International Conference | Sites of Botanical Knowledge Production
Botanical Museum, University of Padua - Via Orto Botanico 15, Padua, Italy
Dal 22.05.2025 al 23.05.2025
Padua, Italy, 22–23 May 2025
Sites of Botanical Knowledge Production
International conference organized by Elena Canadelli, Florike Egmond, and Anatole Tchikine.
Participation is free. Registration required at: https://forms.gle/k7fXdt5wa4dm81w48
Conference Program:
Thursday 22 May
10:00–10:30 WELCOME
Elena Canadelli, Florike Egmond, and Anatole Tchikine
10:30–12:30
SESSION 1 Gardens and Botanical Collecting
Sylva Dobalová (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague), The Renaissance City Garden of the Rosenbergs in Czech Krumlau
Abstract:
The Rosenbergs were a prominent Czech noble family during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Their influence and wealth rivaled even the monarchs. The castle in Czech Krumlou in Southern Bohemia became the focal point for their cultural endeavours, which included the establishment of a horticultural and ornamental garden. However, this garden was not located on the castle hill, but rather in the city centre. This area was recently explored by experts from the National Institute for Monuments and Heritage, who made interesting discoveries about the neighbouring noble house and also found a number of archival materials relating to the garden. In my speech, the forgotten garden's activity of William and Peter Vok of the House of Rosenberg will be sumarized, and it will be shown in a broader context. The interpretation will be based on a Latin poem that was written about the Krumau garden, the model of which were undoubtedly verses collected to celebrate the famous garden of Laurentius Scholtz in Wrocaw. In addition to the iconography of the garden, its content includes a detailed list of the plants grown there. The author demonstrated a substantial degree of botanical expertise. It prompts questions regarding the reliability of such type of descriptions, the genre it represents, and the extent to which Renaissance humanistic poetry contributed to the dissemination of expert knowledge.
Juliette Ferdinand (University of Verona / Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Historiques et Philologiques, Paris), The Garden of Cesare Nichesola in Valpolicella in the Veronese Context (Fracastoro, Pona, Della Torre, etc.)
Abstract:
In Valpolicella during the 16th century a botanical garden enriched with a collection of antichità was created by a Veronese nobleman, collector and canon of the Cathedral, Cesare Nichesola (1556-1612). The garden is still visible today at Ponton near Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella in the villa Nichesola-Conforti, and some written testimonies of its botanical composition can help us to know its original appearance. The veronese botanist Giovanni Pona (1565-1630), mentioned and described it twice in his works: Plantae seu Simplicia ut vocant, quae in Baldo Monte, et in via ab Verona ad Baldum reperiuntur (1601 and 1608) and his Monte Baldo (Venezia 1617). Many piante rare came from Giovanni Pona himself, but also from the venetian patrizio and prestigious botanists from Padova: Nicolò Contarini, Onorio Belli, Prospero Alpino and Gian Vincenzo Pinelli. This paper aims at placing Nichesola garden in the Veneto collectors network in order to better understand its role and importance in context.
Anatole Tchikine (Dumbarton Oaks, USA), What Aldrovandi Saw: Botanical Gardens and Collecting in Florence During the Reign of Francesco I de’ Medici, 1574–1587
Abstract:
A controversial figure as head of the Medici state, Grand Duke Francesco I is now increasingly seen as an early champion of natural history—a passionate collector and eager student of nature. This reputation, in addition to the grand duke’s alchemical experiments and the patronage of Veronese painter Jacopo Ligozzi, largely rests on his contacts with some of the leading Italian naturalists, especially Ulisse Aldrovandi. Aldrovandi’s two visits to Florence in 1577 and 1586—which took place almost a decade apart, in the beginning and toward the end of Francesco’s reign—testify to the major advancement of botanical knowledge in the Medici capital during that period. Their itineraries, however, put into critical light the grand duke’s reputedly pivotal role in ushering such interests. What Aldrovandi’s notes reveal is the existence of a diverse Florentine community of professional and amateur naturalists—courtiers, bankers, merchants, apothecaries, and ecclesiastics—whose gardens and collections commanded no less attention than the objects of nature displayed in the Medici residence, Palazzo Pitti, and the grand ducal Casino di San Marco. This paper is not only about what Aldrovandi—a keen observer—saw, but also what he did not see. Conspicuously missing from his itineraries were any references to the celebrated Medici botanical garden, the Giardino dei Semplici, which, despite its traditional dating of 1545, would only be created in 1588, after Francesco’s death, by his brother and successor Ferdinando I.
