A vernacular late Renaissance manuscript herbal from the eastern Ligurian Apennines

Abstract

In 1982, in the course of transferring the archive of the De Paoli family of Porciorasco to the Museo Contadino di Cassego (eastern Ligurian Apennines), a manuscript herbal dated about 1598 was discovered. The document is analysed here in all its aspect: the materials (paper, inks and pigments), the plants represented, the iconographical models, and the archival context. The result is a hypothesis about the circulation of knowledge about natural history in the area where it was found and used between the late sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. As for the iconographical sources, models were found in both manuscripts and printed books from the medico-botanical tradition, including Hortus sanitatis and Tractatus de virtutibus herbarum.