Ocular plants, 16th century artwork. These floral plants include sedum album, wolf's bane (aconitum), and houseleek (sempervivum tectorum). Artwork fr

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Ocular plants, 16th century artwork. These floral plants include sedum album, wolf's bane (aconitum), and houseleek (sempervivum tectorum). Artwork from the book Phytognomonica (Naples, 1588) by the Italian scholar and polymath Giambattista della Porta (circa 1535-1615). The book is about della Porta's theory of the doctrine of signatures, where plants bore a physical resemblance either to a celestial body, or to the body part which they were able to cure.

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Size: 4478px × 3960px
Photo credit: © MIDDLE TEMPLE LIBRARY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 1500s, 1588, 16th, aconitum, album, artwork, bane, biological, biology, black--white, botanical, botany, celestial, century, della, doctrine, european, eye, eye-, flora, flower, giambattista, historical, history, houseleek, illustration, italian, medical, monochrome, nature, ocular, phytognomonica, plant, porta, sedum, sempervivum, signatures, tectorum, wolfs