12:30–14:00 LUNCH
14:00–16:00
SESSION 2 Plants, Herbaria, and Botanical Publications
Lucie Čermáková (Charles University, Prague), A Garden for Every Season: Representation of Plants in Early Modern Herbaria
Abstract:
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, herbaria of dried plants had various purposes. They could serve as inventories of local flora, collections of exotic plants from far journeys, small field guides, or representative costly gifts. However, the very origin of herbaria production is closely connected to the cultivation and study of plants in botanical gardens. The first herbaria to some extent replaced the garden in winter, when most plants could not be studied outdoors. Therefore, they were also called horti sicci or horti hiemali - dried or winter gardens.
In my contribution, I will analyze this metaphor and compare both tools used by early modern students and scholars investigating plants. What are the analogies and differences between the plant representation in the garden and the herbarium? How was the garden used as a source for a herbarium? How does the order of plants in the herbarium reflect the arrangement of the garden?
I will use the example of Padova Botanical Garden and connected herbaria. I will draw on Elsa Cappelletti's research (2016, 2019) and add some new findings from the herbarium of Padova (1672) stored in the Teplá monastery in the Czech Republic. An herbarium can preserve the beauty and diversity of a garden not only through winter but also for ages.
References:
Elsa Mariella Cappelletti (2016): Piante e didattica nell'antico Horto Medico Patavino: manoscritti, erbari secchi, tavole dipinte. Atti e Memorie, Rivista di Storia della Farmacia (pp. 131-140).
Elsa Mariella Cappelletti (2019): Un gioiello del museo della farmacia in Bressanone: l’erbario secco seicentesco con piante dell’orto medico di Padova. Atti e Memorie, Rivista di Storia della Farmacia (pp. 103-108).
Tilmann Walter (independent scholar, Würzburg), Basel and Beyond: The Herbarium of Caspar Bauhin (1560–1624)
Abstract:
In 1589, the young Caspar Bauhin was the first professor at the newly established medical chair of anatomy and botany at the University of Basel. He was soon to become a particularly influential academic teacher, as he created around 700 doctors of medicine. By training an entire generation of scholars as qualified botanists systematically, Bauhin contributed to the establishment of botany as an independent scientific discipline, with the University of Basel being the undisputed hotspot in the German-speaking world around 1600. With more than 4,000 species, Bauhin’s herbarium was one of the most extensive of its time. Its layout and design were based on his plan of a historia generalis plantarum and did not primarily serve representative purposes, like most herbaria of the time did. The Phytopinax (Basel 1596), Bauhin’s earliest botanical publication, contained a list of people who had sent plants or seeds to Basel before–Giovanni Christofilini named it from today’s perspective an impressive network of scientific information, a network of knowledge covering almost all of Europe. On closer inspection it becomes apparent that the list of names also includes donations that came to Basel via other acquaintances and correspondents, including Felix Platter and, above all, Jakob Zwinger. My planned lecture will, mainly based on numerous manuscript letters from Basel University Library, deal with Bauhin’s efforts to create this worldwide plant collection by his scientific network that transcended Basel as a site.
