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Royal botanist John Parkinson (1567-1650) is credited as the author of the last English herbal and the first English flora. Parkinson was the official apothecary to King James I and also served as the royal botanist for the succeeding king, Charles I. During his appointments, Parkinson published two groundbreaking works, Theatrum botanicum, the most comprehensive herbal of its time, and Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris, the flora to which the above frontispiece belongs.

In a pun on the author’s name, Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris translates to “Park-in-sun’s terrestrial paradise.” The work describes the proper cultivation of the flower garden, the kitchen garden, and the orchard garden. The elaborate frontispiece depicts Adam and Eve among species recently introduced to England, among them the pineapple, the cactus, and the cyclamen. Adam is shown gathering fruit from a tree while Eve harvests from a strawberry plant. Above them, the engraver includes a medieval curiosity, the vegetable-lamb, first described in Sir John Mandeville’s Travels in 1357. The “lamb-fruit” reportedly emerged from the umbilicus of a plant stem, and was believed to graze on surrounding vegetation until its life-giving stem eventually broke.

This edition of Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris contains over one hundred full-page illustrations designed by German artist Christopher Switzer. Many, like this exuberant frontispiece, were colored by hand. Prized for their passages on plants from the New World, Parkinson’s volumes were used as botanical authorities for more than a century after his death.

Details

  • Title: Frontspiece
  • Creator: John Parkinson
  • Date Created: 1629

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