Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Clusius Chair in History of Botany and Gardens, Institute for Biology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2024 Jul 16;19(7):e0276242. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276242. eCollection 2024.
By the mid-seventeenth century, images of natural elements that originated in Dutch Brazil circulated in Europe. These were often included in art collections (the Libri Picturati) and natural history treatises (the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae and the India Utriesque re Naturale et Medica, 1658). The plant woodcut images in these books constituted (icono) type specimens and played a significant role in disseminating scientific botanical knowledge. We present a systematic analysis of their origins by cross-referencing the visual and textual sources related to Dutch Brazil. To do so, we used our previous botanical identifications of the portrayed plants, published sources, and digital archival material. The plant woodcuts accounted for 529 images, which corresponded to 426 taxa. We created a PDF booklet to visualize the (dis-) similarities of the woodcuts with the Libri Picturati and other visual sources. Substantial differences in the visual-making methodology exist between the two treatises (1648, 1658). In the first book, most of the images were available from Dutch Brazil and carved into the woodcuts, while most of these woodcuts were reused in the second one. The Indigenous Tupi-based plant names accompanying the images were crucial when arranging the sources, and portraying as much botanical information as possible was commonly the goal. Freshly picked, living plants, dried branches, fruits, and seeds were used to represent the megadiverse Brazilian flora, even when these belonged to species originating from other regions. Despite not being recognized for their contribution, Indigenous Brazilians and enslaved Africans were essential in the visual knowledge-making processes that later resulted in these natural history collections. As several sources remain lost and many histories yet untold, further archival studies and collaborative projects are pertinent to reveal the missing pieces of this conundrum.
到 17 世纪中叶，起源于荷兰巴西的自然元素图像在欧洲流传。这些图像经常被收录在艺术收藏（Libri Picturati）和自然历史论文（Historia Naturalis Brasiliae 和 India Utriesque re Naturale et Medica，1658 年）中。这些书中的植物木刻画图像构成了（icono）模式标本，并在传播科学植物学知识方面发挥了重要作用。我们通过交叉参考与荷兰巴西相关的视觉和文本来源，对其起源进行了系统分析。为此，我们使用了之前对所描绘植物的植物学鉴定、已发表的资料和数字档案材料。植物木刻画共有 529 幅图像，对应 426 个分类群。我们创建了一个 PDF 小册子，以可视化木刻画与 Libri Picturati 和其他视觉来源的（不）相似之处。这两本论文（1648 年、1658 年）在视觉制作方法上存在很大差异。在第一本书中，大多数图像来自荷兰巴西，并被雕刻成木刻画，而这些木刻画中的大多数在第二本书中被重复使用。伴随图像的基于图皮印第安语的植物名称在整理来源时至关重要，尽可能多地描绘植物信息通常是目标。为了代表巴西多样化的植物群，甚至使用了来自其他地区的物种的新鲜采摘的、活的植物、干燥的树枝、果实和种子。尽管没有因其贡献而得到认可，但印第安巴西人和被奴役的非洲人在后来导致这些自然历史收藏的视觉知识制作过程中是不可或缺的。由于有几个来源仍然丢失，许多历史仍然没有被讲述，进一步的档案研究和合作项目对于揭示这个难题的缺失部分是必要的。
