{"id":53088,"date":"2016-06-06T10:30:18","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T14:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/plant-talk\/?p=53088"},"modified":"2016-07-22T11:27:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:27:33","slug":"small-treasures-in-the-luesther-t-mertz-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/2016\/06\/from-the-library\/small-treasures-in-the-luesther-t-mertz-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Treasures in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jane Lloyd is a volunteer in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library<\/a> of The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"Pietro<\/a>
Pietro Andrea Mattioli<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Visitors to a garden are often impressed by the showy, brightly colored roses and barely notice the smaller, humbler daisies. Likewise, visitors to the Rare Book Room in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden often admire the large folio volumes of botanical illustrations by renowned botanical artists, but are unaware of the treasures among the smaller print volumes on the shelves. For the last two years I\u2019ve been examining the names written and bookplates pasted in these books, trying to trace the histories of these books and to identify their former owners. This detective work has revealed that many books have led fascinating lives.<\/p>\n

One book that has had a particularly noteworthy life is Apologia adversus amathum lusitanum<\/em> by Pietro Mattioli, first published in 1558. Mattioli (1501\u20131577) was a well-known physician, botanist, and natural scientist from Siena, Italy. His book is a discussion of another book, first published in 1557, In Dioscoridis Anazarbei de materia medica libri quinque, enarrationes eruditissimae <\/em>by Lusitano Amato (Juan Rodrigo Del Castel-Branco) (1511\u20131568), a well-known Jewish-Portuguese physician and natural scientist. Amato\u2019s book is a discussion of De materia medica<\/em>, written in the first century A.D. by the Roman physician Dioscorides (c.A.D. 40\u201390). De materia medica<\/em> was a comprehensive compilation and description of plants and their derivatives and of animal and mineral substances used as medicines at that time and was one of the most important reference books on medical substances in the Western world for 1600 years.
\n<\/p>\n

In the 15th and 16th centuries, every doctor, botanist, and natural scientist would have owned copies of these titles as important reference books.<\/p>\n

The LuEsther T. Mertz Library\u2019s copy of Mattioli\u2019s book was acquired by the Library just over a century ago. It is a small book\u2014the size of a modern paperback\u2014and has been rebound in a brown and red binding that has deteriorated with age. There are two small, oval bookstamps imprinted in black ink on the title page. One bookstamp has the image of a spotted cat in the center and a printed legend in Latin in a border around the edge: EX.BIBLIOTH.LYNCAEA.FEDERICI.CAESI.L.P.MARCHMONT.CAEI.II.\u2014\u201cFrom Library Lyncaea\u201d followed by a name. Research soon revealed that the name is Federico Cesi (1585\u20131630), member of a prominent aristocratic family in Renaissance Italy. Cesi became interested in science as a boy. In 1603 he and three friends founded the Lyncean Academy to study nature by direct observation. Over time other Italian scientists joined the Academy. The most important new member was Galileo Galilei (1564\u20131642), who joined in 1611. Members of the Academy met in Cesi\u2019s palazzo in Rome to discuss scientific and administrative matters and plan future publications. When Cesi died in 1630, the Academy disbanded and his wife sold his library.<\/p>\n

The second oval stamp on the title page of this book has a coat of arms with a large-brimmed hat above it and the capital letters BA below it in white on a black ground. It is the stamp of the library of Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692\u20131779), a leading Italian patron of the arts and collector of Classical antiquities, who acquired this, and possibly other books, from Cesi\u2019s library. After the Albani family died out in the middle of the 19th century the books in the Albani collection were sold at public auction.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to imagine the books in Cesi\u2019s library being taken down from the shelves and left lying open on a table as members of the Lyncaean Academy debated scientific matters in his home. Perhaps Galileo himself turned the pages of this book for information on some point in one of their lively debates. In any case, this book that I am holding was once held and opened by some of the greatest scientists of the late Italian Renaissance.<\/p>\n

\n

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; public domain.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The flourishes of the Rare Book Room’s folios aren’t the only stars of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, and sometimes it’s the smallest tomes that bear the greatest histories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111238,"featured_media":53184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1346],"tags":[4957,193,4958,478],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Pietro_Andrea_Mattioli.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph0lU-dOg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53088"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53547,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53088\/revisions\/53547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}