![Quarta pagina figurarum capitalium [12 illustrations of the brain] (1545) - Compendiosa totius anatomie delineatio, ære exarata](/upload/nat/compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineatio-aere-exarata/040-original.webp)
Quarta pagina figurarum capitalium [12 illustrations of the brain] (1545)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.47 : 1
First Look
夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。
—— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》
Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.
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 botanical plate: one plant lifted from field or glasshouse and set at the centre of the sheet, root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit in turn, made legible, citable, transmissible.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
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. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
Before 1700 most botanical figures came from woodcut: thick, hard lines in relief, colour brushed on afterwards. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. 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
朝饮木兰之坠露兮，夕餐秋菊之落英。
—— 战国·屈原《离骚》
At dawn I drink the dew fallen from magnolia; at dusk I dine on the fallen petals of autumn chrysanthemum.
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
The symbolism of such a plate lies not in flower lore but in record: the belief that a plant deserves to be drawn accurately — the plainest ethic of the scientific age. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Plates usually record flowering, the fortnight when a plant is most identifiable. Various: local hillside or a plant brought from overseas. The nineteenth-century botanic garden and glasshouse were their first address away from home. 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. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1545.
![Tertia pagina figurarum capitalium. [9 pictures of the brain and its parts] (1545)](/upload/nat/compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineatio-aere-exarata/039-thumb.webp)
![Anatomicorum instrumentorum delineatio [Various medical apparatuses] (1545)](/upload/nat/compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineatio-aere-exarata/041-thumb.webp)
![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)