specimens remain both eternally alert and look as though they have hastened to a kind of rigor mortis
Figure 4 . Charles Bonnet ( French 1720 – 1793 ), Recherches sur l ’ usage des feuilles dans les plantes , 1754 , pl . VII . word stilleven , also known in French as “ nature morte ”) encapsulates ( Figure 5 ).
In an attempt to find the right word for what it is that an energetic eye and hand are doing whenever an artist copies nature , the verb “ to capture ” ( a process literalized by Glowacki ’ s oblong cage ) seems right . Even if a sampling was not severed from its nurturing source , not harmed , nor even touched , confinement to a pictorial field operates like a kind of trap . This is because static , two-dimensional arts cannot mimic growth .
It is also the case , however , that in the early history of the spreading of knowledge about the physiological characteristics and medicinal properties of plants , the circulation of images and descriptions in an easily reproducible medium led to the perpetuation of bits of false information . Early printed illustrated texts , such as the Gart der Gesundheit of 1485 , set a standard for decades of reissuings of crude woodcuts , some of which were attached to the wrong names . 5 It was with Otto Brunfels ’ Herbarum vivae eicones , published in three parts between 1530 and 1536 , that the claim to have produced original images from the study of samples ( boasted by the title , which translates to “ Images of
Figure 5 . Albrecht Dürer ( German , 1471 – 1528 ), Great Piece of Turf ( Das große Rasenstück ), 1503 , watercolor , pen and ink , 40.3 x 31.1 cm , Albertina , Vienna .
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