V. Changing the concept of illustration

Matthias de L’Obel. Plantarum seu Stirpium historia. – Anvers: Christophe Plantin, 1576. In-4 and in-folio.

This large herbal describes more than 2,000 plants and offers one of the earliest attempts at classification that no longer relies on their utilitarian properties but rather on their natural characteristics.

   The work tallies nearly 1,000 woodcuts, making it one of the most extensively illustrated books of its time. The botanical treatises published by the Plantin-Moretuses (L’Obel, Rembert Dodoens, Carolus Clusius, among others) were rightly famous for the abundance and quality of their illustrations. Plantin took the initiative to establish a considerable repertory of xylographic matrices: in order to produce this edition, he commissioned illustrator Peeter van der Borcht and the engravers Arnold Nicolai, Gerard Janssen van Kampen, Cornelius Muller and Antoni Van Leest.

   By reacquiring the xylographic stock of Flemish or English printers, by recycling old series and by making new ones regularly as specific orders, the Plantin-Moretuses thus created an iconographic tool without equal. The corpus, which reached nearly 4,000 blocks by the end of the seventeenth century, is preserved today at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.

Mazarine: 2° 3955 A

Mazarine: 2° 3955

Cultura Fonds: LC 310