plut. 18.7, 54 MS plut. 23.6, 19 MS plut. 73.415, 5 MS plut. 82.1.8, 86 Biblioteca Nazionale MS BR[Banco Rari] 397, 58 58,, 80 MS LF [Landau Finaly] 22 22,, 58  Anonimo Gaddiano, MS Magl., XVII, 17,, 153 17 flowers, 34 34,, 66 66,, 137 137,, 143 143,, 208 208,, 210 210,, 216 216,, 220 –  –22 22,, 224 224,, 234 234,, 237 237,, 240 –  –41 41,, 242, 248;; see also under names of  248 individual plants

in nature prints, 212 212,, 216 –  –17 17,, 231 231,, 236 pressed in books, 209 Sanguineus , emblem of, 195 Fogolari, Gino, 61 folklore, 23 23,, 168  fomes, 43 food and foodstuffs, 38, 43 43,, 168 168,, 216 216,, 247 247;; see also under names of individual  diet;; non-natural causes of   foodstuffs; diet

health

 

260

INDEX

exotic foods, 55 55,, 56 , 75 –  –77 77,, 79 sanitatis in Tacuinum , ,52  –55  – 55,, 56 , 59 59,, 63 63,, 73,, 75 – 73  –77 77, , 79, 81 81, 224 foot, anatomy of (by Leonardo da Vinci),

enclosed gardens, 56 , 101 101,, 104 104,, 105

forensic medicine, see anatomy anatomy,, dissections Foster, Richard, 200 four humors, 177 –  –80 80,, 244 244;; see also complexion/humoral types; types; humoral medicine;; tetrads medicine tetrads;; seasons seasons;; tetrads Fourth Crusade, 25 25,, 50 Fra Angelico, Adoration of the Magi fresco (Florence, Dominican Convent of San Marco), 96  fragaria (strawberry), 143

garden love,62 72, 104 garden of plants, 62, 104,, 105 in Tacuinus sanitatis, 51 51,, 62 –  –63 63,, 66 66,, 68 68,, 72,, 76 72 76,, 77 garlic, 143 Gart der Gesundheit , 136 –  –37 37,, 229 229,, 237 237,, 244 Linnaeus’ss opinion of, 237 Linnaeus’ Gaston (Phoebus) III of Foix,  Livre de chasse, 208 Gauls, 128 Gaurico, Pomponio, De sculptura, 199 gems, jewelry and precious stones, 7, 15 15,, 19,, 21, 106 19 106,, 193 healing and apotropaic properties, 15 15,, 19 –  –20 20,, 21, 24 24,, 193

Francesco Carrara II, seeofCarrara, Francesco II, Lord Padua , Padua, Franciscan, see Pacioli, Luca Frederick II of Sicily Sicily,, 54 Frederik IV, King, 135 French courts, 72 Friedman, John Block, 102 frieze, nature-printed, 218 frontispieces, 93 –  –95 95,, 96 96,, 137 137,, Frugardi, Roger, Chirurgia, 13 fruit and nut trees, 72 72,, 86 86,, 132 fruits, 193 Fuchs, Leonhart, 230 230,, 240 240,, 244 –  –45 45,, 249

108, 193 pearls, Pliny on, 95 95,, 106 106,, 107 , 108, 109 genitalia, 16 , 148 148,, 149, 158 158,, 168 168,, 169 genre scenes, 64, 69 69,, 71, 73 73,, 74, 77 77,, 79, 137:: see also labors of the months 137 biblical models for, 73 geography, 75 75,, 85 85,, 95 95,, 98 and periodization, xvii xvii,, 240 George of Liechtenstein, Bishop Prince of  Trent, 61 German Fathers of Botany Botany,, see see   Brunfels, Otto;; Bock, Hieronymus; Otto Hieronymus; Fuchs, Leonhart

157 

230,, 240 240,, 242  De historia stirpium, 230 240    New Kreüterbuch Kreüterbuch, 240  fueillet , 137

Füllmaurer, Henricus, self-portrait, 241 241,, 242

Galen and Galenic medical tradition, 7, 8, 29,, 46 – 29  –49 49,, 55 55,, 57 57,, 119 119,, 125 125,, 126 126,, 168 168,, 244,, 248 244 248;; see also complexion/humoral types; types; humors humors;; non-naturals;; passions; Pseudo-Galen non-naturals Pseudo-Galen;; temperament  Ars medica (Techne (Techne- iatrike-), 52  De simplicium medicamentorum medicamentorum 29,, temperamentis et facultatibus, 29

47 –  –49 49 and Dioscorides, De materia medica, 46,, 49 46 49,, 248 humoral theory, 29 29,, 46 46,, 52 52,, 177 177,, 244 galenga, 73 Galilei, Galileo, 176 gallit [ri]cum, 42 gallitcum , 41 gardens and gardening, 43 43,, 72 72,, 80 80,, 101 101,, 144;; see also botanical gardens 144

German plants, 240 Gherardini, Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo, 153 153;; see also Mona Lisa Ghiberti, Lorenzo, relief of melancholic seer (Florence, Baptistery north door) 183 –  –84 84 Ghiringhelli, Giovanni, 173 Ghirlandaio, Domenico, St Jerome in his Study fresco (Florence, Chiesa di Ognissanti), 184 184,, 185, 189 Gilbertus Anglicus Compendium Medicinae, 3 The Sekenesse of Wymmen, 4 gimlet, 14 Giovanni di Paolo,  Expulsion from from Paradise (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), 98 Giovannino dei Grassi, Salamone dei Grassi, and workshop, 57 57,, 58 58,, 59 59,, 62 –  –69 69,, 77 77,, 80 Bergamo sketchbook, 65 65,, 67 Visconti Hours, 80 Salamone dei Grassi, 58 Giovio, Paolo, Leonar  Leonardi di Vincii Vincii Vita Vita, 155 155,, 158,, 163 158

 

INDEX

261

Girolamo Ruscelli, see see  Alessio Piemonte

Hague, The, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS

Giuliano attributed to,; Scirpus 87,, 105 87 ; rushes rushes; giunchus ,Amadei, see   Cyperus see GKS 227 227;; see Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 227 2º ( Livre  Livre des simples medicines) glossaries, 127 127,, 135 135,, 138 138,, 139; see also translations, languages, and vernacular texts Goes, Hugo van der, Portinari altarpiece (Florence, Santa Maria Nuova hospital chapel), 18 gold (aurum), 128 128,, 139, 143 143;; see also litterae notabiliores, 132 Golding, Arthur, 85 Gombrich, Ernst, 112

133.A.2, 96, , 133 hair, 133 135,.A.2, 135 , 141 141,,96 209 hand, anatomy of (Leonardo da Vinci sketch), 157 , 164 handwriting, 29 29,, 123 123,, 207 207,, 218 218,, 226 226,, 234 hart’s tongue fern, 41 harvesting, 137 Haskins, Charles Homer, 25 hazel, 131 hazelnuts, 121 healer and patient, 10 10,, 11 11,, 17 healing images, 15 15,, 18 18,, 19 health and hygiene, concepts of, 52 52,, 72 72,, 78,, 163 78 health handbooks, 51 –  –81 81,, 87 87;; see also Ibn also Ibn

Gomes, Refael, grains, 69 69, , 77 226 Grant Herbier, 137 137,, 138 138,, 143 143;; see also  Arbolayree, Grete Herball  Arbolayr grapes and grape leaf, 69 69,, 70, 112 112,, 208 208,, 217 graphic experiment, 231 Greek language in herbals, 31 31,, 33 –  –35 35,, 37 , 39, 42 –  –50 50 teaching in Milan, 171 Greek science and medicine, 48 48;; see also Dioscorides,, Galen Dioscorides Galen,, Hippocrates Arabic translations of, 48

But.l n; Tacuinum sanitatis; Taqwım a

health office and officers, 159 heart, 163 163,, 166 Heliodorus, 181 hellebore, 43 henbane, 43 Henri de Mondeville, 23 Henry VI, King, 18 Heraclitus, 186 herbal medicine, 85 85;; see also Dioscorides Dioscorides;; foods and foodstuffs; foodstuffs; herbalists  herbalists;; herbals;; materia medica, herbals medica, plants  plants;; remedies

136,, 137 137,, 138 138,, 139, 140, Grete Herball, 136 143,, 144 144,, 239 239;; see also Tractatus 142, 143 de herbis et plantis; Livre des simples simples médecines

herbalists, 87 87,, 104 104,, 117 117,, 246 herbals, 11 11,, 35 35,, 41 41,, 85 85,, 115 –  –45 45,, 230 230,, 243 243;; see also under individual authors and  titles

woodcuts in, 141 Grieco, Allen, 188 Grimani, Cardinal Domenico, 90 grotesques, 200 200,, 215 Grünewald, Matthias, Isenheim altarpiece (Isenheim, hospital), 18 Grüninger,, Johann, 137 Grüninger guaney, 216 Guariento, 57 –  –58 58 Guarino da Verona, 89 89,, 92 Guild-book of the Barber-Sur Barber-Surgeons geons of  York, London, British Library, Egerton MS 2572, 11 11,, 12, 195 Guillebert of Mets, 125 125,, 127 127,, 132 132,, 133 Guiron le Courtois, 76 gum arabic, 218 gum from an overseas tree, 132 Gynaecia, see Muscio gynecology, 3

Byzantine, 26 –  –50 50 compilation and production, 26 –  –50 50,, 115 –  –45 45,, 210 210,, 224 –  –30 30,, 248 –  –49 49 functions, 11 11,, 46 46,, 116 –  –19 19,, 143 –  –45 45,, 245 245,, 248 illustrations and pictorial traditions, see Carrara Herbal; Gart der Gesundheit ; Grete Herball; Hortus sanitatis; Manfr  Manfredus edus Herbal; Pseudo-Apuleius;; Schoenberg Pseudo-Apuleius herbal; Tacuinum sanitatis; Tractatus de herbis

incunabula and early printed editions, 116,, 136 116 136,, 229 229,, 232 232,, 233, 234 234,, 235, 236,, 244 236 244;; see also Arbolayr also Arbolayree; Brunfels, Otto; Otto; Cordus, Euricius; Euricius; Fuchs, Leonhart; Leonhart; Gart der Gesundheit ; Grete Herball;  Herbarius Latinus (Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum); Herbolario  229;; Hortus sanitatis; Le volgare, 229

habitats, 35 35,, 43 43,, 121 121,, 209 209,, 221 221,, 222

 

