Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi

Seeds of Knowledge highlights the collection of 15th to 17th-century European printed herbals of Dr. Peter Goop (Liechtenstein). Herbals were highly illustrated, critical texts to doctors and lay healthcare providers that included both the folkloric and medicinal uses of plants. The text and illustrations were repeatedly refined as the medicinal benefits of a plant’s use were more clearly understood and the style of illustration tended towards higher degrees of naturalism. These books were working manuals and frequently annotated by readers with notes of herbal recipes/medicines or other uses not found in the printed text. Dr. Goop’s collection is one of the most extensive in private hands. Using the Morgan’s 10th-century manuscript of Dioscurides’ De materia medica (MS M.652) as a centerpiece, this Thaw Gallery exhibition will explore developments in the understanding of the healthful and healing properties of plants, as Europe moved away from medicinal folklore towards an increased understanding of the natural world.

Seeds of Knowledge highlights the collection of 15th to 17th-century European printed herbals of Dr. Peter Goop (Liechtenstein). Herbals were highly illustrated, critical texts to doctors and lay healthcare providers that included both the folkloric and medicinal uses of plants. The text and illustrations were repeatedly refined as the medicinal benefits of a plant’s use were more clearly understood and the style of illustration tended towards higher degrees of naturalism. These books were working manuals and frequently annotated by readers with notes of herbal recipes/medicines or other uses not found in the printed text. Dr. Goop’s collection is one of the most extensive in private hands. Using the Morgan’s 10th-century manuscript of Dioscurides’ De materia medica (MS M.652) as a centerpiece, this Thaw Gallery exhibition will explore developments in the understanding of the healthful and healing properties of plants, as Europe moved away from medicinal folklore towards an increased understanding of the natural world. Text in German.

The author identifies the sitter of Sebastiano del Piombo's Portrait of a Humanist in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, as Fernando Columbus, son of one of the most famous men in history, Christopher Columbus. This identification opens a confluence of relations, international exchanges, and cultural interests that bring together the Old and New World. An intriguing written correspondence centered on three key elements-portraits, books, gardens-reveals the singular personality of this intellectual and passionate collector Fernando, and his association with the painter Sebastiano del Piombo and the wealthy banker, Agostino Chigi, "the Magnificent."

This magnificent compendium is the fourth in a series of catalogues describing selections of rare books and other material in the Oak Spring Garden Library, a collection assembled by Mrs. Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon. Herbaria describes sixty-three books and manuscripts about herbs and includes exquisite illustrations selected from the works themselves. Spanning the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, and featuring works by Brunfels, Culpeper, Monardes, and Linnaeus, among others, this authoritative catalogue will prove fascinating to botanists, bibliophiles, garden historians, and herbalists alike.

These volumes catalogue more than 200 botanical drawings from the Erbario Miniato, an early seventeenth-century herbal made for Federico Cesi and acquired by Cassiano after Cesi's death in 1630. Also included are a further sixty or so loose sheets that originally formed a companion volume, broken up in the eighteenth century, and botanical drawings commissioned by Cassiano and Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo. Most of the drawings depict the native flora of central Italy, but mycological specimens, rarities from across Europe and recently imported species such as the crown imperial, the tobacco plant, the tomato and the aubergine are also represented.