Doctrine of signatures: (above) a plant (arum) with seed-pods resembling the horn of a unicorn, and (below) a unicorn's head. Coloured ink drawing by C. Etheridge, 1906, after G.B. Della Porta.

  • Porta, Giambattista della, approximately 1535-1615.
Date:
1906
Reference:
524849i
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Previous title, replaced September 2023 : Doctrine of signatures: (above) a plant (arum) with seed-pods resembling the horn of a unicorn, and (below) a unicorn's head. Coloured ink drawing, c. 1923, after G.B. Della Porta.

Description

In his Phytognomica, Della Porta discerns the hidden qualities of plants from the analogy of their forms with comparable features of animals. Those features of animals are "signs" which signify the same effects in plants which they have in animals: "ut cui signum competat, eidem et effectus: et cui effectio, pariter & signum: & quae signis vacent, & effectibus vacent" (Phytognomica, lib I, cap. xiii, Rouen 1650, p. 26); in English "That to which a sign belongs, to it also the effect belongs; and that to which the effect belongs, equally to it the sign belongs; and those which lack the signs also lack the effects"

Publication/Creation

1906

Physical description

1 drawing : ink, with watercolour

Lettering

Doctrine of signatures. Plant resembling a unicorn. From a woodcut of the XVI. century.

Reference

Wellcome Collection 524849i

Reproduction note

After: G.B. Della Porta, Phytognomica Io. Baptistæ Neopolitani, octo libris contenta, lib. IV, cap. xi (Rouen 1650 p. 289)

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