Illustrated herbals and the illustration of botany

An illustrated herbal is a fundamental record in the history of medicine and botany as it contains, for each period of history, the entire body of plant-related knowledge at that point in time, analysed both scientifically and therapeutically.
Between 1200 and 1400 herbals were used exclusively to provide information on the curative properties of medicinal plants, which were illustrated simply and approximatively.

With the establishment of botany as a science, attention turned more to the classification and recognition of the plant itself. Great assistance in this was provided by the technical perfection of the illustrations and the introduction of colour, which increased the scientific and documentary value of herbals.

The new images were born from the close partnership between the artist and a botanist. It was recognised that a verbal description of a plant without an illustration could lead to confusion and it was therefore necessary to show it in every detail.

The first printed herbals date from the early sixteenth century. The earliest in the Biblioteca Antiqua Aboca is the Herbarium vivae Icones, published in 1530 by the German botanist Otto Brunfels, which was the first to show the plant as realistically as possible. The printing technique used was the woodcut.

In 1542 Leonhart Fuchs included high quality water-coloured woodcuts in his herbal De Historia stirpium, which aided in the identification of plants through the colours of the flowers and fruits. Also outstanding was the work by the Italian botanist, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, who printed many original woodcuts in his herbals next to the text or even in full-page illustrations.

A jump in quality and technique was brought about by Basilius Besler, a botanist and pharmacist from Nuremberg, who in 1613 published the anthology Hortus Eystettensis, which included 367 chalcographic engravings.
The engravings in Besler's masterpiece, which were etched on metal plates, were of such quality that the artistic element in the book was as important as its scientific and naturalistic components. Using this technique, plants were illustrated in their constituent parts in other herbals for educational purposes.

The use of lithography, introduced at the end of the eighteenth century, marked another step forward in botanical illustration and coincided with the publication of university manuals. Daniel Wagner, a Hungarian botanist and chemist, included 250 high quality lithographs in his treatise Pharmaceutisch-medicinische Botanik.
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