262

INDEX Grant Herbier; Le Grant Herbier en francoysin zu Teutsch Teutsch ; Herbarius  Herbarius Dyetsch; Tractatus de; uirtutibus herbarum [ Herbarius  Herbarius  Latinus]

Leonardo da Vinci and, 172 172,, 232 232,, 234 234,, 236 naturalism in, 23 23,, 75 75,, 144 144,, 240 240,, 241 241,, 243,, 244 243 244,, 248 248;; see also Brunfels, Otto;; Carrara Herbal; Fuchs, Otto Leonhart;; Hortus sanitatis; Leonhart  Manfredus  Manfr edus Herbal; Roccabone  Roccabonella lla herbal;  Herbal; Schoenberg herbal; Tractatus de herbis

owners, readers, users, 143 143,, 172 172,, 224 224,, 237 see Antidotariu see  Antidotarium m textual traditions, , Circa instans, Dioscorides Dioscorides,,  Nicolai Galen,, Isaac Judaeus, Galen Judaeus, Macer Macer,, Pliny Pliny,, Pseudo-Apuleius,, Tractatus de Pseudo-Apuleius herbis herbarium (hortus siccus), 209  Herbarius (Pseudo-Apuleian), 117  Herbarius Latinus (Tractatus de uirtutibus 232,, 233, 234 234,, 236 236,, 235, herbarum), 232

239,, 244 239  Herbarum vivae eicones eicones; see Brunfels,

Otto herbolari (herbal), 30

Ca’ Grand Granda, a, Milan, Milan, 161 –  –63 63,, 167 as charitable 17,, 161,, 163institutions (luoghi pii), 17 161 and medical schools (consorzii, scuole, scolle, scole), 155 155,, 163 Hôtel Dieu, Beaune, 18 at Isenheim, 18 Leonardo da Vinci and, 152 152,, 167 167,, 174 patients in, 15 15,, 17 –  –18 18,, 161 –  –62 62 in Rome, 174 Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, 17 17,, 161 Santa Maria Nuova, Florence, 17 17,, 152 152,, 161,, 163 161 humanists and humanism, 89 89,, 93 93,, 95 –  –96 96,, 114,, 174 114 174,, 209 209,, 229 italic hands, 206 , 207 207,, 209 –  –10 10,, 226 humoral medicine a89, and nd, 224 theory theory, , 29 29, , 52 –  –53 53,, 72,, 163 72 163, , 178 –  –89 224; ; see also humoral/complexion types Galen and, 29 humoral/complexion types, 178 –  –200 200;; see humors; humoral medicine also four humors; and theory; theory; tetrads accident vs. essence, 182 colors of skin, and traits associated with, 180,, 181 – 180  –82 82,, 187 187,, 190 190,, 194 194,, 197 197,, 200 and figure painting, 178 178;; see also Dürer, Albrecht;; Leonardo da Vinci; Albrecht Vinci; Luini,

 Herbolario volgare volgare, 229 herborizing, see see  botanizing

hermits, 98 98,, 101 101,, 183 183,, 188 Hippocratic medicine and physiology, physiology, 168  Historia animalium animalium, see Aristotle  Historia corporis humani sive Anatomice, Anatomice, libri v, see Benedetti, Alessandro  Historia plantarum, 62 62,, 67 –  –68 68 historiated initials, see initials

history of art, xvii xvii,, 112 112,, 116 –  –17 17,, 143 –  –44 44,, 237   237 history of science, xvii xvii,, 237 Hohenstaufen court, 54 Homer, 109 honey, 132 Horace, Ars poetica, 248 horses, images of, 30 30,, 155 155,, 236 horsetail, 34 34,, 36 , 37 136,, 229 229,, 239 239,, 244  Hortus sanitatis, 136 hortus siccus, see herbarium hospitals, 154 154,, 160 –  –62 62 administration of, 154 154,, 160 –  –62 62 architecture and ornamentation, 15 15,, 17 –  –18 18 Brolo, Milan, 160 –  –63 63

Bernardo; Michelangelo Bernardo; Michelangelo;; Raphael Raphael;; Pontormo,, Lorenzo Pontormo gender attributes, and, 189 189,, 190 190,, 193 193,, 197 group representations (as sets), 194 –  –200 200   moon, planets, winds associated with, 193,, 195 193 hunchback, see Clesippus Hunt, Tony Tony,, 144 hunting and treatises on the hunt, 73 73,, 77 77,, 208  Hyemps (winter), 71 hyssop, 43 Ibn But.la-n (Abu- al-H . asan al-Mukhta- r Ibn al-H. asan Ibn ‘Abdun Ibn Sa‘dun Ibn But.la-n), Taqwı-m as-S   –55 55,, 68 68,, . ih. h. a, 52 –

75,, 77 75 icensaria, 132 iconography, 96 –  –98 98,, 109 109,, iliaca passio, 14 illusionism and illusionistic effects, 216 216,, 219 –  –20 20 image production, professionalization of, 241

 

INDEX

263

imagination, maternal, influence on

John of Arderne, Practica, 13 13,, 15 15,, 16 

embryo, imitation; copying;; “counterfeit” copying “counterfeit”;; see  168 see illusionism and illusionistic effects; effects; naturalism incunabula and early printed books, 86 86,, 88 –  –89 89,, 121 121,, 139 – 40,  –73 73,, 40, 142, 171 – 194,, 196 194 196,, 233, 235, 239 239,, 245 –  –46 46;; see also individual authors and titles; herbals;; printers, early; herbals early; printing Leonardo Leonar do da Vinci Vinci and, 232 232,, 234 234,, 236 Index of Medieval Medical Images in North America (IMMI), 7 India, fruit from, 132 ink, printers, see prints and printmaking, printmaking, techniques and materials

II of France,St, King, 72 , 40 John Prodromos, monastery, monastery 40,, 46 46,, 48 48,, 50 John the Baptist, St, 11 11,, 18 18,, 98 98,, 101 John the Evangelist, St, 11 11,, 18 18,, 183 183,, 184 Johnston, Stanley H., Jr Jr.,., 136 Joseph, St, 189 189,, 194 Josephus, Flavius, 101  jujube, 76 76,, 77 Julius Caesar, 109

99 100, initials,  –7  – 7, 8,, 103 86,,,88 86 88, , 95 95, , 97 97,,,198 98, 1015 –  –102 102, , 108 112,, 107  10,, 11,1, 112 114;; see also  114 also articulation systems intaglio, see prints and printmaking international gothic style, 58 ipericon , 43 iringe, 43  Iris germanica L., iris, 42 iris, 29 29,, 42 42,, 43 Isaac Israeli, see Isaac Judaeus Isaac Judaeus (Is’h. a-q ibn-Sulayma-n alIsra-’-ıl-ı)

Kibre, Pearl, kidneys, 21 90 Kings, Three, 20 20   Konrad von Butzenbach, 213, 215 kotule-do-n, 42 Kubiski, Joyce M., 86 kuminon, 42 Kurth, Betty, 61 Kusukawa, Sachiko, 241 241,, 249 Kwakkelstein, Michael, 182

 Liber dietarium universalium universalium et   particularium , 118 –  –19 19,, 123 123,, 128 128,,

kallitrichon , 42

Keele, Kenneth, 154 Kemp, Martin, 152 152,, 166 166,, 179 179,, 180 180,, 190 190,, 197,, 220 197

labels on images, 5, 16 , 186 186,, 211 211,, 226 labors of the months, 64, 65 65,, 68 –  –69 69,, 71, 75 75   lamps and candelabra, Corinthian bronze,

131,, 137 131 Omnia opera Ysaac, 121 121,, 123 Isabella d’Este, 203  Isagoge (Joannitius), 55 Isaiah, 5, 6 , 183 Is’h. a-q ibn-Sulayma-n al-Isra- ’ı-lı-, see see   Isaac Judaeus Isingrin, Michael, 230 230,, 242 istoria (narrative image), 181 Ivins, William M., Jr. Jr.,, 229 229,, 243 ivy, 43

Jairus, 18 Jean sans Peur of Burgundy, 133 Jenson, Nicholas, 84 84,, 90 90,, 96 96,, 97 Jeremiah, see Michelangelo Jerome, St, 85 85,, 101 101,, 183 183,, 184 184,, 185, 186 –  –89 89,, 194  jewelry,, see gems  jewelry Joannitius, 55 Johann Graf zu Solms, 215 Johann von Cube Johannes de Spira, 90 Johannes Platearius, 118

101, 114 101, “Lancelot and Guinevere,” Chevalier de la Briti sh Library, charrette, (London, British Additional Ms 10293), 73  Lancelot du Lac, 76 Landino, Cristoforo, 84 84,, 90 landscapes, 59 59,, 63 63,, 67 67,, 76 76,, 84 84,, 88 88,, 97 97,, 98 98,, 221 lansolata, 43 lapidaries, 7 Lateran Council of 1215, 17 Latin empire of Constantinople, 25 –  –27 27,, 40 40,, 45,, 46 45 46,, 50 Latins and Byzantines, intellectual exchanges between, 26 –  –27 27,, 45 –  –50 50 Latour, Bruno, 231 Laurenza, Domenico, 177 177,, 182 lazarettos, 159 Lazarus, raising of, 18 Leo X, Pope, 158 158,, 174 Leonardo da Vinci anatomical investigations, 149, 152 152,, 154 –  –55 55,, 156 , 157 , 162 –  –65 65,, 168 168,, 173,, 174 173 174,, 176

 

264

INDEX della Torre, Marcantonio, and 152 152,,

155,, 173 155 173,, and 174,,reading, 174 176 books, booklists, 167 –  –68 68,, 170 –  –73 73,, 232 232,, chronology of life and works, 147 147,, 152 152,, 154 –  –55 55,, 156 , 157 , 162 –  –63 63,, 168 168,, 172,, 173 172 173,, 190 190,, 204 204,, 205 205,, 210 210,, 217 217,, 218,, 221 218 221,, 232 232,, 234 234;; se seee al also so  Anonimo Gaddiano; Giovio, Paolo; Paolo; Pacioli, Luca; Luca; Vasari, Giorgio contemporary artists, relationships with, 177,, 191 177 191,, 197 197,, 200 –  –204 204 drawings, paintings, sculpture, other images, 153 –  –55 55,, 162 –  –63 63,, 167 –  –68 68,, 220,, 222 220 222;; see also printing and printmaking alimentary architecturalsystem, studies,drawing, c. 1518,149 207 arm and hand, drawings, 157 , 164 centenarian series of drawings, 163 163,, 164, 165, 167 coition of hemisected man and woman, drawing, 168 168,, 169 columbine ( Aquilegia  Aquilegia), drawing, attributed to, 210 cranium (skull), drawing, 155 155,, 156  embryological drawings, 167 –  –68 68,, 173 equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza, 155 200,, Five Grotesque Heads, drawings, 200

