1992 Articles

Ferrari on the Classification of Oranges and Lemons

Freedberg, David A.

The extremes of the classification of oranges and lemons may be represented by the illustrations in two works: on the one hand, the illustrations in the sixteenth-century editions of Pier Andrea Mattioli's enormously influential reworking of Dioscorides; on the other, this in Ovidio Montalbani's 1668 edition of Aldrovandi's Dendrologia, the last of his very free adaptations of the natural historical material collected by Aldrovandi. The woodblocks of oranges and lemons the editions of Mattioli stand at the sober pole; this in Montalbani-Aldrovandi at the other, extravagant extreme.