Woodcuts

The predominant notion of the historical track of modern science is teleological: this narrative holds that as time passed, accuracy naturally increased, as the pursuit of knowledge solidified in form and texts could increasingly be fact-checked.
In the most basic terms, a woodcut, also known as a woodblock, is a kind of relief print, in which material is removed from a plate to leave a raised design that will then be inked and printed. In woodblocks, material is carved away from a relatively soft plank of wood, traditionally from trees such as pear, apple, and holly.

Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium, (1542)

In Leonhart Fuchs’s 1542 herbal De historia stirpium, we see a prime example of the affordances of woodcuts in early reference literature.

Pietro Andrea Mattioli: Commentary on the Materia Medica, (1563, 1565, 1568, 1600)

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Figure 20

Of the most well-known herbals, both now and in its time, is Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on the Materia medica of ancient Greek physician Dioscorides. Mattioli’s herbal, like Fuchs's, takes full advantage of woodcut technology for reference purposes. Almost every page of the more than nine hundred folios (in some cases, as in the 1568 Latin edition, more than one thousand) contains a woodcut illustration. Further, through its more than 60 editions and dozens of thousands of prints,1 the Mattioli herbal exemplifies the extreme reproducibility of the woodcut and its potential to create uniformity among texts.

Despite Mattioli’s resulting fame as a celebrity doctor after the success of his herbal,1 by Fuchs’s standards, this herbal would’ve been a disaster of scientific accuracy. In comparing the two, we see flaws in the notion that scientific illustrations only increased in photographic accuracy as time passed. Mattioli had no working knowledge of plants.2 Often, he had no specimens to work from, would accept dried plants that then had to be reconstituted to observe, and would copy illustrations with no means of checking with the original plant.3 Further, the illustrations in Mattioli’s herbal are as beautiful as they are inaccurate. Throughout the work, it is often obvious that the “illustrator has not properly understood the construction” of the specimens.4 These illustrations held great appeal for the many thousands of contemporary readers,5 and were perhaps made with this readership in mind; we see here, more so than in Fuchs’s, illustrations toward an artistic ideal.

Artistry seems to take the reins in much of the illustrations. Mattioli’s herbal is infamous for its rectangularization.6 Roots and leaves conspicuously turn inwards and press against an invisible border in nearly every illustration. Further, in stark contrast to Fuchs’s simplifying illustrations, here the “artist has over-elaborated his subject” to the point of confusion.7 The pictures are heavily shaded and textured to point of obfuscation. So too do the colors conceal. The paints bleed past woodcut borders and obscure outlines by nature of their thickness.8 Further, different editions differ in illustrations of the same plant. Sometimes this is subtle, as in the 1565 and 1568 Latin editions. One can see that the same woodblock of the “VERBALCUM” has been printed with different pressures: the 1565 picks up noise from the plate that isn’t apparent in the 1568.9 More conspicuously, the different editions are, in a way revelatory of the lack of supervision across editions and languages, colored differently to represent the same plants. For example, the 1600 German edition paints the “VERBALCUM” flowers red where in the 1563 German edition they are an almost imperceptible light yellow.10 In these two woodcuts we further see differences in the “accuracy” of illustrations throughout editions. The 1600 edition of the “Verbalcum” woodcut, an imitation of the 1563 “Verbalcum” and exactly half its size, changes not only the color, but the shape of the flowers. Where in the 1563 they are rounded, in the 1600 they are clearly pointed.11 Which is more accurate? Which should the Early Modern reader question? It is unlikely that an Early Modern reader would have had access to more than one of Mattioli’s herbals. The woodcuts in each copy, then, stand alone as unquestionable, authoritative representations to their readers.

Despite their major differences, the Mattioli herbal and De historia stirpium define accuracy in very similar ways. As Fuchs worked to update German medicinal knowledge, Mattioli sought to update Dioscorides’s Materia medica with contemporary information.12 Explicit in the opening paratexts, this endeavor, like Fuchs’s woodcut portrait, works in two ways to validate the text. It validates Mattioli as both a sound follower of ancient wisdom and a contemporary physician presenting the most up-to-date information possible. His authorship, in turn, validates the text. Likewise, the two herbals assert authority through similar material decisions. The Mattioli herbal is a massive book13: the 1568 Latin edition surpasses 1000 folios; Blunt’s and Raphael’s The Illustrated Herbals warns that “only those accustomed to let their Great Dane sleep on their bed should contemplate choosing the Mattioli folio [...] for a bedside book.”14 Nearly every page in the massive text is populated by an illustration, this overwhelm of images further contributing to a sensation of abundance. Further, not only is it physically impressive and heavily illustrated, but it also asserts authority in its binding: the 1563 edition is bound in parchment and embossed with an intricate design.15 The hard covers are held together by metal clasps that, at least in my experience, require more than one reader to undo.16 Finally, like in De historia, the copious amounts of information are indexed extensively. There is a lengthy index of plant species and, at least in the 1568 Latin edition, a practical index of medicinal uses; the text asserts itself not only in amount of information, but in knowledge of its own purpose. Thus, like Fuchs’s, the Mattioli herbal employs textual and material abundance to assert authority, one which implies its own accuracy.