Complete Record

FABIO COLONNA (1567-1650) Phytobasanos : sive, Plantarum aliquot historia in qua describuntur diversi generis plantae veriores, ac magis facie, viribúsque respondentes antiquorum Theophrasti, Dioscoridis, Plinij, Galeni, aliorúmque delineationibus, ab alijs hucusque non animaduersae Ex Officina Horatij Saluiani, Apud Io. Iacobum Carlinum, & Antonium Pacem 1592 1st 16 unnumbered pages, 120, 32 pages, 8 unnumbered pages 21 cm

Colonna was a distinguished Neapolitan lawyer whose interest in botany came about through his search for a herb to cure his own epilepsy. After much research, during which he discovered about eighty new plants, he found that valerian produced beneficial results. He was one of the first members of the Accademia dei Lincei and corresponded with other leading scientists including Galileo. This is the first edition of this landmark in the history of botanical illustration, being one of the earliest herbals to contain engraved illustrations (and one of only four books in the sixteenth century to use engravings as a medium to depict plants). Colonna intended his book to be a touchstone – a means of positive identification – for plants (phytobasanos means “plant touchstone”). For this reason he chose to reproduce his own drawings on copper rather than wood. The engravings preserve a wealth of details that were inevitably lost in the heavier lines of woodcuts. The first part of the book illustrates twenty-six plants from Dioscorides and describes the medicinal virtues ascribed to them by the ancients; the second part adds eleven further plants and marine creatures. Colonna used a lens to look at the floral parts of plants, and was probably the first to do so. He was the first to use the Greek word petalon (on page one of this book), and later he proposed the use of the term “petal” in its modern botanical sense.

Cited references: Cushing C341; Wellcome I 1540

John Martin M.D. Endowment