RUBUS ICONOGRAPHY: ANTIQUITY TO THE RENAISSANCE

Abstract

Rubus images from late Antiquity to the Renaissance are described and assessed for botanical and horticultural information. The earliest surviving European blackberry (R. fruticosus L. sp. agg.) image is found on folio 83 in the Juliana Anicia Codex (Codex Vindobonensis) of 512 CE which contains copies of several older texts including an illuminated, illustrated, partial alphabetical recension of De Materia Medica (English: On Medical Matters) written in the first century by Pedanius Dioscorides. Comparisons are made with other blackberry images from later Dioscoridean recensions including the Codex Neapolitanus folio 32 (7th century CE), Morgan folio 25 (10 th century CE), Grecian 2179 folio 82b (8th century), and Arab 2850 folio 19 (13th century CE). Rubus images from the Medieval Period include the recensions of Apuleius Platonicus: Leyden Apuleius (600 CE), Leech Book of Bald (920) and Bodley 130 (1120 CE). Renaissance images from the 16th century include Rubus paintings from a prayer book, Horae ad Usum Romanum (Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne) ca. 1503 to 1508, drawings by Leonardo da Vinci (1508 to 1510), and a woodcut from De Historias Stirpium of Leonhart Fuchs (1542). Images from the ancients represented nature, but deteriorated to crude diagrammatic representations in the Medieval Period. Images in the Renaissance eschewed imitative reproduction and returned realism to art.