1. Musculorum laringis quartuordecim figurç – 2. De musculis peni peculiaribus (1545)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.66 : 1
First Look
搜尽奇峰打草稿。
—— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》
Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.
The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
Form and Colour
A bulb of overlapping fleshy scales gives the lily its Chinese name, 'hundred-fold'; six tepals reflex as the flower opens, around six stamens with long, T-shaped anthers.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.
Line and Colour
Before 1700 most botanical figures came from woodcut: thick, hard lines in relief, colour brushed on afterwards. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. If you mean to copy it: take its skeleton, its margins and the order of its colours; the burin's hatching is the language of copper — suggest it with pencil density, do not imitate it stroke for stroke.
Poetic Resonance
两丛香百合，一架粉长春。
—— 宋·陆游《北窗偶题四首 其一》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In the West the white lily is Marian purity, held by the angel of the Annunciation; in China the name sounds like 'a hundred years in harmony', a wedding wish. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
Early to high summer, June and July. Temperate north — China, Japan, Europe. Long used in Chinese medicine, lilies were hunted in East Asia by nineteenth-century collectors and transformed European gardens. The year 1545 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. See this kind of plate in the flowering season if you can: once you have met the living flower, you stop reading only colour.
The Book and the Hand
“Compendiosa totius anatomie delineatio, ære exarata” carries only Thomas Geminus's name. A plate is collective work: drawer, engraver and colourist were different hands, and the unnamed ones decided how good it looks.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1545 gave a whole day to a single flower.
![Prima ossium tabula [Human skeleton leaning on a spade] (1545)](/upload/nat/compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineatio-aere-exarata/003-thumb.webp)
![Secunda ossium tabula [Human skeleton inspecting a skull and in deep thinking] (1545)](/upload/nat/compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineatio-aere-exarata/005-thumb.webp)
![Tertia ossium tabula [Skeleton in aiming position] (1545)](/upload/nat/compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineatio-aere-exarata/006-thumb.webp)
![Prima musculorum tabula. [Shows human muscles] (1545)](/upload/nat/compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineatio-aere-exarata/007-thumb.webp)
![Secunda musculorum tabula. [Shows muscles in a walking position] (1545)](/upload/nat/compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineatio-aere-exarata/008-thumb.webp)