A Millenium and a Half of Fern Illustrations

Abstract

The history of fern is part of history of western botanical illustration. Drawings of ferns intertwine with art of 1500 years this story spans. To concentrate pri- marily on this history as it is revealed in published works over this time, an important theme becomes evident. As in so much scientific discovery, technological advances pave way for a growth of knowledge and more accurate perception. The advances in botanical are balanced between growing knowledge and talent of scientific artist and growing skill of his technician allies, woodblock cutter, etcher, engraver, lithographer, and photographer, and growing strengths of techniques themselves. The earliest existence of sound recognizable botanical art is affirmed on walls of Egyptian tombs. However, no examples of painted Greek and Ro- man art that were source of almost all medieval copies have survived, although it is known from Greek and Roman chronicles that such art did exist. The earliest botanical volumes that have survived were herbals. They were books about medicinal plants with descriptions and drawings of plants for identification. Among these plants were pteridophytes thought to have medic- inal properties. At least two species, Adiantum capillus-veneris and Polypodium vulgare, are in earliest manuscript dealing with depiction of plants that has come down to us today. The Codex Vindobonensis (Dioscorides, 512 AD), writ- ten and illustrated in Constantinople for daughter of Byzantine Em- peror of West, is a copy of Greek text De Materia Medica by Dioscor- ides, a first century AD physician and botanist. It is believed original work consisted of paintings by Crateuas of some 500 plants, with written part consisting of little more than their names and healing properties. According to British art historian Wilfred Blunt, Codex provided the link be- tween classical and modern botany, and paintings the link between an- cient Greek and modern European botanical illustration (Blunt and Steam 1994). From a facsimile of this text is a lovely, if somewhat primitive, illustra- tion of Adiantum capillus-veneris (Fig. 1). The manuscripts that made up source of medical and botanical knowl- edge for Medieval era were copies of Codex and other classical mate- rial. For nearly 1000 years, manuscripts produced were copies of copies made by illuminators with no or little botanical knowledge so that simplifi- cations, anthropomorphisms, and mistakes made identification of plants nearly impossible (Apulius, 1481). This problem was compounded because maintaining a fidelity to previously printed words and images was one of disciplines of Christianity in that period, which found heresy in observa- tion of nature itself.