“Saint Anne,” drawing, 153 Salvator , 203 “rushes,”Mundi drawing and text, 222 222,, 223,

237 education, training, and self-education, 170,, 174 – 170  –55; se books and  and seee al also so books reading Latin, limited knowledge of, 152 152,, 168,, 170 168 170,, 174 174,, 206 , 207 207,, 232 handwriting, 207 207,, 218 218,, 226 226,, 234 Leo X, Pope, and 174 mathematics, interest in, 170 170,, 173 173,, 175 175,, 217,, 234 217 medical knowledge and relationships with medical community community,, 152 152,, 154 154,, 155,, 167 – 155  –76 76 Melzi, Francesco, and 181, 181 , 205 205, , 206  210  –211  – 211,, 216 –  –218 218, , 221 221, , 230 230, , , 236 –  –237 237 Michelangelo and, 186 186,, 203 myth of isolated genius, 174 –  –76 76 observation of nature, 210 210,, 221 221,, 222 222,, 223 Pacioli, Luca, and, 170 –  –71 71,, 173 173,, 175 175,, 216 –  –19 19,, 230 230,, 234 234,, 236 patrons and patronage, 170 –  –75 75,, 203 physiognomy and physiology, interests in, 180 –  –83 83,, 200 200,, 201 201,, 203 –  –44, 221 four humors, 204

four “universal states of man,” 182

201 “flowers portrayed from nature,” 220 foot and leg, muscles of the calf and tendons, drawing, 157  genitalia, male and female, drawings, 167 –  –68 68 grape leaf (or maple leaf), stencil or physiotype, 207 –  –208 208,, 220  Holy Family with Saint Anne Anne and  Saint John the Baptist (London,

National Gallery), 203 horse heads, drawing or engraving, 155 Jesus disputing in the temple, planned painting, 202 202,, 203 maple leaf (or grape grape leaf) physiotype, physiotype, 207 –  –208 208,, 220  Mona Lisa, 153 153,, 190 –  –91 91 mulberry leaf ( Morus 211,,  Morus), drawing, 211 220,, 221 220 “one of our Ladies,” drawing, 153 penis dissection, drawing, 169 sage leaf nature print, Codex Atlanticus (Melzi?), 205 –  –208 208,,  –211 211,, 216 216,, 230 206 , 210 –

gender differences, 168 168,, 193 –  –94 94 printing and printmaking Achademia, designs for woodcuts, 234 copper-plates for anatomy treatise for painters, 155 155,, 221 221,, 234  De divina proportione proportione (Pacioli), designs for woodcuts, 173 173,, 175 175,, 217,, 234 217 nature printing, 205 –  –11 11,, 206 , 216 –  –221 221,, 230 –  –32 32,, 236 –  –37 37 printed books, plans for, 155 155,, 232 232,, 234 printed book, typesetting calculation, 232 relief engraving, method for, 234 234,, 236 technology of printing, knowledge of, 220,, 232 220 visual thinking and strategies graphic codification, 167 167,, 222 222,, 231 writings (notebooks, manuscripts manuscripts,, treatises); see also Windsor Castle, Royal Collection

 

INDEX

265

Codex Atlanticus, 205 –  –11 11,, 206 , 216 216,,

libraire, 133

219  –21  – 21,  –32  – 32,  –37  – 37 Codex on the, 230 flight of, 236 birds,  Il codice sul volo degli uccelli, Turin, Biblioteca reale di Torino, MS Cod. Varia 95 95,, 211 211,, 220 220,, 221 Codice Trivulziano, Milan, Castello Sforzesco, Codex Trivulzianus N 2162, 151 “discourse on herbs,” 221 drapery,, proposed treatise on, 221 drapery figural representation, “On the human figure,” 155 155,, 156 , 177 Libro A (reco (reconstru nstruction ction of treatise on painting), 154 154,, 221 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS

libraries of San Antonio di Castello, 90 in convents, 90 90,, 93 courts, Italian, at, 95 Gesuati family family,, 89 Grimani, Cardinal Domenico, 90 Guarino da Verona, 92 Byzantine, 45 45,, 48 –  –50 50 Visconti family, 55 55,, 57 Pico della Mirandola, 89 –  –90 90 Salutati, Coluccio, 92 John Prodromos, St, 48 universities, Italian, 93  Libri de Morti (Books of the Dead), 158 Lichtenberger,, Johannes, 215 Lichtenberger

8936 (Madrid Codex II), 171 171,, 232,, 234 232 Paragone, 171 171,, 175 Paris, Institut de France, Manuscript A (217 (2172, 2, 2185), (formerly (formerly Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS It. 2038), 222 Paris, Institut de France, Manuscript F (2177), 172 Paris, Institut de France, Manuscript G, 221 plant morphology and growth, on, 221 riddles, 218

Liège, 51, , 62 sphere of, see Sphere of  life and51 death, Pythagoras life cycle, see ages of man  Life of the Virgin Virgin, hospital murals (Florence, Santa Maria Nuova), 17 life-casts, 220 ligatures, 17 lights and darks, 191 191,, 196 196,, 211 211,, 220 –  –21 21,, 231,, 237 231 lily, 43 Limbourg brothers, 133 lingua bovina, 44 Linnaeus, Carolus, Carolus, and Linnaean botany botany,,

31,, 121 31 121,, 237 237,, 241

trees and landscapes, on, 221 treatise on human physiology, physiology, anatomy, and physiology, outline for, 177 treatise on painting, Libro di Pittura, Trattato della pittura (ed. Melzi), Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Codex Urbinas Latinus 1270, 154 154,, 181 181,, 205 205,, 221 –  –22 22 Leonardus (Achates) de Basilea and Gulielmus de Papia, 233 leopard, 98 Leopold of Habsburg, Archduke Archduke of Austria and Count of Tyrol, 59 lepers, 161 Lepidus, Aemilius Paulus, 113 lesser celandine, 124, 129, 131 letterforms, 123 lettuce, 53  Liber de simplici medicina dictus dictus circa instans, see Circa instans  Liber dietarium universalium universalium et   particularium, see see   Isaac Judaeus

lion, 98 98,, 99 99,, 101 Lippi, Fra Filippo,  Adoration of the Magi (Florence, Uffizi), 184 Lisa del Giocondo, see Lisa 153 153,, see  Mona Lisa  190 –  –91 91,, 197 literacy, 19 19,, 26 26,, litterae notabiliores, 123 123,, 132 Liuinus Stuudert, 135 Livia, Empress, 106  Livre de la chasse, see Gaston III Foix; Foix; Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 616)  Livre des simples simples médecines (Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliothek, MS GKS 227 2º), 116 116,, 118 118,, 125 125,, 126 , 129, 134 –  –36 36;; see also Circa instans

Livy, 93 Lobelius, Matthias, 240 Lomazzo, Giovan Paolo, Trattato dell’Arte de la Pittura, 178 London British Library Additional MS 10293, 73

 

266

INDEX Additional MS 18854, 2

Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, 155 155,,

16  Additional MS 29301, 42130 (Luttrell Psalter), 78 Additional MS 47680, 23 Arundel MS 295, 3 C.27.11, 139, 140, 141 141,, 142 Cotton MS Tiberius C VI, 11 Egerton MS 2020 (Carrara Herbal), 23,, 67 23 67,, 70, 193 193,, 209 Egerton MS 747 (Tractatus de herbis 52,, 68 68,, 115 115,, 118 –  –19 19,, et plantis), 52  –88, 193 120, 122, 124, 127 – Egerton MS 2572 (Guild-book of the Barber-Surgeons of York), 11 11,, 12 Harley MS 2897, 133

 –72  – 72 Luini,171 Bernardino, 200 –  –204 204,, 201  Disputa nel tempio (Saronno, Santa Maria dei Miracoli), 202 Saint Mary Magdalene (National Gallery, Washington), 203 Young Christ (Milan, Ambrosiana), 202 –  –203 203 Christ Teaching [Christ Among the  Doctors] (London, National Gallery), 201, 203 Luttrell Psalter, 78 lynx stone (amber), 132

Harley F, 10 Harley MS MS 5311, 5401, section 14 Royall MS 10 E IV (Smith Roya (Smithfield field Decretals), 9 Sloane MS 249, 3, 4 Sloane MS 1975, 5, 6  Sloane MS 1977, 13 Sloane MS 2250, 10 Sloane MS 2435, 23 Sloane MS 2463, 3 Sloane MS 2839, 5 British Museum MME AF 897 (Coventry Ring), 20 20,, 21

Maccagni, Carlo, 232 Macer Macer (Pseudo-Macer Floridus, 118 Floridus), 57 Machiavelli, 147 Macrobius, In somnium Scipionis, 89 Madden, Thomas F., 25 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 8936 (Leonardo da Vinci, Madrid Codex II), 171 171,, 232 232,, 234 magic, 213, 214, 215 215,, 216  Magistrato di Sanità (health officer), 159 magus (wise man), 96 96;; see also Kings, Three maidenhair (adiantos, politricum), 31 31,, 33, 39, 41

mallow (siriaca), 213

Victoria and Albert Museum Codex Forster II 2 [formerly London, Forster Library, South Kensington Museum, MS S.K.M.II.2], 162 Codex Forster III [formerly, Forster Library, South Kensington Museum MS S.K.M. III], 173 MS L.1504–1896, 86 86,, 105 Wellcome Institute, MS 5265, 160 Long, Pamela, 174 Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419 ( Erbario 26,,  Erbario, “Schoenberg herbal”), 26 211,, 224 211 224,, 225, 226 226,, 227 , 228, 229 –  –30 30,, 236,, 237 236 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, Good Government  in the City and the Country (Siena, Palazzo Pubblico), 78 L’Ortolano, Saints Roch, Sebastian and   Demetrius altarpiece (London, National Gallery 669), 186 Louis d’Orleans, 72 Lubeck, 86

malum terre, 43 malve, 43

mandorla, 98 mandrake, 43 43,, 137 Manfred, King of Sicily Si cily,, 54 Manfredus de Monte Imperiale, 27 27,, 66  Manfredus  Manfr edus Herbal (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 6823), 66 –  –68 68 Mantegna, Andrea, St Mark (Frankfurt, Städelisches Institut), 187 187,, 189 mantic text, 213, 215 Mantua, 95 manuscripts; see also articulation systems; systems; incunabula and early printed books albums of illustrations, 27 27,, 29 29,, 31 31,, 41 –  –49 49,, 226 –  –29 29,, 239 ancient, in Constantinople, 26 annotations in, 29 29,, 77 77,, 95 95,, 127 127,, 170 170,, 226,, 229 226 229,, 236 borders, illuminated, 9, 237 commissioned, 7, 216 composite, 229 229,, 236 236  

