88A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICONBOTANY: SETTING THE ICONOGRAPHY
OF NATURAL HISTORYFairnington’s Flora series challenges the viewer with an inherent onto-
logical provocation: despite its title, both animals and plants appear in
the paintings. As we have seen, the importance of this provocation lies in
the acknowledgment that the epistemic modality of early natural history
found relevant discursive data only on the surfaces of objects: taxonomy
organized by juxtaposing morphological forms for the purpose of identi-
FIGURE 2.4 “Chameleon,” illustration in Gesner, C. (1551–1558), Historiae Animalium
(Tigvri: Apvd Christ. Froschovervm), vol. 2, p. 3. Open-access image courtesy of the
National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland.