The herbal of Giovanni Cadamosto da Lodi

[-JKP-]

Marco, I'm glad you posted an example where the text is similar and the drawings more individualized. Based on comments I've seen on the Net, there still seem to be people who think that everything created in the middle ages and early Renaissance are slavishly copied and that there have to be exemplars for everything.

I have always doubted this assumption, partly based on what I've observed and also based on the fact that many of the old illustrated herbals (esp. 11th and 12th century) are descended from unillustrated herbals or are descended from Mediterranean herbals but were adapted to include plants that grow in the north. Obviously illustrators sometimes relied on personal knowledge to create all or part of the illustrations.