This book is based on a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Bern in thesummerof2002. Researchonthethesiswasmadepossiblethroughagrant provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) from 2000 to 2002 foraprojectonthehistoryandepistemologyofscienti?cillustrations(Project No. 1152-059499). Gerd Graßho? headed this programme at the University of Bern and made my reworking of the thesis into a book in English possible. He also provided the funding for the services of a professional copy editor (Margareta Simons, Bern). The?ndingspresentedinthisbookarecloselyrelatedtothegeneralresults of the SNF project, which are published elsewhere: the source material can be 1 consultedinanearliermonographandinanelectroniceditionontheinternet; thetheoreticalapproachwillbemorethoroughlyinvestigatedinatextbookon the analysis of scienti?c illustrations. In addition, this study has made use of theoretical concepts developed by Gerd Graßho?, which, in their latest form, have yet to be published; these concern primarily the model concept discussed in Chapter 3. The criteria put forward for optimizing scienti?c illustrations, which are dealt with in Chapter 7, were also originally proposed by Gerd Graßho?; they were re?ned and elaborated in the SNF project. Some of the material on the copying links presented in this book was ?rst published in 2 an article in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science; Part C; while some of the material in Chapter 5 on the hand-colouring of illustration was 3 published prior to this book in the Annals of Science. Iwasabletoaccesssourcematerialforthisstudyfromseveralarchivesand 4 institutions. Most of the images that I examined originated from copies held in the University Library Göttingen, while the remainingillustrations came 1 See Nickelsen (2000), Nickelsen & Graßho? (2001) and Graßho? et al. (2001).
This book is the first in-depth study of eighteenth-century botanical illustrations, and its findings offer a completely new insight into the working practices of the botanists and scientific draughtsmen of this period. The author describes the different production stages of these illustrations, traces their uses by means of the private correspondence of participants and the documentation of the learned societies and academies, and explores their visual language, with particular emphasis placed on the difficult issue of colour. Finally, and for the first time, the author presents a convincing description of how these botanical illustrations developed, ascertaining the criteria that drove this process, which was arrived at through a careful study of the many copying links that the author discovered existed between images of the same species -- a sophisticated strategy that fulfilled the exacting requirements of eighteenth-century scientific botanical illustrations.
From the reviews:
"It is the first thorough study of eighteenth century botanical illustrations. ? The book is richly illustrated with well chosen pictures, facilitating the discussion. In all, this is a book that can be warmly recommended to all interested in the history of botany as well as in the pictorial world of Linnaeus' times." (Gunilla Törnvall, Svenska Linnesällscapets Arsskrift, 2008)