 

INDEX

267

deluxe copies, 2, 3, 23 23,, 31 31,, 40 40,, 45 45,, 49 49,, 54,, 57 – 54  –58 58,, 65 65,, 67 67,, 76 76,, 84 84,, 89 –  –90 90,, 117,, 121 117 121,, 123 123,, 125 125,, 132 –  –33 33 front-matter, 30 30,, 134 production and workshop practice, 30 30,, 62,, 65 62 65,, 77 77,, 88 –  –89 89,, 123 123,, 134 134,, 239 mappamundi, 98 Marani, Pietro, 152 Marbode of Rennes, De lapidibus, 7 Marc Antony, 113 Marco Polo, Milione, 102 Marcon, Susy, 86 86,, 112 Margaret of Antioch, St, and childbirth, 193 marjoram, 67 Mark, St, 187

Cosimo il Vecchio, 86 86,, 87 87,, 96 96,, 184 184   Cosimo I, 188 188,, 191 Francesco, 179 179,, 194 Wunderkammer, 194 Giovanni, 192, 193 Giuliano, 147 147,, 158 158,, 184 Giuliano di Lorenzo de’, 158 Giulio (Pope Clement VII), 158 Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, 184 Lorenzo il Magnifico, 147 147,, 151 151,, 183 –  –44, 187 mausoleum, 184 scrittoio, 187  Medicina Plinii, 85 medicinal substances, 118 118,, 128 128;; see also

Marliani, (Marliano, Giuliano?), 172,, Giovanni 172 232 Marseille, 28 marvels of the East, 102 Mary Magdalene, St, 101 Mascarino, Niccoló, 88 88,, 90 Master of Guillebert of Mets, 125 125,, 127 127,, 132 –  –33 33 materia medica, 2, 31 31,, 33, 35 35,, 41 41,, 46 46,, 53 53,, 66;; see also 66 also unde underr names names of  individual medicinal substances; Dioscorides;; Galen Dioscorides Galen;; herbals  herbals   mathematics and mathematicians, 170 –  –72 72,, 173,, 175 173

materia medicine; anatomy;; diseases and seemedica also anatomy conditions;; dissections conditions dissections;; medical education;; medical schools, education schools, physicians and medical community; community; Salerno and Salernitan medicine; medicine; surgeons forensic, 148 –  –51 51,, 158 158,, 159 159,, 160 practical medicine, 125 rhetoric, 13 –  –14 14,, 24 24,, 171 melancholia and melancholics, 135 135,, 178 178,, 180,, 182 – 180  –84 84,, 186 186,, 188 –  –89 89,, 197 197;; see humors;; humoral/complexion also humors types;; tetrads types

under names of individual substances;

melancolie , 135

Matthaeus Platearius  Antidotarum Nicolai Nicolai, attributed to,

sciarca), 118 melegueta pepper (nux 183,  Melencholia I (Dürer), 183  Melencholia , 187 187,, 188 melograno, 42

119

Compendium Salernitanum, 211

Mattiolus, Pierandreas, 245 McMurrich, James P., 153 meat and game, 55 mechanical arts, 174 –  –75 75 medical education, 3, 22 –  –23 23,, 120, 244 244;; see also universities medical images, categories and functions of, 1 –  –24 24;; see also under individual subjects of images medical miscellanies, 6 , 212 212,, 213, 214 214,, 215 medical practice and practitioners, 125 125,, 126 , 151 –  –52 52,, 159 159,, 174 174,, 245 245;; see also physicians;; surgeons physicians surgeons;; herbalists medical schools, 154 –  –55 55,, 159 159,, 160 160;; see also dissections dissections,, hospitals  hospitals,, medical education,, universities education medical traditions, 52 52,, 54 54,, 66 66,, 83 83,, 170 Medici family, 147 147,, 158 158,, 179 179,, 184 184;; see also Eleonora of Toledo

melon, 67 67,, 75 melones dulces (sweet melons), 75 Melzi, Francesco, 205 205,, 206 , 210 210,, 221 221,, 230 230,, 236;; see also Leonardo da Vinci; 236 Vinci;

nature prints and nature printing Flora and Pomona, 210 Vertumnus, 210 memory, cognitive role in learning, 247 menstrual cycle and moon, 193 193;; see also breast milk menstruation, 209  Mentha spp., mint, 42 mercury, 128 Mesue, 57 metals, minerals, ores, 41 41,, 95 95,, 112 112,, 194 Metlinger, Pierre, 136 Meyer, Albertus, 241 241,, 242 Meynererius, Johannes Anthonius, 28 Michaelangelo, 178 178,, 182 182,, 184 184,, 186 –  –88 88,, 195 –  –96 96,, 203 –  –204 204

 

268

INDEX

Dawn, Night, and Lorenzo, Duke of  Urbino capitani , (S. Lorenzo chapel, New Sacristy Sacrist y, Medici mausoleum), 184 184,, 186 186,, 188 four seers: Daniel, Libica, Jeremiah, Persicha (The Vatican, Sistine Sisti ne Chapel, eastern bays of ceiling), 184,, 186 – 184  –88 88,, 195 195,, 196 Milan, 59 59,, 67 67,, 72 72,, 75 75,, 78 78,, 80 80,, 87 87,, 147 147,, 151 151;; Vinci; Pavia Pavia,, see also Leonardo de Vinci; University of  court, 170 –  –71 71 medical community community,, 154 154,, 170 170,, 173 173,, 174 174,, 232 Biblioteca Ambrosiana Codex Atlanticus (Leonardo da

movements of the soul, see moti mentali; non-natural causes of health mulberry ( Morus  Morus), 211 211,, 220 mumie (mummies, powder of), 131 Muscio (Pseudo-Moschion), Gynaecia, 2, 3, 30 30,, 31 31   Musée Cluny, 208 Musée de Condé, 69 Museo del Castelvecchio, 63 music and harmony, 53 53,, 199 musk, 131 –  –32 32 Muslims and Christians, intellectual exchanges between, 26 26;; see also Arabic science and medicine

206  Vinci), 173, 205  –11 ,  – 216,, 219 –  –20 20,,173 229, –  –30 30, – , 11, 236  –37 37, 216 MS E. 42 inf. (Pliny, Natural 58,, 87  History), 58  Milione, see see  Marco Polo milium, 42 millet, 77 mimesis, see copying copying,, imitation imitation,, naturalism,, visual representation, naturalism representation, illusion,, Zeuxis illusion minerals, 41 41,, 83 83,, 95 Mini, Bartholomaeus, see Bartholomaeus Mini   Mini mint, 42 42,, 43

 Narc  Narcissus issus poeticus , 13 L., pheasant’s eye, 42 narrationes

Naples, 27 27,, 68 Nativity, 86  Natural History ( Historia  Historia naturalis), see

Pliny the Elder naturalism, 112 –  –13 13,, 116 –  –17 17,, 143 –  –44 44,, 236 –  –37 37,, 241 241,, 241 241;; see also fidelity to nature;; colors nature  colors;; fidelity to nature; nature; illusionism counterfeit, 218 218,, 219 219   descriptive accuracy accuracy,, 144 flattening, and, 67 67,, 131 131,, 209 209,, 231 functions of, 144 historiography, 116 –  –119 119,, 143 –  –66, 237 237,,

241,, 243 241

Mirandola, counts of, 89 89;; see also Pico della mirror, 20 Mivandola, Giovanni Mithridates, 109 mnemonics, xix mnemonics,  xix,, 132 132,, 247 247;; see also memory model and copy, 65 65,, 131 131,, 134 134,, 136 136;; see copying;; model books also copying model books, 65 mollusk, 118 Mona Lisa, 153 153,, 190 –  –91 91,, 197 Mondino, Anatomia, 154 monstruous races and exotic peoples, see Plinian races Montefeltro, Federico da, 147 Montuus, 249 moon, 30 30,, 191 Morley, Brian, 222 morus (mulberry), 211  Morus nigra (mulberry), 220 Mosley,, Michael, 153 Mosley moti mentali, 180 180,, see complexions complexions,, humoral theory, passions,  passions, Galenic medical theory, theory, non-naturals

and humoral Pliny theory,on,178 and illusion, 112,, 113 112 and illustrations in Byzantine herbals, 34 Carrara Herbal, 69 early printed herbals, 143 143,, 229 229,, 237 237,, 240  Historia Plantarum, 67 Leonardo da Vinci, 155 155,, 167 –  –88, 220 –  –222 222,, 223, 224 224,, 231 67    Manfredus  Manfr edus Herbal, 67  Roccabonella  Roccabone lla Herbal, 75 Schoenberg herbal, 224 224,, 226  –99, 67 67,, 76 –  –77 Tacuinum sanitatis, 58 – Tractatus de herbis, 116 –  –117 117 and imitation, 219 219,, 220 220,, 224 and modernity, 241 and nature printing, 216 –  –19 19 and observation of nature, 167 –  –88, 220 220,, 224,, 231 224 231   and periodization, medieval vs. Renaissance, 144 144,, 239 –  –41 41 scientific knowledge, signaled si gnaled by, 241

 

INDEX trompe l’oeil, 215

269

obstetrics, 3

verisimilitude, 230 –  –11, 236 236,, 241 nature, Leonardo da Vinci on, 220 nature printing and nature prints, 205 –  –37 37;; see inci;; Melzi, also Leonardo da Vinci Francesco;; Pacioli, Luca; Francesco Luca; books of  secrets;; prints and printmaking; secrets printmaking; printing navelwort, 41 Negi Master, 98 nenofar maior, 43 Nero, Emperor, 101 Neudörffer, Johann, 196 –  –97 97 New Haven Yale University, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library MS 28 (Paneth Codex), 7, 8, 9