Noël Golvers (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium), The European Botanical Background of Johann Schreck Terrentius and his “Plinius Indicus”
Abstract:
In my study on Johann Schreck Terrentius, SJ (1576-1630) –botanist, Lincean academician (1611) and collaborator of the Thesaurus Mexicanus (produced in Rome ca. 1610 etc., edited only in 1651), which was the prelude for his famous ‘Plinius Indicus”. I looked for the roots of his botanical skills, through an analysis of his academic curriculum in Europe and his professional network / contacts in Europe. This brought me (a) to the Basel University (C. Bauhin, J. Zwinger and other fellow students); (b) to Padua university; (c) to the Roman milieu of G. Faber; (d) to a series of botanists / botanical keepers in Europe and elsewhere. He had also a personal acquaintance with a series of botanical gardens (Rome; Padua; Bologna; Pisa; Bamberg; Eichtstätt, etc.), and with a large series of botanical publications. In his connections two pharmacists were also instrumental, viz. Enrico Corvino in Rome and Johann Friedrich Eggs in Rheinfelden-Basel. Through this network – which shows also alchemical and pharmaceutical aspects - Terrentius not only received specimina and information, but after his arrival in East Asia – China (1618/9-1630), he distributed also semina, etc. to European correspondents. Finally, with all this information I want to return to a more precise understanding of the name ‘Plinius Indicus’.
BREAK
16:00–18:00
SESSION 3 Gardens, Pharmacies, and the Medical Marketplace
Sheila Barker (Medici Archive Project, Florence), Putting Plant Knowledge to Work in the Medici Grand Ducal Pharmacy
Abstract:
Beginning with Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, the Medici court fostered botanical research and knowledge production. To a notable degree, this is due to the family's interest in the medical use of plants and the production of proprietary medicines in the Grand Duke's apothecary, or fonderia. While botanical gardens were certainly the primary place for learning about plants, this paper investigates the Medici fonderia as a secondary site of botanical knowledge production. Several initial conclusions can be drawn from the extensive archival record of the fonderia’s activities, and from other sources such as treatises and visual art made at the Medici court. First, similar to their strategy of scouring Tuscany for mineral resources, the Medici sought to utilize Tuscany's indigenous plants and animals as much as possible for the making of the medicaments in their court pharmacy, so there was no less interest in local plants than in the showy exotic arrivals from abroad. Second, the court's prestigious pharmaceutical enterprise encouraged a medical thrust to the discourse around plants. Third, the Medici fonderia allowed for the confluence of different kinds of knowledge offered by the various contributors and workers who gathered there: bookish philosophers, alchemists, court functionaries, professional pharmacists, and rustic herbalists. Adding to this complex mix, there were also secondary fonderie at the Medici court that had been set up by the grand duchesses for the purpose of duplicating the medicines of their native courts. In these grand duchesses' fonderie, parallel and interconnected investigations of plants and their medical properties took place, possibly offering greater opportunities for Germanic and French Paracelsian ideas to permeate botanical discussions.
Marlise Rijks (Vrije Universiteit, Brussels / Ghent University, Belgium), BIO-COPIA. The Garden, Collection, and Workshop of the Antwerp Apothecary Pieter van Coudenberghe (1517–ca. 1599)
Abstract:
Biodiversity loss is one of the most important issues facing us today. The protection of biodiversity is embedded in a complex array of knowledge, commercial interests, and media. This is not a contemporary phenomenon: it has a long history that entered a crucial new phase in the 16th century. The 16th century was a period of new global trade, new knowledge practices, and new media. Nature’s variety and ‘copia’ (‘plenty, abundance, a copious quantity’) took center stage. This paper examines the garden, collection, and workshop of the Antwerp naturalist and apothecary Pieter van Coudenberghe (1517–c.1599) as locations of variety and copia. Coudenberghe was admired for his abundant garden and collection (including many ‘exotics’), as an apothecary he was an expert in utilizing natural ingredients, and he collaborated with the renowned Plantin Press. It is argued that Coudenberghe played a key role in the 16th-century garden culture of the Southern Netherlands, where knowledge of plants – BIO – was inextricably linked to the practical knowledge of how-to create variety and COPIA.
