The person who painted the plants and animals on this box might be called an artist today. But at the time, there was no reason to separate the arts and sciences with a disciplinary divide the way we often do now. The scientific disciplines of zoology and botany have always been closely intertwined with literature and art, making it sometimes hard to determine where the art ends and the science begins.<\/p>\n
The goal of artists who drew and painted foreign species in the 1600s was, according to the botanist and painter Christian Mentzel, \u201cto reproduce nature itself as perfectly as possible.\u201d This period marked the introduction of images of certain exotic animals in Europe, and it also saw the rise of widespread circulation of books about plants and animals from all over the world. \u00a0The most famous of these books was a series of six volumes by the Swiss physician Conrad Gessner, who published his Historia Animalium<\/em> between 1551 and 1558. Gessner was the first European to describe and depict many plants and animals, including the tulip and the bird of paradise.<\/p>\n \u00a0Use the slider to see how the bird of paradise painted on the ivory box compares to the bird of paradise drawn by Conrad Gessner.<\/strong><\/p>\n