Sat Jul 24, 2021 12:23 PM

July 24, 2021

(Found this post from when I started writing back in 2018. I don’t think it ever migrated to this page. If it is a duplicate, it is an old one, so I figured a revisit wouldn’t be terrible.)

These plates of plants are from Egelnoff’s _Herbarium, Arborum, Fructium, Frumentorum_ from 1540. They’re interesting in their own right, but the coolest part is how they figure into the history of copyright. Christian Egelnoff was sued in October of 1533 by Johann Schott. Schott had published _Herbarium Vivae Icones_. Hans Weiditz did the woodcuts for Schott. They were much more detailed and reality based than previous plant illustration and it was a big change. When Egelnoff published his own herbal, Schott argued it was infringement. Egelnoff argued that nature could not be copyrighted and that plants stood as communal models for any artist. (The colored illustration is one of Schott’s, the rest are Egenolff.)

The Met doesn’t have the full book online, but some of the plates are here https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/343855