01-03-2016, 01:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-03-2016, 02:11 AM by Diane.
Edit Reason: smile
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Not sure it helps, but I would note that the system informing the botanical folios appears to classify a plant chiefly by the leaf, petiole and habit, only emphasising a flower if it has some particular commercial value - not necessarily herbal.
The kidney-shaped leaf appears to be drawn as a succulent, and for some reason the original draughtsman wanted to make a point of referring to what is inside. It makes me think that perhaps, in the same way that we value the aloe's juice as a remedy for burns, so the juice as well as the flower was of value.
I should first say that I agree with Tiltman that all the botanical folios show a composite. This is a view I reached independently after having analysing a good number - though frankly I quite shrank from sharing that information with the online community of the time. In 2011 reception of information about any non-Latin style, custom or antecedents in the imagery was routinely met by ad hominems and 'back room' denigration. Reading Tiltman's opinion, and finding it agreed with mine, at last gave me the courage to risk explaining those folios.
The common factor for each group, I think, is the plants' having similar appearance AND comparable/interchangeable uses. Very practical for the traveller, I should think.
With regard to this folio, I was less confident than with most of them, but settled with some hesitation for the leaf (which sets the type) as being from Bauhinia malabarica; with the flower from Bauhinia tomentosa . The latter would have been of importance where it grew, in southern India, because it is also known as the 'flower of St. Thomas' and would thus have been revered, and I expect used for festivals and so forth, where it grew. (The Community of Thomas was founded in Malabar).
As I suppose some will know, I see no evidence that the botanical folios are related to the earlier medieval Latin herbals. They differ in attitudes to the page, in style of drawing, in emphasis and especially in displaying an intellectual and artistic sophistication of which we find no trace in Latin herbals made before the middle of the thirteenth century, when believe the matter travelled west through Syria and the Levant. (Hope this isn't a digression).
I think that this folio and those adjacent to it represent plant 'groups' from along the maritime trade routes between southern Arabia and southeast Asia.
The route was known to relatively few Europeans before 1438, but then some of the plants which are perfectly depicted in our manuscript had their appearance still unknown to illustrators of western botanical works until as much as a couple of centuries after 1438.
The kidney-shaped leaf appears to be drawn as a succulent, and for some reason the original draughtsman wanted to make a point of referring to what is inside. It makes me think that perhaps, in the same way that we value the aloe's juice as a remedy for burns, so the juice as well as the flower was of value.
I should first say that I agree with Tiltman that all the botanical folios show a composite. This is a view I reached independently after having analysing a good number - though frankly I quite shrank from sharing that information with the online community of the time. In 2011 reception of information about any non-Latin style, custom or antecedents in the imagery was routinely met by ad hominems and 'back room' denigration. Reading Tiltman's opinion, and finding it agreed with mine, at last gave me the courage to risk explaining those folios.
The common factor for each group, I think, is the plants' having similar appearance AND comparable/interchangeable uses. Very practical for the traveller, I should think.
With regard to this folio, I was less confident than with most of them, but settled with some hesitation for the leaf (which sets the type) as being from Bauhinia malabarica; with the flower from Bauhinia tomentosa . The latter would have been of importance where it grew, in southern India, because it is also known as the 'flower of St. Thomas' and would thus have been revered, and I expect used for festivals and so forth, where it grew. (The Community of Thomas was founded in Malabar).
As I suppose some will know, I see no evidence that the botanical folios are related to the earlier medieval Latin herbals. They differ in attitudes to the page, in style of drawing, in emphasis and especially in displaying an intellectual and artistic sophistication of which we find no trace in Latin herbals made before the middle of the thirteenth century, when believe the matter travelled west through Syria and the Levant. (Hope this isn't a digression).
I think that this folio and those adjacent to it represent plant 'groups' from along the maritime trade routes between southern Arabia and southeast Asia.
The route was known to relatively few Europeans before 1438, but then some of the plants which are perfectly depicted in our manuscript had their appearance still unknown to illustrators of western botanical works until as much as a couple of centuries after 1438.