Sarah Kyle (Iowa State University, USA), A Physician’s Transformation of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae in a Fifteenth-Century Illustrated Herbal
Abstract:
The illustrated manuscript of botanical medicines now known as the Codex Roccabonella, created by the Venetian physician Niccolò Roccabonella (1386-1457) and the artist Andrea Amadio (fl. mid-fifteenth century), contains written entries and watercolour illustrations for over 450 plant medicines, an alphabetical index of plant names in multiple languages, and an unusual preface. Departing from contemporary conventions, in his preface Roccabonella rewrites the histories of canonical and local physicians and saints, reimagining their lives and contributions through the work of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 477-524 CE), especially De consolatione philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy). In a distinctive twist on the genre of collective biographies of illustrious men (historia magistra vitae), Roccabonella weaves himself and his family into a new history of medicine. In its transformations of literary and artistic conventions, this unique illustrated manuscript reinvents the histories of Greco-Arabic medicine to bolster Roccabonella’s professional status and social identity as a moral humanist-physician, atop the “narrow seat” of Boethius’ Lady Philosophy, in a medical marketplace increasingly crowded with hustlers and mountebanks in mid-fifteenth-century Venice. By beginning with Boethius, Roccabonella teaches his reader how best to approach the unusual textual and visual contents of the manuscript and their apparent disorder, knitting them together in a way that advances both his innovation in botany and medicine and an understanding of plants and their therapeutics in the traditional Christian cosmology.
Friday 23 May
9:00–9:30 REMARKS
9:30–11:00
SESSION 4 Botanical Knowledge Production in the Sixteenth Century
Oury Goldman (University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), Producing Knowledge about Nature in Times of Civil and Religious Conflict: Sites of Botanical Knowledge in France during the Wars of Religion
Abstract:
During the second half of the 16th century, France was torn apart by civil and religious conflicts known as the Wars of Religion. In this period of widespread social upheaval, intellectual and scholarly life did not cease; rather, it adapted to the context of conflict. Somewhat paradoxically, this era was characterized by a flourishing of scientific activity, particularly in the field of botanical knowledge. In Lyon, publishers released both annotated editions of ancient texts (such as those by Pliny and Dioscorides) and original works like the Historia generalis plantarum. While Paris experienced less publishing activity in this field, the study of nature was not neglected. This is evidenced by the establishment of botanical gardens by individuals like Jacques Gohory and Jean Robin. Although these scholarly endeavors have not been entirely overlooked by historians, studies on the subject have often failed to consider the works within their conflict-ridden context, reducing it to a mere backdrop or portraying it as an obstacle to the full development of the sciences. My presentation seeks to understand how these conflicts influenced the material and social production of botanical knowledge in sites significantly affected by the clashes. Through case studies mainly focused on Paris and Lyon, I aim to contribute to historiographical reflections on the local dimensions of science by demonstrating the impact of spatial configurations on the shaping of knowledge.
Florike Egmond (independent scholar, Rome), Garden Owners and Flower Collectors, Male and Female, Around the Habsburg Capitals, ca. 1560–1600
Abstract:
Returning to the wealth of information in the correspondence of the naturalist Carolus Clusius, I focus on some of the famous but by now usually forgotten gardens created by both male and female plant collectors in the period c. 1560-1600. Not only their geographical locations in the Southern Netherlands, Spain and Austria, but also the identities of the men and women who created these living collections point to close links with the Habsburg courts. The letters of several garden owners in the Southern Netherlands and Austria (e.g. Jean de Brancion, various members of the Boisot family and several members of the Viennese aristocracy) provide glimpses of information about the composition of their plant collections and the types of expertise involved in growing them. It also reveals the tension between the importance of a fixed and relatively permanent location for growing plants, the great, international mobility of plants and the role of collectors and naturalists in this respect, the longevity of documentation in text and image, and the impermanence of the gardens themselves in the long run.
