Every page of the Hortus Romanus collection is a unique work – each illustration is a priceless work of art, Annaliza Borg finds out.
The National Library’s collection of the very rare and impressive Hortus Romanus botanical renderings is being restored by the Book and Paper Conservation Laboratory at Villa Bighi.
Malta has seven volumes from a total of eight in the collection of hand-painted botanical books dating between 1772 and 1793.
Only the New York Public Library has all the eight volumes and Malta’s collection is said to be the second largest. Even famous collections such as the Hunt, Library of Congress and the British Library lack some volumes.
The edition, containing 800 engraved plates showing botanical images, was so small that due to the absolute scarcity of the work, not even the planned 300 copies were actually published. Of the few copies circulated, only a handful were originally coloured.
The Hortus Romanus, considered as one of the few Italian efforts at the publication of colour plate botanical books in the eighteenth century, is generally ascribed to Giorgio Bonelli, an Italian physician and professor of medicine in Rome.
In truth, Bonelli only wrote a short introductory text which was published in Volume I. The vast bulk of the work was by Liberato and Constantio Sabbati, and edited by Niccolo Martellio. The beautiful botanical renderings were mostly engraved by Maddalena Bouchard after the drawings by C. Ubertini. The series was published in Rome by Bouchard et Gravier.
Herbals, whose function was to provide information on the useful properties of plants, were the first illustrated botanical printed works to appear in Western Europe. The sixteenth century voyages of discovery brought an influx of plants to Europe from all over the world. Notably among these were the tomato and tobacco from the New World and the tulip from the east.
Wealthy flower enthusiasts bred and proudly displayed these exotic specimens in splendid flower gardens. This new interest in the decorative qualities of plants led to the appearance early in the seventeenth century of forilegia – picture books of ornamental plants, rather than the useful plants of the older herbals.
The introduction of the Linnaean sexual system of plant classification in 1737 by Swedish botanist Carl Linneaus, and its almost universal acceptance, gave a tremendous impetus to the production of illustrated botanical books. As a result of improved printing techniques, botanical depiction in the latter half of the eighteenth century saw the marriage of beauty and scientific accuracy.
The Book and Paper Conservation Laboratory, managed by Joseph Schiro, is restoring old collections of books and fine art prints housed at the Fine Arts Museum and the National Library.
Among the books that are being restored are 20 volumes of Shakespeare works in French which date back to 1728. The books’ pages were being held together with a rubber band because their binding had come apart. Each insect hole in the books is being infilled manually with paper pulp.
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