Historia Plantarum

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his precious manuscript, now in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, is an encyclopaedia of natural science, containing descriptions of plants, minerals, animals (quadrupeds, fish, insects, birds, reptiles, and imaginary animals) with particular reference to their medicinal and therapeutic properties.

The codex can be dated to the last years of the fourteenth century and was made at the court of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who gave it to Wenceslas IV, King of Bohemia and Germany, as a gift. The codex presumably reached the court of Wenceslas between 1395 and 1400. In the bottom margin of the frontispiece, Wenceslas coat of arms appears beneath the damaged arms of Matthias Corvinus, into whose library the codex passed after the deposition of Wenceslas and the dispersion of his library. At the end of the sixteenth century the codex was the property of the Portuguese physician Roderico de Fonseca, a professor at the universities of Padua and Pisa. Finally, in the eighteenth century it was purchased for the library founded by Cardinal Girolamo Casanate.

The topics in the Historia Plantarum are organised in alphabetical sections; the opening page of each section is richly decorated with architectural motifs, especially Gothic pinnacles, entwined with bizarre tendrils flecked with gold. The initials often enclose a half-length figure of a doctor or a scholar.

Since ancient and medieval pharmacotherapy was largely based on products with a vegetable origin, most of the illustrations in the Historia Plantarum are botanical. The 295 sheets comprising the manuscript are covered with more than five hundred illustrations of plants, furnishing an impressive and detailed picture of the vastness of the knowledge of the vegetable world reached in Italy in the late Middle Ages. Along with these botanical illustrations, there are more than eighty illustrations of animals from which pharmaceuticals can be obtained, and more than thirty illustrations of mineral derivatives. Moreover; these are accompanied by vignettes and characters illustrating aspects of daily life.

Such a rich and complex codex required the contribution of several hands and a very well-organised work force. As early as 1912, in the first edition of his basic work La pittura e La miniatura in Lombardia (Painting and Miniatures in Lombardy), Pietro Toesca established the codex’s origin in Lombardy, within the sphere of the school of Giovannino de Grassi, pointing out the enormous range in the quality of the illustrations.

Giovannino was a man of many talents; documents record him as a painter, miniaturist, sculptor; and at the height of his career (1391 - 1398) also as an engineer, in charge of the construction of Milan Cathedral.

We owe to the prestigious workshop of Giovannino de Grassi, aided by his son Salomone and a number of assistants sufficient to complete an enterprise of such great size and importance, the extraordinary illustrations of the Historia Plantarum. The twenty-four frontispieces, one for each letter of the alphabet, prepared for each section containing the descriptions of the individual substances, are outstanding for their quality and decorative magnificence. The richness and variety of decorative motifs are united with a fantastical imagination and delicacy of colour and handling that render the style of the authors of these miniatures unmistakable.

The Making of the Facsimile

The reproduction of these manuscripts is a remarkable blend of sophisticated imaging technology with the most traditional artisan techniques. Together they recreate that magic one feels when standing before the original. Before being reproduced, the codex is dismantled to enable the technicians to verify more completely the state of conservation and to arrange for any necessary restoration.

The photography is done in the same protected environments as the restoration. The next step, utilising the most modern technology, is the decomposition of the colours, an indispensable part of the reproduction process. Subsequently, in a delicate operation of image elaboration, carried out by hand, the plates are made for the gold leaf and dry impressions for each page.

The colour trials are then meticulously compared page by page with the original, and further adjustments of the colour checked equally carefully.

The printing is done by offset on fine paper using a very fine screen, which allows the reader to use a magnifying glass without being disturbed by the dot effect given by normal printing techniques.

The gold decorations are reproduced using hot plates and the sheets sewn individually to recreate the irregular edges of the pages of the original.

The binding, done by hand in artisans’ workshops, recomposes the sections exactly as they appear in the original.

The cover is made of wooden boards covered with silk velvet, the ribbons are handsewn and trimmed with decorative edging. The endpapers are made of moiré and the inner straps of leather. The accessories are of burnished brass, silver and silver gilt created especially for the facsimile.

The Volume of Commentary

Besides enabling the safeguarding of the original, the facsimile edition of an ancient codex offers the chance for a more profound and systematic study of the work, permitting scholars to work, using the facsimile, in more suitable environments, rather than having to go to the library where the original is preserved. In this way, ancient manuscripts may reveal information that has remained hidden for centuries. For this reason, every facsimile edition is entrusted to a scholar chosen among the leading experts on the historical period and milieu in which the codex was produced. The scholarly editor co-ordinates the work of the individual experts who examine the various aspects of the codex and its history.

Thus part of the volume of commentary collects the fruits of their research, made possible by the operations carried out in the course of preparing the facsimile, beginning with taking the binding apart, and moving through the flattening, cleaning, and if necessary actual restoration.

But the volume of commentary also aims at offering readers an introduction to the historical and cultural context in which the work was created and an analytical description of the manuscript’s contents, with particular attention to the miniatures and decorations. Where opportune, an integral transcription of the text is given and, if necessary also a translation into modern Italian.

The volume of commentary thus constitutes a valuable tool for comprehension and full appreciation of the beauty and significance of the codex.

The refined printing, authoritative authors, and rich illustrations make the commentary an indispensable complement to the facsimile itself.

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