Officio di Sanità (Health Office), 159

MS 55 (Book19 of Hours, detached leaves), New York The Pierpont Morgan Library Inc. ML21193, 96 MS Acc. No. II, 65 MS M 652 (Dioscorides,  De materia medica), 31 31,, 34 34,, 39, 40 40,, 43 MS M. 873 (Matthaeus Platearius, Compendium Salernitanum), 211 Nicander, 40 Nicolas de Lyr Lyra, a, 73 Nicolaus de Mascharinis, see see  Mascarino, Niccolò

articulation35 systems systems; ; tetrads alphabetical, 35, , 121 121,, 135 135, , 141 anatomical, 135 135,, 141 specific to general, 141 page layout and, 121 Oribasius, 47 ornamentation, see workshop practice; practice; manuscript production; production; articulation systems;; patronage systems Ornithiaka, 35 Ornithopus (bird’s foot), 41 orpiment, 131 orthography, 43 43,, 128 128,, 131 orticha, 44

oils, 41 41,, 53 53,, 121 121,, 197 197,, 210 210,, 217 217,, 218 old age and health, 72 72,, 163 163,, 164, 165 old wives, 246 246;; see also herbalists Olea (olive-tree), 86 olive oil, 121 olive-tree (Olea), 86 121;; see also Isaac Omnia Opera Ysaac, 121 Judaeus On the Dignity of Man, see Pico della Mirandola orarium, 202 ordinatio, 125 oregano, 43 organizational systems, 125 125;; see also

Niketas Choniates, 26

os cuer (stag s heart cartilage), 132

 Noble Experyence Experyence of the Vertuous Vertuous Handy Warke of Surgeri, see Brunswyg,

Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (National Library of Austria), Vienna, Vienna, 40 Ourscamp, Cistercian monastery monastery,, Noyon, 5 Ovid, 93 Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández,  Historia General y Natural de las Indias, 247 Oxford Bodleian Library MS Arch G. b. 6; previously MS Douce 310, 84 MS Rawl. liturg. e. 14 14,, 133 ox-tongue, 217

Hieronymus, 138 Hieronymus, nomenclature, 31 31,, 144 144;; see also Linnaeus, Carolus bones, names of, 138 diseases and ailments, 135 135,, 141 141,, 183 remedies, 141 non-natural causes of health, 52 52,, 69 162,, 166 –  –67 67;; see also anatomy anatomy;; notomia, 162 dissection nudity, 106 106,, 162 Nuremberg, 187 187,, 246 nurses, hospitals, in, 17 nutmeg, 132 nux sciarca (melegueta pepper), 118 nymphaea, 43 Nyverd, Guillaume, 136 –  –38 38 oats, 77 observation and experience of nature, 116 –  –17 17,, 167 167,, 168 168,, 208 208,, 221 221,, 222 222,, 244 –  –46 46;; see also naturalism

Pächt, Otto, 68 68,, 116 –  –18 18,, 127 127,, 209 Pacioli, Luca, 170 “books of secrets” and, 219 –  –20 20 173,, 175 175,, 217 217    De divina proportione proportione, 173  De viribus quantitatis, 216 Leonardo da Vinci, relationship with, 170,, 216 – 170  –18 18 mathematics, 171 171,, 216 Padua, 47 47,, 58 58,, 187 187,, 199

 

270

INDEX

page layout, 7, 28 28,, 44 44,, 55 55,, 88 88,, 93 93,, 96 96,, 121 121,, 125,, 234 125 in Leonardo da Vinci manuscripts, 209 209,, 234 painting, techniques and materials, 113 113,, 222,, 224 222 224,, 230 230;; see also artists and illuminators theory and practice, 154 154,, 168 168,, 178 –  –79 79,, 181,, 205 181 205,, 207 207,, 221 palaces, 66 Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, 78 Palermo, 54 Paneth codex, see see   New Haven, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, MS 28 Panicum miliaceum L., millet, 42

Park, Katharine, 148 148,, 152 Parkes, Malcolm, 123 Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1278 (Pliny the Elder, Natural History), 88 88,, 97,, 104 97 104,, 111 Parmigianino, 189 189,, 190 Parrhasius, 112 parts of body, 135 135,, 138 138,, 148 148,, 155 155,, 157 , 167 –  –68 68;; see also bones bones;; diseases and conditions;; skeleton conditions  skeleton;; skulls Pasquino Capelli, 58 58,, 87 patients and doctors, 3, 125 125,, 143 patrons and patronage, 57 57,, 73 73,, 78 78,, 84 84,, 96 96,, 132,, 158 132 158,, 175 175;; see also Medici family;; Sforza family; family family; Visconti family fami ly Beatrix de Savoie, 23

 panne de verre , 218 Panofsky, Erwin, 188,, 196, 188 196, 243  papaver (white and black poppy), 44 Papaver rhoeas L., red poppy, 44 Papaver somniferum L., poppy, 44 Paralesis (Primula vulgaris), 226

Berry, Duc Jean de,8787 87,, 133 133   Capelli, Pasquino, confraternities, 17 Frederick II, King of Sicily, 54 hospitals and almshouses, 17 17,, 23 Isabella d’Este, 203 Manfred, King of Sicily Sicily,, 54 Pico della Mirandola, 88 –  –90 90 Piccolomini, Gregorio Lolli, 87 Paul of Aegina, 48 Paul, St, 19 paupers, 162 Pavia, 51 51,, 58 58,, 152 Pazzi family conspiracy conspiracy,, 147

paralysis, 19  paraph symbol, 123 123,, 128 Paris album, nature print, see Paris, Bibliothèque du Muséum d’Histoire naturelle, MS 326  326  Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5070, 133

Bibliothèque de l Ecole des Beaux Arts, MS Masson 116,, 67 d’Histoire 116 Bibliothèque du Muséum naturelle, MS 326 (Paris album of  plant illustrations), 212 212,, 215 215,, 236 Bibliothèque nationale de France MS fr. 343 (Guiron le Courtois), 76 MS fr. 616 (Gaston III of Foix, Livre de la chasse), 209 MS gr. 2183 (Parisinus Graecus), 47 MS Inc. Rès. 415, 98 MS lat. 364, 73 MS lat. 6802, 95 MS lat. 6823, 66 MS lat. 6977A, 55 MS lat. 7939A, 84  Lancelot du MS nouv. acq. fr. 5243 ( Lancelot  Lac), 76 MS nouv. acq. lat. 1673 ( Tacuinum sanitatis), 56 , 58 58,, 60, 74, 79 Institut de France, MS F. (2177), 172 Parisinus Graecus 2183, see Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS gr. 2183

pearls, 106 106,, 109 109,, 193 Perspectiva communis, Pecham, 171 Johannes, Pedretti, Carlo, 154 154,, 221 221,, 220 Pelacani, Biagio, 173 173   Pellegrinaio murals, see see  hospitals, Santa Maria della Scala penis, 148 148,, 149, 168 168,, 169  pentefullon  pentefullo n, 43 43,, 226  peonia, 43 peony, 43 peoples, exotic, see Plinian races perfumes, 53 53,, 75 35,, see Dioscorides, De Peri ules iatrike-s, 35 materia medica

Perino del Vaga, 178  Isaiah (Rome, Trinità dei Monti, Pucci Chapel), 186 186,, 188 Vasari on, 178 178,, 186 periodization, xvii xvii,, 1, 144 144,, 237 237,, 239 –  –41 41 Perspectiva communis, see Pecham, Johannes de; de; Cardano, Fazio Peter of Abano see Pietro d’Abano Petra monastery, 40 40,, 48

 

INDEX

271

Petrarch, annotations on Pliny Pliny,, 95 Petrus Christus, 186 Pharisees, 202 pharmacists, 28 28,, 78 78,, 118 118,, 132 132,, 222 222,, 245 pharmacopoeia, 246 Pharmacorum … Dispensatoriu Dispensatorium m (Cordus, Valerius), 246 pharmacy,, education, 66 pharmacy Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia, MS Lewis E M 5.20, 5.19, 133 phlegm, 141 141,, 193 193;; see also humors, four; four; humoral/complexion types; types; phlegmatics;; tetrads phlegmatics phlegmatics, 180 180,, 182 182,, 189 –  –91 91,, 193 –  –95 95;; four; see also humors, four; humoral/complexion types

Savonarola, Michele da, 199 199   Theodore, Master, physician to Frederick II of Sicily, 54 Varesi, Ambrogio, 173 physiognomy, 177 177,, 196 196,, 199 199;; see also humoral/complexion types; types; Leonardo da Vinci; Vinci; physiology, human, 148 physiotypic process, see nature printing Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius, see Pius, II Piccolomini, Gregorio Lolli, 87 87,, 105 Pliny manuscript owned by (London, Victoria and a nd Albert Museum, MS L.1504–1896), 86 86,, 87 87,, 97 –  –98 98,, 101 –  –102 102,, 105, 106 106,, 109 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 84 –  –114 114 On the Dignity of Man, 89 89,, 104

physicians community, community , 92, 167 7, , 11,, 17 11 17,and , 24 24,,medical 125,, 126  125 , 143 143,, 158 –  –9 167, 173,, 174 173 174,, 215 215,, 222 222,, 230 230,, 245 245;; see also anatomy;; costume and clothing; anatomy clothing; Dioscorides;; dissections Dioscorides  dissections;; Galen Galen;; hospitals;; medicine hospitals medicine;; surgeons surgeons;; universities arrogance of, 245 Benivieni, Antonio, 166 Brack, Wenzeslaus, 212 212,, 214 214,, 215 Budahyliha Byngezla, 53 Byzantine physicians, 49 calendar, physician’s physician’s folding (vade mecum), 9, 10, 22 Cardano, Fazio, 171

Plinymanuscript, the Elder,  Natural , 88 –  –104 104,History , 106 –  –14 14 Pico Master, 84 –  –114 114 decorations to incunable copies of Pliny,  Natural History, 84 –  –90 90,, 96 manuscripts attributed to, 91, 94, 99, 100, 102 –  –14 14,, 103, 105, 107 , 108, 110 pictorial cycles, genres, and narrative themes, 65 65,, 72 72,, 113 113;; see also herbals Pietro da Pavia, 58 58,, 87 87,, 98 Pietro d’Abano (Peter of Abano), 47 47,, 75 pigments, 112 pilgrims and pilgrim badges, 17 17,, 20 –  –22 22,, 24 212,, 213  pilifagus (sage), 212 pine trees, 67

