Double folio from a Kitab-i hasha’ish (The book of herbs). Manuscript dated September 1595 or 1645. Opaque watercolour and ink on paper.
Google Art Project: Home via Wikimedia.
(via scientificillustration)
But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. Jonah 4:7 (NIV)
Cucurbita major (1599) Ulisse Aldrovandi
Selections from Herbarium vivum (1576, one of 12 volumes), compiled by Hieronymus Harder.
Harder collected plants in the Swabian Alps around Lake Constance in Germany. Beginning in 1562, he began assembling plants in one of the earliest volumes of its kind, an Herbarium vivum, which included flowers, ferns, leaves, mosses, and crop plants. Harder illustrated the missing plant parts with colored drawings of his own. Eleven of the twelve original volumes remain in existence today.
2013: Year of the Snake
The signature of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1514) of a winged snake with a ruby ring, which he used on his paintings from the year 1508 onward.
One of them went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine. He gathered some of its gourds and filled the fold of his cloak. When he returned, he cut them up into the pot of stew, though no one knew what they were. 2 Kings 4:39 (NIV)
Illustration: Ulisse Aldrovandi (1599)
Tulips, Joachim Camerarius (1589).
Native American Village, Secoton, Virginia (1590), engraving created by Theodor Johann de Bry, depicting crop fields, a vegetable garden and a Native American dance ceremony with villagers.
Thomas Harriot’s book (1588) A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia
The Imperial Crown, Albrecht Durer (1510).
At first glance, this appears to be an elaborate, hand-drawn landscape plan. But it isn’t.
Turkish woven textile, tulips, late 16th Century, silk and silver lamella. The tulips represent true-to-life depictions of Turkish plants, but with the added abstract emblem-like elements.
Babur’s Garden, Baburnama, 16th c. British Library
