going forward with the "true eye of a lynx" to study the very anatomy of nature

jessamyn — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:53:19 -0800

"While we are generally horrified by monstrosities in the case of human beings, we love them in fruit" - Giovanni Battista Ferrari (naturalist, "discoverer" of the blood orange and the cure for scurvy). Illustrations in Ferrari's book Hesperides sive de Malorum Aureorum cultura (1646) are based on close collaboration with Cassiano dal Pozzo and his Paper Museum, called one man's project to "commission drawings of all known antiquities, and to attempt to systematically categorize this vast repertory of visual images." This collection of over 7,000 seventeenth century illustrations, drawings, and prints -- now held by the Royal Collection -- is being assembled, cataloged and published in thirty-four separate (expensive) volumes with every item reproduced. It contains the work of the Linceans and the first illustrations created with the use of a microscope. Most of the non-fruit illustrations have never before been published. tl;dr? Here are some links to "the good stuff": highlights of the Paper Museum with Sir David Attenborough, article on the Paper Museum's discovery by David Freeberg in Natural History (1990), three scholarly articles from David Freedberg about the collection Ferrari and the pregnant Lemons of Pietrasanta, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Natural Historian, Ferrari on the Classification of Oranges and Lemons (more) [via]

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