Cardano, Girolamo, Cordus, Euricius, 246171  –47  – 47 Cordus Valerius, 246 Cusano, Nicolò, 173 della Torre, Marcantonio, 152 152,, 155 155,, 173 –  –74 74,, 176 dress, 7, 125 125;; see also clothing Ficino, Marsilio, 183 Fuchs, Leonhart, 240 –  –44 44 Frugardi, Roger, 13 Ghiringhelli, Giovanni, 173 Giovio, Paolo, 158 Ibn But.la-n, 52 ignorance of, 246 images of, 2, 87 87,, 105 Leoni, Pierleone, 151 Marliani family family,, 172 Marliani, Giovanni da, 172 Pelacani, Biagio, 173 Pietro d’Abano (Peter of Abano), 47,, 75 47 Pirovano, Gabriele 173 Roger de Baron, 7

Pino, Paolo, , 43  pionia

 Dialogo della Pittura, 178

Pius II, Pope (Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini), 87 place and geography geography,, in health, 53 53,, 72 72;; see also non-naturals plague, 80 80,, 159 159,, 174 plant books, see herbals plant gatherers, 105, 117 117,, 245 –  –47 47;; see also herbalists  plantago, 143 plants; see also under names of individual  plants; botanical illustration, illustration, herbals  herbals,, materia medica, medica, naturalism in amulets, 15 classification and taxonomy, 121 121,, 221 221,, 222,, 224 222 224,, 231 231,, 241 growth, form, and morphology, 33 33,, 34 34,, 77,, 224 77 224,, 231 231,, 240 habitat, 43 43,, 121 121,, 221 nomenclature and identifications, 26 26,, 42 42,, 46,, 49 46 49,, 116 116,, 119 119,, 121 121,, 128 128,, 137 –  –38 38,, 215,, 237 237,, 241 241,, 246 139, 215

 

272

INDEX

illustration, 31 –  –44 44,, 47 47,, 49 49,, 62 62,, 66 –  –68 68,, 98,, 134 98 134,, 117 117,, 128 128,, 143 143,, 207 207,, 209 209,, 128,, 230 128 230,, 237 237,, 241 241,, 244 244,, 248 images of, 14 14,, 32, 33, 36  – 39 39, 56 , 60, 70, 79, 124, 129, 140, 213 – 14 14, 223, 225, 227   – 28 28, 233, 235, 242 specimens, 209 209,, 231 study of, 104 104,, 247 247,, 248 symbolism of, 15 15,, 72 72,, 224 uses, 15 15,, 43 43,, 85 85,, 104 104,, 119 Platearius, 118 118,, 119 119,, 127 127,, 137 137;; see also Johannes, Platearius; Platearius; Matthaeus Platearius,, Circa instans Platearius Plinian races, 102 102,, 103, 104 Pliny the Elder,  Natural History, 83 –  –114 114,, 131,, 244 131 244,, 248 248;; see also Guarino da Verona; Verona ; Berry, Jean, Duc de; Petrarch de; Petrarch; Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni Giovanni; ; Pico ; Master;; Pietro da Pavia; Master Pavia; Pliny the Younger;; Pseudo-Pliny Younger anecdotes illustrated in, 101 –  –14 14 art, naturalism, and illusion, on, 109 –  –13 13,, 131 botany, on, 131 131,, 144 incunable editions, 92 medieval textual tradition, 85 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS E. 42 inf., 58 58,, 87 moralizing, 101 –  –102 102,, 106 106,, 109 109,, 114 London, Victoria Victoria and a nd Albert Museum, MS L. 1504–1896 (Piccolomini

Portinari altarpiece, see Goes, Hugo van der portraits and portraiture, 80 80,, 90 90,, 106 106,, 113 113,, 153,, 190 153 190,, 193 of authors, 86 86,, 84 84,, 86 86,, 94, 240 153,, 190 –  –91 91,, 197  Mona Lisa, 153 in Pliny mss, 84 84,, 86 86,, 87 87,, 91, 93 93,, 94, 96 96,, 97,, 108, 109 97 self-portraits, 87 87,, 230 230,, 241 241,, 242 of women, 192, 198 Posner, Kathleen Weil-Garris, 204 post-mortems, see see  anatomy anatomy,, dissections pouncing, technique, 208 Practica medicinae, 3 Practica platearij , 118 Practica, see see   John of Arderne Prague, knihova, MS XXIII F 129,Národni 129 , 212 212,, 214 precious stones, see gems and jewelry; jewelry; Polycrates pregnancy, 168 pressed flowers, 209 226   Primula vulgaris ( paralesis  paralesis), 226 printed books, see book owners, readers, and users; users; incunabula and early printed books; books; printers, early printers, early early,, 143 Andrewe, Laurence, 143 Egenolff, Christian, 246 le Caron, Pierre, 136 Grüninger,, Johann, 137 Grüninger

ms.), 86 Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1278 (Parma Pliny), 88 88,, 97 97,, 104 104,, 111 Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat.Vi 245 245 (coll  (coll 2976) (Pico manuscript), 91, 94, 99 –  –11 1111 Pliny the Younger, Letters, 90 90,, 92 92,, 93 Plutarch, Vitae virorum illustrium, 89 poetry and poets, 92 92,, 171 171,, 175 poisons, 135 political praxis and mechanical arts, 175 Poliziano, Angelo, 89 89,, 209 Polycrates, 106 pomegranate, 42 42,, 193  pomes granades, 42

Gulielmus de Papia, 232, 232 , 233, 235 Isingrin, Michael, 230, 230 , 242 Jenson, Nicholas, 84 84,, 89 89,, 90 90,, 96 96,, 97 Johannes de Medemblick, 47 Johannes de Spira, 90 Leonardus (Achates) de Basilea, 232 232,, 233, 235 Metlinger, Pierre, 136 Nyverd, Guillaume, 136 136,, 137 Schott, Joannes, 246 Sweynheym and Pannartz, 92 Treveris, Peter, 136 –  –38 38,, 139, 140, 142 printing and printing press, 207 207,, 210 210,, 235; early; prints and see also printers, early; printmaking;; Leonardo da Vinci printmaking

Pomiferae, 86

nature printing and, 207 207,, 217 217,, 220 printing errors, 143 143,, 233, 234 prints and printmaking, 143 143,, 207 207,, 230 230,, 234,, 236 234 236,, 239 239;; see also copperplate engraving;; engravings engraving engravings;; intaglio intaglio;; relief  engraving;; woodcuts engraving prognostication, see see  Sphere of Pythagoras (sphere of life and death)

Pompey, 106 106,, 108, 109 Pontormo, Jacopo, 195 –  –97 97,, 203 203,, Four Evangelist Evangelistss, tondi (Florence, St Felicità, Capponi Chapel), 195  popolo grasso, 81 poppy, 43  populus (poplar), 211

 

INDEX

273

prophets and prophecy, 5, 183 183,, 189 189,, 196 proverbs, 216 Pseudo-Apuleius, Herbarius and herbal tradition, 117 117,, 118 118,, 226 Pseudo-Aristotle, Le Livre des problèmes problèmes, 96 Pseudo-Galen, Experiment  Experimenta a, 7, 8 Pseudo-Moschion, see see  Muscio Pseudo-Pliny,  Medicina Plinii Plinii, 85 Ptolemy, 96 96,, 97 public health, 159 –  –60 60 pulse-taking, 3, 13 punctuation, 123 Punic War, First, 113 Punica granatum L., pomegranate, 42 purgatory, 17

relics, 20 relief carvings, church porch, San Zeno, Verona, 69 relief engraving, 236 Rembrandt, 189 remedies, 13 13,, 14 14,, 28 28,, 118 –  –19 19,, 127 127,, 132 132,, 135,, 137 – 135  –38 38,, 141 141,, 142; see also under

pygmy, 102 229 Pyle, Cynthia,

ricotta, 55, , 59 riddles, 55 218 Rinio Herbal, see Roccabonella Herbal (Venice, (V enice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI.59)  Rizon (rice), 79  Roccabonella  Roccabonel la Herbal (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS lat. VI.59), 75 Roch, St and plague, 2 Roger de Baron, Practica medicinae, 3  Rogerina, 7, Rogier van der Weyden, altarpiece (Beaune, Hôtel Dieu), 18

qualities, see see  humors, four Queller, Donald E., 25 quicksilver, 128 quid pro quo, 119 races and racism, 102 102,, 104 104;; see also alterity;; Plinian races alterity races, monstruous, see Plinian races Raphael, 181 181,, 189 189,, 191 191,, 193 193,, 196 196,, 197 197,, 198, 199 199,, 203 –  –204 204 Alberti, Della pittura, and, 181 Heliodorus fresco (The Vatican), Vatican), 181

names of individual plants and  medica; medicinal remedies; materia medica;

substances resurrection of the body, 150 150,, 151 Reti, Ladislao, 232 Rhazes, 57 57,, 137 rice, 77 77,, 78 78,, 79 Richard de Bury, 209 Richter, Jean-Paul, 172

 Jeremiah  Jere miah (Bologna, San Giovanni Evangelista, St Cecilia Altarpiece),

reading and readers, 96 96,, 144 144;; see also

Rogier van der (Sherborne, Weyden, follower altarpiece Dorset,of, almshouse chapel), 18  Roman de la Rose, 72 Roman emperors, 80 80,, 86 86,, 82 82,, 93 93,, 101 101,, 106 romances, 68 68,, 72 72,, 73 Rome, 92 92,, 186 ancient, 95 95,, 102 102,, 106 106,, 109 Biblioteca Angelica, MS 1474, 23 Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 459, 62 MS 1382, 5 MS 4182 (Theatrum sanitatis), 23 23,, 61,, 62 61 ronce, 44

articulation systems; systems;  book owners, users, and readers realism, see see  naturalism recipes, household and medical, 29 29,, 215 215,, 216   216 Reeds, Karen Meier, 117 117,, 244 reeds, see rushes 138,, 139  Registree of the chaptrees, 138  Registr

roses, 43 43,, 60, 77 77,, 132 132,, 217 Rosso Fiorentino, 189 189,, 190 Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, MS Leber (3054) 1088 (Tacuinum sanitatis), 51 51,, 104 roxe (rose), 60 Rubens, 189 rubrication, 134

186  Maddalena Doni (Florence, Palazzo

Pitti), 191  Madonna di Loreto Loreto (Chantilly, Musèe

Condè), 189 Saint Cecilia with Sts Paul, John  Evangelist,, Augustine, and Mary  Evangelist  Magdalene (Bologna, Pinacoteca), 186,, 197 186 197,, 198  Madonna of the Goldfinch (Florence,

Uffizi), 193 School of Athens, 186

 

