Around 1560, Georg Bocskay, secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created the Model Book of Calligraphy to exhibit his skill and mastery of writing styles. Thirty years later, Joris Hoefnagel was commissioned to illuminate Bocskay's text.…
José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit and naturalist, discusses the use of chili peppers in the West Indies. The chapter focuses on the varieties of chili peppers, their medicinal properties, and the ways in which indigenous peoples used them.
Spanish historian and missionary Bartolome de las Casas records his interactions with the native peoples of the West Indies, including their foods. In this excerpt, he describes specifically the taste and significance of the peanut, or maní.
This image is one of over five hundred woodcut illustrations that were part of a book written by Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium commentarii insignes, which was originally published in 1542. Albrecht Meyer drew the plants based on observation,…
The title page of the book "Beschreibung der Ostindischen Kusten Malabar und Coromandel" depicting native peoples, animals, and resources. This book was a travel log, geography, and ethnography of Sri Lanka and the Southern Indian coastal regions…