An Experiment in the Collection of Knowledge: The Roccabonella Herbal as "Laboratory"

• In Event: The Collection as Laboratory

Abstract

Around 1445, Venetian physician Niccolò Roccabonella wrote an herbal – a book of botanical medicines – and commissioned an elaborate, accompanying illustrative cycle for it. In the text, Roccabonella synthesizes and builds upon classical, medieval, and Greco-Arabic traditions. Likewise, the illustrations are composites of traditions and techniques, glossing the history and collection of illustrated herbals. Furthermore, the history of the book’s collection and use reveals its evolving role in the amalgamation and construction of medical knowledge: beginning during Roccabonella’s life, when he travelled to Zadar, and continuing when later physicians, spice-traders, and pharmacists acquired it, the herbal was annotated in diverse hands and languages, resulting in the creation of a lexicon that complemented the syncretic nature of the original content. Borrowing Bredekamp’s metaphor of the collection as ‘laboratory’, this paper explores Roccabonella’s herbal as a site of collection and experimentation, and as a locus for the generation of new medical knowledge.

Author

• Sarah R. Kyle, University of Central Oklahoma