274

INDEX

 Rubus spp., bramble, 44

Rufinus herbal, 134 Rufus of Ephesus, 55 runes, 215 Ruscelli, Girolamo, see see   Alessio Piemontese,, 218 Piemontese rushes, 222 222,, 223 rustici, see herbalists rute, 29 rye, 77 sacra conversazion conversazionee, 194 Sacrobosco, Johannes, Sphera Mundi, 98 sage (salvia), 29 29,, 55 55,, 205 205,, 207 –  –209 209,,

211 –  –12 12,, 215 –  –17 17,, 226 226,, 230 Salvia (sage), 206 , 210 210,, 213 Salvia officinalis L., sage, 229 Salvia pratense L., salvia dei prati, meadow clary, 229 Salvia salvatica, 229 (clary,, catnip?), 228, Salvia salvaticha (clary 229 Salamon dei Grassi, 58 Salerno and Salernitan medicine, 27 27,, 66 66,, 68,, 115 – 68  –16 16,, 211 Salutati, Coluccio, 92 Salvia, see sage Salzburg, University Library Salzburg, MS M I 36 36,, 212 212,, 213, 237 237,, 230 230,, 237 San Marco, Dominican convent, 96 San Zeno, Verona, church porch, 69

Longboat Key, FL, Lawrence J. J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 419, 224,, 225, 226 224 226,, 227 , 228, 236 scholars, Byzantine, medieval, and humanist, 26 26,, 46 46,, 50 50,, 66 66,, 89 89,, 92 –  –93 93,, 96,, 116 – 96  –17 17,, 144 144,, 180 180,, 183 183,, 209 209,, 244 –  –49 49 schoolmaster, 212 212,, 230 Schott, Joannes, 237 237,, 246 246,, 249 sciatica, 73 science and art, 241 241;; see also text and image scientific images, printed, 144 144,, 243 Sciopod , 102 Scirpus, 222 222,, 223, 224 224,, 234 Scirpus lacustri, 222 scolopendria, 41 scorpions, 30 scribes and amanuenses, 1, 134 134;; see also artists and illuminators Guillebert of Mets, 133 Mascarino, Niccoló, 88 88,, 90 Pliny the Younger, portrayed as, 97 for Pacioli, De viribus quantitatis, 217 Scuole Piattine, 172 Scythia, 102 sea water, 63 seals, wax, 208 seasons of life, see see  ages of man seasons, 53 53,, 69 69,, 72 Secreti del Reverendo Alessio Reverendo Alessio Piemontese Piemontese,

sanguines, 180,, 182 180 182,, 194 –  –97 97; ; see also humoral/complexion types Santa Maria della Scala, hospital, Siena, 17 Santa Maria Nuova, hospital, Florence, 163 Sanudo, Leonardo, 84 sardonyx, 106 Saturn and melancholy melancholy,, 188 Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo, Elijah Fed  by the Raven (Washington D.C., National Gallery), 187 savon, 199 Savonarola, Michele da, Speculum  phisionomiae, 199

see Alessio Piemontese, Piemontese, books of  secrets

secretions and excretions, 52 –  –53 53;; see also non-natural causes of health Secretum secretorum, 23 Segre Rutz, Vera, 51 51,, 57 57,, 67 Sekenesse of Wymmen, 3, 4 Sempervivum tectorum L., houseleek, 44 sempre viva, 44 semprevivum, 44 Serapion, 57 serpentaria mayor, 43 sexuality, 72 72,, 77 77;; see also coition, coitus Sforza family, 62 62,, 63 63,, 151 151,, 154 154,, 158 158,, 161 –  –62 62,, 170

Savoy, Bona of, 63 schematization and stylization in visual images, 15 15,, 87 87,, 97 97,, 141 141,, 194 –  –95 95,, 226 226,, 229,, 237 229 237,, 241 241;; see also naturalism, flattening Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI), 226 Schoenberg herbal ( Erbario  Erbario), see

Sforza, Bianca Maria, 62 Sforza, Francesco, 155 155,, 161 161,, 168 Sforza, Giangaleazzo Maria, Duke of  Milan, 62 Sforza, Ludovico, 151 Shearman, John, 202 shepherd’s purse, 41 shops, 78

 

INDEX Shrine of Juno, 113 sibyl, Libyan ( Libica  Libica), 196 Siena, 17 17,, 78 sigils, astrological, 19 Signorelli, Luca, The Realm of Pan, 184 signposting, see see  articulation systems simple and compound medicines, 123 123,, 135;; see 135 medica, medicinal see  materia medica, substances,, remedies substances  remedies;; see also under names of individual plants and  substances simples (simple medicines), see see  materia

medica, medicinal substances, medica, substances, remedies,, simple and compound remedies medicines;; see also under names of  medicines individual plants and medicinal substances

Singer, Charles, 117 siriaca, 213 siringue (syringe), 135 Sixtus IV, Pope, 147 skeleton and bones, 138 138,, 155 155,, 172 172,, 173 173,, 195;; see also parts of body 195 skin, 135 135,, 180 180,, 181 181,, 182 182,, 187 –  –88 88,, 197 197;; see also colors; humoral/complexion types skulls, 13 13,, 101 101,, 104 104,, 155 155,, 156 , 187 187;; see also cranium sleep and wakefulness; see also nonnatural causes of health smells, 13 13,, 23 23,, 53 53,, 72 72,, 104 104,, 132 132,, 216 216,, 224

275

spikenard, 197 spiritelli, 93 sponges, 132 squash, 67 Stachys officinalis (L.) Trev., betony, 41 41,, 42

stag, 80 80,, 132 standardization of images, 87 starch, 63 63,, 124, 129 stars, 97 statuary and monuments, 17 17,, 92 92,, 113 113,, 155 155,, 184,, 186 184 Stella, Angelo, 57 stenciling, 208 208,, 220 stole, see see orarium  orarium stomach, 135 Strassburg, 137 strawberry, 143 Strozzi, Filippo, 84 Studio (University of Pavia), 174 Studiolo Studio lo of Francesco de’ Medici Medici,, (Florence, Palazzo Vecchio), 179 Studium, see universities stufe (communal baths), 162 sudarium, 22 Suetonius, De viris illustribus, 90 90,, 92 sugar, 75 75,, 77 77,, 137 –  –38 38 sulfur, 132 sulphide of antimony antimony,, 123 123;; see also antimonium , antimony surgeons and surgery, 2, 13 –  –17 17,, 138 138,, 143 143,, 159,, 160 – 159  –161 161,, 174 174;; see also John of 

see10London, Smithfield Decretals, Library, Library , Royal MS E IV, 9 British snakes, 30 30,, 113 snow and ice, 63 63,, 65 65;; see also winter social order and health, 78 sodomy, 158 Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium (The Excellent and Pleasant Worke), 85,, 93 85 93,, 102 102;; see also Pliny the Elder sorghum, 77 soul and body, 168 Southwark, 136 136,, 139, 140, 142 Spain, 28 28,, 75 Sparagus (asparagus), 56  Speckle, Veit Rudolf, 241 241,, 242

spelt, sperm,7773 73,, 168 Speroni family family,, 76 Speroni, Alvarotto, 61 Speroni, Pietro, 61 Sphera Mundi, see Sacrobosco, Johannes Sphere of Pythagoras (sphere of life and death), 11

Arderne; Arderne ; Frugardi, Roger  fistula in ano , operation, 15,, 16  15 operations, 13 13,, 16  plants in surgical texts, 14 surgical instruments and technology, 13 13,, 16 

suspensions, amuletic, 17 sweets, 53 symmetry and naturalism, in plant images, 226 Syracuse, 113 syrups, 53 table of health, see Taqwı-m as-S  . ih. h. a, Tacuinum sanitatis

tablesarticulation of contents,systems 127,, 130; see also 127 51,, 56 , 60, 64, 67 67,, 71, Tacuinum sanitatis, 51 74, 79, 84 Arabic sources, 52 52,, 55 55;; see also Taqwı-m as-S  . ih. h. a

iconography and pictorial traditions, 51 51,, 58,, 88 58 88,, 216

 

276

INDEX

manuscripts, 51 51,, 54 54,, 55 55,, 57 57,, 58 58,, 64, 73 73,, 88 Tamus communis L., black bryony, 44 Taqwı-m as-S  52;; see also Ibn But.la-n; . ih. h. a, 52 Tacuinum sanitatis teasel (virga pastorum), 213 Galen,, Ars medica Techne- iatrike-, see Galen

techniques and materials, 20 20,, 65 65,, 95 95,, 106 106,, 123 –  –24 24,, 132 132,, 212 212,, 215 215,, 216 216,, 219 –  –20 20,, 222,, 224 222 224,, 230 –  –31 31,, 236 236,, 241 technology and mechanical arts, 175 temperaments, 197 197,, 199 199;; see also humoral medicine Temple of Concordia, 106 tetrads in medieval and Renaissance thought, 180 180,, 193 –  –96 96,, 199 –  –200 200  see man; beasts of the also ages of man; Apocalypse;; cosmology Apocalypse cosmology;; complexions;; diagrams; elements complexions elements;; evangelists;;  humoral/complexion evangelists types;; humors types  humors;; seasons seasons;; moti mentali; qualities;; temperament qualities  temperament;; winds Tetragrammaton, 20 text and image, xix image, xix,, 3, 9, 13 –  –15 15,, 22 22,, 44 44,, 55,, 88 55 88,, 128 128,, 131 131,, 244 244,, textual criticism, humanist, 96 Theatrum sanitatis (Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 4182), 23 23,, 52 52,, 61 61,, 69,, 76 – 69  –77 77 Theodore of Gaza, 96 Theodore, Master, physician to Frederick

Torre, Marcantonio della, see see  della Torre, Marcantonio Tractatus de herbis et plantis (London, British Library, MS Egerton 747), xx, 66,, 68 66 68,, 115 –  –16 16,, 118 –  –19 19,, 120, 122, 134,, 209 209;; see also Livre 124, 134 also Livre des simples médecines Tractatus de oleis, see Roger de Baron Tractatus de uirtutibus herbarum [ Herbarius  Herbarius Latinus], 232 –  –36 36,, 233, 235

translations, languages, and vernacular texts, 48 48,, 84 84,, 115 115,, 144 Arabic, 48 48,, 53 bilingual glossaries and indexes, 138 138,, 139, 144 English, 3, 115 115,, 116 116,, 118 118,, 136 136,, 138 138,, 144 French, 26 26,, 28 28,, 38, 42 42,, 46 46,, 115 –  –16 16,, 118 118,, 125,, 127 125 127,, 133 133,, 144 144,, 211 German, 136 136,, 189 189,, 212 212,, 213, 215 215,, 229 229,, 240 Greek, 42 42,, 45 45,, 46 46,, 48 Italian, 42 42,, 46 46,, 57 57,, 84 84,, 90 90,, 180 180,, 209 209,, 215,, 226 215 Latin, 28 28,, 38, 42 42,, 46 46,, 115 –  –16 16,, 127 127,, 136 136,, 144,, 170 144 170,, 209 209,, 215 Provençal, 30 Spanish, 46 Syriac, 48 travel narratives, 102 trees, 41 41,, 75 75,, 101 101,, 132 132,, 211 211,, 221

II of Sicily, 54 Theophrastus, 244 theology, 150 –  –51 51 therapeutics, 125 Thomas of Canterbury Canterbury,, St, 22 Thott 190, (Copenhagen, Konglige Bibliotek, MS Thott 190 2º); see also Dioscorides, De materia medica codicology and sources, 27 –  –28 28,, 31 31,, 44 –  –46 46,, 50 Thott Addition, 27 27,, 44 44,, 46 Thott Album, 43 –  –44 44,, 46 46,, 48 –  –49 49 Thott Archetype, 27 27,, 44 –  –45 45,, 49 Thott Model, 27 27,, 49 Tiepolo, Domenico, 189 189  

Trent, 61 Heures du Duc de Berry Très Riches (Musée de Condé, Chantilly), 69 69,, 76 76,, 78 Treveris, Peter, 136 –  –38 38,, 139, 140, 142 Trionfo delle Quattro Complessioni, 180 trompe l’oeil, 215 Tudor-Craig, Tudor -Craig, Pamela, 200 Turin Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MSS I. I. 24–I. I. 25 25 (Pliny,  (Pliny, Natural  History), 87 87,, 97 Biblioteca reale di Torino, MS Cod. Varia 95 95 (Leonardo  (Leonardo da Vinci, Codex on the flight of birds), 211

tiles, Titian,stamped 189 designs, 208 Titus, Emperor, 86 86,, 93 T–O map, 97 97,, 98 Toesca, Berti, 67 Tolosani, Giovanni, La Nuova Sfera, 182 Toresella, Sergio, 211 Torre dell’Aquila murals, 61

Turkey, 147 turnip, 67 Tyrol, 59 59,, 65 UCLA Digita Digitall Librar Libraryy, 7 Ugelheimer, Pietro, 96 ulcers ( ferite  ferite), 13 13,, 168 Ulm, Municipal Library Library,, 240

 

INDEX Umbelliferae, see fennel fennel,, anise umbilicus, 168 Umbria, 80 universities (Studia), 3, 24 24,, 61 61,, 93 93,, 96 96,, 116 116,, 117,, 143 117 143,, 170 170,, 171 Bologna, 89 Padua, 61 61,, 89 Paris, 150 Pavia, 152 152,, 155 155,, 170 170,, 172 –  –73 73 professors in academic dress, 97 97,, 119 119,, 125 Salerno, 27 27,, 66 66,, 115 115,, 116 116,, 118 upokustidos, 43 Urban, Anthoine, 28 urine and uroscopy, 9, 11 11  125 125,, 138 138,, 144 144,, 209 Urtica spp., nettle, 44 utopian imagery, 76 76,, 78 78,, 80 80,, 81 physicians’ cians’ calend calendars ars vade mecum, see see  physi Vasari, Giorgio, 155 155,, 178 –  –99, 184 184,, 186 186,, 188,, 190 – 188  –91 91,, 194 four humors, drawings (Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Vecchio, Studiolo St udiolo of  Francesco France sco de’ Medici Medici,, decorative program), 179  Lo Zibaldone, 179 Saturn, drawings (Sforza Almeni, facade frescoes, coppieri), 188 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

277

verisimilitude, 112 112,, 190 190,, 236 236;; see also fidelity to nature, nature, naturalism, imitation,, counterfeit imitation  counterfeit,, trompe l’oeil, l’oeil, vernacular translations, see see  languages and translations Verona, 58 58,, 59 59,, 61 61,, 63 63,, 78 78,, 92 Museo del Castelvecchio, fresco fragments, “Dill,” “Starch,” “Aged Wine,” 63 veronica, 22 Vertuose Boke of Distyllacyon, 143 vervain, 42 Vesalius, Andreas, 153 153,, 176 vesche de machomet , 42 Vicia faba f aba L., bean, 34 Vienna Dioscorides ( Dioscorides  Dioscorides Vindobonensis), see Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS med. gr. 1 Vienna Tacuinum sanitatis, see, Vienna, Österreichische National Bibliothek, MS series nova 2644 Vienna, Österreichische National Bibliothek, MS med. gr. 1 ( Dioscorides  Dioscorides Vindobonensis, Vienna Dioscorides), 31 –  –41 41,, 43 –  –44 44,, 47 47,, 49 –  –50 50 MS series nova 2644 (Tacuinum sanitatis), 61 61,, 64, 71 vigna (grape vine), 70

MS codex Urbinas Latinus 1270di (Leonardo da V inci,  Libro  pittura), 154 154,, 181 181,, 205 205,, 221 –  –22 22 MS gr. 284, 40 40,, 47 MS. Lat. 1950, 97 MS Vat. Lat 3533, 97 vegetables and fruits, 75 Venice, 90 90,, 204 Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana MS lat. VI.59 ( Roccabonella  Roccabonella Herbal, formerly the Rinio Herbal), 75 MS lat. VI. 245 (coll. 2976) (Pliny the Elder,  Natural History), 84 84,, 91, 94, 99, 100, 103, 107 , 108, 109 109,, 110

vinegar, 218,, L., violet, 41 218 Viola odorata 41,, 42 29,, 217 viola, 29 violet, 29 29,, 41 41,, 42 42,, 217 41,, 42 violette, 41 41,, 42 virga pastoris, 41 virga pastorum (teasel), 213 Virgil, 84 84,, 85 Visconti court and family, 51 51,, 57 57,, 72 72,, 80 80,, 81,, 87 81 87,, 158 Visconti, Bernabò, 59 Visconti, Caterina, 62 Visconti, Giangaleazzo, Count of Milan, 54,, 57 54 57,, 62 62,, 67 67,, 78 78,, 80 Visconti Hours, 58 58,, 80

Tacuinum MS lat. Z. 315), (coll. 54 1645) ( sanitatis MS lat. Z. 316 (coll. 1646) ( Tacuinum sanitatis), 55 Venturelli, Paola, 152 Verbena officinalis L., vervain, 42 verbena, 43 verdigris, 236

Visconti 57,, 66 57 Visconti, Library Isabell e,inventory, Isabelle, 72 Visconti, Valentina, 72 Visconti, Verde, 59 59,, 65 65,, 76 visual conventions and vocabulary, 5, 14 visual cuing systems, see articulation systems in manuscripts and early printed books

 

278

INDEX

visual hypothesis, 231 visual representation, 112 112,, see also naturalism,, illusion naturalism illusion,, aesthetics visual theory, 131 visualization, in John of Arderne, 14 14,, 15 15,, 16 

volvelle, 11 11,, 12 von Schlosser, Julius, 61 Vostre, Simon, 195 Wakeman, Geoffrey 211 water lily, 132 water, 19 19,, 53 53,, 63 63,, 137 137,, 191 “book on water of Marco Antonio,” 173 watercolor, 212 212,, 216 –  –17 17,, 224 224,, 226 watermark, 215 Watteau, Antoine, 189 wax, 19 19,, 208 way-finding devices, see see   articulation systems weights and measures, 119 Welch, Evelyn, 152 152,, 161 Wellcome Library for the History of  Medicine, London, 2 Wenceslas IV, Emperor of Germany and King of Bohemia, 67 Wenceslas, attributed to, Cycle of the  Months (Trent, Torre dell’ Aquila), 63 wheat, 77 Wieck, Roger, 133 winds and health, 53 53,, 195

womb, 3, 4 women book owners, readers, and users, 23 23,, 59 59,, 62 in coitus, 74, 169 dissec dis sectio tions ns of, 151 151,, 160 160,, 167 –  –68 68,, 169 herbalists, 246 in hospitals, 17 17,, 18 in medical images, 3 in Pliny, Natural History, 104 104,, 106 humoral/complexion types, 178 178,, 182 182,, 187,, 189 – 187  –93 93,, 197 197,, 199 199,, 200 portraits and portrayals, 60, 63 63,, 169, 189 –  –94 94,, 192, 198, 200 200,, 201 pregnancy,, childbirth, and reproduction, pregnancy 3, 4, 167 –  –68 68,, 193 sanctity investigated, 160 witchcraft accused of, 160 working, 64, 72 72,, 106 106,, 246 woodcuts, 108 108,, 136 –  –38 38,, 140, 141 141,, 143 143,, 194,, 195 194 195,, 208 208,, 217 217,, 230 230,, 233, 234 234,, 241,, 242, 245 235, 241 workshop practice, 88 88;; see also manuscripts;; scribes and amanuenses; manuscripts amanuenses; techniques and materials  materials  wormwood, 43 Wunderkammer (Francesco de Medici), 194 Yates, Frances, 187 187,, 188  ypericon, 43

Windsor Castle,daRoyal Leonardo VinciCollection; see also W. 12421, 221 W. 12427, 221 –  –22 22,, 223, 224 W. 19016r, 157  W. 19019v, 148 148,, 149, 168 W. 19027r, 163 163,, 164 W. 19027v, 163 163,, 165 W. 19059r, 154 –  –55 55,, 156  W. 19097v, 167 –  –68 68,, 169 wines, 41 41,, 53 53,, 55 55,, 63 63,, 69 69;; see also grapes Winter [ Hyemps  Hyemps], 71, 72 witchcraft, woman accused of, 160 Wittkower, Rudolf, 102 woad, 106

 ypoqustidos  yreoss, 42 , 43  yreo  yriganum, 43  yringe, 43

Zeno, Apostolo, 89  Zephirus/Aer/Saguineus  Zephirus/Aer/ Saguineus, 195

Zeuxis, 112 112,, 113 Zilsel, Edgar, 174 zodiac man, 9, 10, 11 zodiac, 11 11,, 28 28,, 30 zoology, 229 Zoppo, 188  zuccaro  zuccar o (sugar), 137  zuccarus (sugar), 138