BREAK
11:00–13:00
SESSION 5 Botanical Knowledge Production in the Seventeenth–Nineteenth Centuries
Luca Tonetti (University of Padua), Marcello Malpighi’s Botanical Enquiry into Context: Insights from his Country-House Experiments with Seeds and Galls in the 1680s
Abstract:
Historiography has emphasized the significance of “domesticities” in the pursuit of natural knowledge during the early modern period in Europe. Early modern households and homes provided a supportive environment for scientific exploration, fostering a “culture of curiosity” that often involved collaborative efforts. While written records are limited, they suggest that scientific pursuits were influenced by domestic activities and spaces, despite facing challenges due to urban living and work constraints. In the preface to the Anatomes plantarum pars altera (1679), which focused mainly on seed germination and gall formation, Malpighi warned readers about the time-consuming nature of these topics and the limitations imposed by his home space and domestic responsibilities as a physician. He noted that the limited space in his home hindered optimal plant growth conditions. However, his correspondence and personal notes (see BUB, MS. 2085/II) reveal that he spent most of his summer months, starting in the 1670s, at a country house in Ronchi di Corticella, near Bologna, which he eventually purchased in 1682. His “Villa” served not only as a place for relaxation and leisure but also as a site for botanical observations. Despite the scarcity of available data, this paper aims to shed light on this aspect of Malpighi’s research practices, particularly focusing on his activities in the 1680s following the publication of his treatises on plant anatomy. During this period, specifically in 1687 and 1689, as documented in his notes, he conducted various experiments and observations on seeds, especially laurel and dates, as well as galls. These experiments, particularly those on dates, attracted the attention of Leibniz during his visit to Bologna in 1689 and were later extensively discussed in the autobiography published in the Opera Posthuma. This paper seeks to uncover more information about Malpighi’s research in the countryside and identify other individuals involved in his observations.
Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore (Italian Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Padua), The Portable Garden of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili
Abstract:
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili consistently pushed boundaries in both his life and botanical research. General, entrepreneur, discharged with dishonor, naturalist, enslaved, founder of the Institute of Science of Bologna, Marsili was certainly not an armchair scholar. In his naturalistic studies, we find a wide array of sites of knowledge production, directly related to his adventurous biography. Journeys and battlefields figure in his scholarship alongside private and public botanical gardens, collections of specimens and libraries. Equally varied are the modes and techniques of knowledge production: drawings, questionnaires, descriptions, and mapping, including innovations such as chorological maps, showing the geographical distribution of organisms. This paper examines Marsili’s private gardens—established during his stays in Bologna and abroad—alongside his questionnaires (interrogazioni), which he used to study two kinds of mushrooms—truffles and stone fungus. I explore the possibility that for Marsili, the garden functioned not as a static place but as a portable site of knowledge production, one that could be moved, displaced, or reached depending on the natural object under study. Through this lens, the garden emerges as an experiential site, where knowledge was built upon the observation and expertise of both traditional scholars and local practitioners fostering networks of botanical understanding.
Elena Canadelli (University of Padua), The Botanists’ Sense of History: The Case of the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua
Abstract:
Over the centuries, many botanists at the Botanical Garden of the University of Padova such as Giulio Pontedera (1688-1757) or Pier Andrea Saccardo (1845-1920) have been involved in studying and writing the history of this institution starting from the early modern period, in relation to other public and private institutions in Italy and abroad. History has therefore been an effective way for them to strengthen a botanical tradition linked to this place and the botanists who have worked there since the year of its foundation in 1545. For these reasons, the Botanical Garden's historical archive today kept at the Vincenzo Pinali and Giovanni Marsili Historical Library of Anatomy and Botany at the Botanical Garden of Padova preserves numerous manuscript materials and archival sources of various prefects of Padua, particularly from the 18th century to the first half of the 20th century, that trace and record the history of this institution and its protagonists. Among these, for example, some notes by Giuseppe Antonio Bonato (1753-1836), who was the prefect of the Garden of Padova from 1794 to 1835, deals precisely with the subject of botanical gardens in the modern age in Veneto, and beyond, listing some private gardens.
13:00–14:30 LUNCH
14:30–17:00 SPEAKERS' VISIT TO THE BOANICAL GARDEN/MUSEUM/LIBRARY
Organizing committee:
Elena Canadelli - Scientific head of the Botanical Museum, University of Padua (elena.canadelli@unipd.it)
Florike Egmond - Independent Scholar
Anatole Tchikine - Dumbarton Oaks.
