90A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICONLuca Ghini, founder of the academic study of nature in Bologna and
Pisa.^55 Ghini introduced the field trip and specimen collection as essential
parts of his courses and is credited as being the first researcher to estab-
lish an herbarium involving preserved dried specimens.
Flattened and dried, plants were affixed to sheets of paper in ways that
aesthetically echoed the preceding tradition of botanical illustration.
Leaves and flowers were laid parallel to the page surface, while stems were
organized in order to impose a sense of clarity and definition; the overlap
of leaves and stems was avoided whenever possible. Despite the loss
in coloration and three-dimensionality, dried specimens provided the
much-needed evidential truth necessary to begin a secular, taxonomical,
and empirical cataloging project. The emergence of taxidermy during the
FIGURE 2.5 “Plant cottony Blackberry (Wolliger Brombeer, Rubus Tomentosus),” in
Vienna Dioscurides manuscript, early sixth century. Cod. med. Graec. 1, folio 83r.
Open-access image courtesy of the Austrian National Library.