Looking into the flora of Dutch Brazil: botanical identifications of seventeenth century plant illustrations in the Libri Picturati

Mireia Alcàntara-Rodríguez,Mariana Françozo,Tinde Van Andel

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-99226-8

Mireia Alcàntara-Rodríguez, Mariana Françozo + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99226-8

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Abstract

The Libri Picturati includes a collection of plant illustrations from seventeenth century Dutch Brazil that is kept in the Jagiellonian library in Krakow since World War II. While many studies focused on the artistic details and history of these images, we identified the flora depicted. We used contemporary textual sources (e.g., Historia Naturalis Brasiliae), monographs and taxonomist’ assessments. We checked origin, life form, domestication and conservation status and the plant parts that are represented. We identified 198 taxa, consisting mostly of wild, native rainforest trees and 35 introduced species. Fertile branches are the most represented, although some loose dry fruits and sterile material were also painted, which sheds light into the collection methods by naturalists in Dutch Brazil. Several species are no longer abundant or have become invasive due to anthropogenic influences since colonialism. Through this botanical iconography, we traced the first records of the sunflower and the Ethiopian pepper in Brazil, as well as the dispersion and assimilation of the flora encountered in the colony by Indigenous, African and European peoples. We emphasized the relevance of combining visual and textual sources when studying natural history collections and we highlighted how digitalization makes these artistic and scientific collections more accessible.

Highlights

“We are told that the nature of the foreign was understood through its natural objects
The latter were created under the patronage of count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen by artists and naturalists who aimed to represent the natural elements that surrounded them in the colony
The Brazilian collection includes the seventeenth century oil paintings known as the Theatrum Rerum Naturalium Brasiliae, the watercolor drawings known as Handbooks, Manuais or as the Libri Principis (LP) and the crayon/pencil sketches and oil paintings bound in the Miscellanea Cleyeri (MC)[4]

Summary

Introduction

“We are told that the nature of the foreign was understood through its natural objects. The Libri Picturati consists of thousands of drawings and paintings of flora, fauna and people from several ethnical backgrounds, which were bound together in the nineteenth century[4] It contains—inter alia—sixteenth century plant watercolors, attributed to the circle of correspondents around Carolus Clusius and Charles de Saint O mer[5] and a collection of Brazilian Natural History illustrations made during the Dutch occupation of northeast Brazil. Other contemporary materials to these visual sources of Brazilian nature include an account of Johan Maurits’ endeavors in Brazil written by polymath Caspar Barlaeus[6]; the encyclopedia Historia Naturalis Brasiliae ( on HNB) authored by naturalist Marcgrave and physician Piso and published by Johannes de Laet in 16487; and the India Utriesque re Naturali et Medica (IURNM), a modified and doubtful version of the HNB8 Both the HNB and IURNM contained descriptions and woodcut images of animals, plants, people and tropical diseases of Dutch Brazil. We chose to identify the species depicted in the paintings, thereby revealing their domestication status, geographic origin and the natural vegetation type in which they occur, to suggest where they were made and how close naturalists and artists collaborated in Dutch Brazil

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