Browse Items (48 total)

This item is a scientific illustration from the late 18th century of the taro root. It is from a catalog of plants by Buc'hoz.

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,…

This ceramic vessel from the Moche Civilization of South America features a spout and a figure with a peanut-shaped body

Five Native Americans are brewing a chocolate drink with cocoa beans and cooking instruments.

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.

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.

A man selling onions in the way they were sold in London at this time: hanging in long rows from a pole

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.…

Georg Flegel's 1625 Still Life portrays a lemon in the context of the Early Modern period. This painting depicts a meal probably consumed by the merchant or noble class. The lemon would perhaps be used to season the bird on the plate. This painting…

Plants from PAXTON'S MAGAZINE OF BOTANY