Masterpiece?

[-JKP-]

I actually like the university students idea better because I think whoever masterminded the drawings may have seen an alchemical manuscript and I'm guessing that one of the exemplars may have been in a university library or in the hands of a university professor, possibly in northern Italy.

I don't think the plants are copied, I think they are mostly original, but I think the idea of how they could be done was influenced by a certain amount of exposure to existing manuscripts.