These three volumes catalogue the extensive corpus of
mycological drawings in the Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo.
Executed mostly in watercolour between 1625 and 1630 and depicting
fungi native to Umbria and the environs of Rome, they constitute
the first sustained attempt to survey all the larger fungi of a
region, recording in detail the stages of their growth. Laden with
notes on colour, smell, taste, weight, season and the locality in
which the specimens had been found, the almost six hundred folios
were commissioned by Federico Cesi (1585-1630), founder of
Europe’s first scientific academy, the Accademia dei Lincei.
They were acquired by Cassiano dal Pozzo after Cesi’s death
and were greatly admired by those who saw them in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Thought to have been lost until their
rediscovery in 1979 in the library of the Institut de France in
Paris, the drawings are also remarkable for their pioneering use of
the microscope, a novel instrument given to Cesi in 1624 by Galileo
and used throughout the pages of these manuscripts to enhance the
direct observation of nature. Also included are drawings of fungi
commissioned by Cassiano and his brother Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo
now in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, and an early set of
copies of the Cesi originals in the library of the Royal Botanic
Gardens at Kew. Each drawing is reproduced in colour with
accompanying text, and two introductory essays discuss the
scientific investigations and collecting activities of Cesi and
Cassiano and the importance of these drawings in the history of
science and art.
David Pegler retired in 1998 as Head of Mycology at the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. His taxonomic research has specialized
in tropical and temperate Basidiomycetes, for which he received a
Science Research Council individual merit promotion, and he has
published 16 books and over 300 scientific papers. He is a Fellow
of the Linnean Society, London, of the Norwegian Academy of Science
and Letters, and Centenary Fellow of the British Mycological
Society. He has held visiting professorships at the Institute of
Terrestrial Ecology, Lódz, Poland, the Instituto do
Botânica, São Paulo, Brazil, and the University of
Jilin, China.
David Freedbergis Professor in the History of Art
at Columbia University, New York, and Director of the Italian
Academy for Advanced Studies. He has written extensively on the art
and culture of the seventeenth century, including the intersection
of art and science in the age of Galileo, most notably in The Eye
of the Lynx (Chicago, 2002).
"(...) ein Meilenstein im Verständnis der Geschichte der Mykologie, der eine weite Verbreitung verdient." (W. Gams in: Zeitschrift für Mykologie, Band 72/2, 2006, p. 224-225)
"This publication is a milestone in understanding the history of mycology, and it deserves a wide distribution." (W. Gams in: Nova Hedwigia, 84, 2007, p. 271-273)
"Historians of science and mycologists will certainly find this book of great value, as will researchers interested in the development of museum collections. There are fascinating insights to be had from the study of both the scientific and common names recorded on the illustrations. Biological artists will also find inspiration in these pages." (S. A. Harris in Journal of the History of Collections, 2006, vol. 18, nr. 2, p. 287-288)
"These splendid volumes, which allow us to experience at first hand the spirit of the inquiry that pervaded 17th-century Europe, are examples of modern scholarship and modern publishing at their best." (T. K. Rabb in The Art Newspaper, n° 172, September 2006, p. 39)
"For many years to come these volumes will be a major source of information for those who study the history of mushrooms and mycology, as well as for historians of science, culture, collections and art." (Nuncius)