To Press, Dry, Organise, and Represent

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the epistemological relation between two types of scientific image produced during a botanical expedition to New Granada in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: herbarium sheets and botanical illustration. Visual analysis of an exceptional collection of these two types of documents brings to light how scientific ideologies were transferred from Europe to New Granada, during the transformation of this latter from a colony to a republic. This study shows how features such as composition, proportion, and pictorial technique derive from both aesthetic choices and epistemological necessities. It reveals the development of a codified visual language resulting from a highly organised and structured outcome, complying with Carl Linnaeus’ principles of classification, and materialising a new way of looking at plants based on Isaac Newton’s universal mathematical principles.