Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany 1470-1670

by Agnes Robertson Arber

Colouring of the figures was characteristic of many of the earliest works in which wood-engraving was employed. In cases where uncoloured copies of such books exist, there are often blank spaces in the wood-cuts, which were left in order that certain details might afterwards be added in colour. The origin of wood-engraving is closely connected with the early history of playing-card manufacture. Playing-cards were at first coloured by means of stencil plates, and the same method, very naturally, came to be employed in connection with the wood-blocks used for book illustration.

The engravings in the ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius are executed in black, in very crude outline. At least two colours, now much faded, were also employed by means of stencilling. The work was coarsely done, and the colours only “register” very roughly. Brown appears to have been used for the animals, roots and flowers, and green for the leaves. The drawings show some rather curious mannerisms. For instance, in the first cut labelled “Vettonia,” each of the lanceolate leaves is outlined continuously on the one side, but with a broken line on the other. It has been suggested that the illustrations in the ‘Herbarium’ are possibly not wood-engravings, but rude cuts in metal, excavated after the manner of a wood-block.

Plate XVI

‘Dracontea’ [Herbarium Apuleii Platonici, ? 1484].
The tint represents colouring, which was probably contemporary.

We have already referred to the imaginative portrait of the Mandrake (Plate [V]). Figures of the animals whose bites or stings were supposed to be cured by the use of a particular herb, were often introduced into the drawing, as in the case of the Plantain (Text-fig. [1]) which is accompanied by a serpent and a scorpion. In this figure the cross-hatching of white lines on black—the simplest possible device from the point of view of the wood-engraver—is employed with good effect. Sometimes the essential character of the plant is seized, but the way in which it is expressed is curiously lacking in a sense of proportion, as in the case of “Dracontea” (Plate [XVI]), one of the Arum family.

The figures in the ‘Herbarium’ are characterised by an excellent trait, which is common to most of the older herbals, namely the habit of portraying the plant as a whole, including its roots. This came about naturally because the root was often of special value from the druggist’s point of view. It is to be regretted that, in modern botanical drawings, the recognition of the paramount importance of the flower and fruit in classification has led to a comparative neglect of the organs of vegetation, especially those which exist underground.

We now come to a series of illustrations, which may be regarded as occupying an intermediate position between the classical tradition of the ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius, and the renaissance of botanical drawing, which took place early in the sixteenth century. These include the illustrations to the ‘Book of Nature,’ and to the Latin and German ‘Herbarius,’ the ‘Ortus Sanitatis,’ and their derivatives, which were discussed in Chapters II and III.

‘Das půch der natur’ of Konrad von Megenberg occupies a unique position in the history of botany, for it is the first work in which a wood-cut representing plants was used with the definite intention of illustrating the text, and not merely for a decorative purpose. It was first printed in Augsburg in 1475, and is thus several years older than the earliest printed edition of the ‘Herbarium’ of Apuleius Platonicus which we have just discussed. The single plant drawing, which illustrates it, is probably not of such great antiquity, however, as those of the ‘Herbarium,’ for its appearance suggests that it was probably executed from nature for this book, and not copied and recopied from one manuscript to another before it was engraved. The illustration in question is a full-page wood-cut, showing a number of plants, growing in situ (Plate [III]). Several species (e.g. Ranunculus acris, the Meadow Buttercup, Viola odorata, the Sweet Violet, and Convallaria majalis, the Lily-of-the-Valley) are distinctly recognisable. It is noticeable that, in two cases in which a rosette of radical leaves is represented, the centre of the rosette is filled in in black, upon which the leaf-stalks appear in white. This use of the black background, which gives a rich and solid effect, was carried much further in later books, such as the ‘Ortus Sanitatis.’