Willem Piso and Georg Marggraf's 'Historia naturalis Brasiliae' (1648)

In the early seventeenth century, people in Europe recognised tropical America as a place of mystery and tropical abundance, with great economic potential. Moreover, plants and animals in the Americas were disturbing certainties about the natural world based on classical and biblical authority. Exploration of the Americas brought forth ever more new plants, creating more confusion for European botanists trying to name and classify life. Early modern botanists argued about the best way to bring order to the apparent chaos, perhaps revealing something about God at the same time. Robert Morison was one of those men.

The Dutch physician Willem Piso (1611-78) and the German astronomer Georg Markgraf (1610-44) were encouraged to explore Brazil by the German-Dutchman Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604-79) during his Governorship of Dutch Brazil between 1638 and 1644. Piso, from his medical practice in Recife, investigated tropical medicine, whilst Markgraf ventured across the colony to investigate natural history and cartography. Piso published their joint investigations as the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648). Piso contributed four books on Brazilian medicine, which established him as an authority on tropical medicine. Markgraf posthumously contributed eight books on natural history, creating his reputation as the most important early modern natural historian of Brazil. When, in the mid-eighteenth century, the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) named a genus of spiny shrubs and trees, Pisonia after Piso, he added the characteristically barbed comment that the plant’s spines were as unpleasant as Piso’s reputation. In contrast, Linnaeus commemorated Markgraf in the name Marcgravia, a genus of extraordinarily beautiful climbers and scramblers.

The elaborate title page of Historia Naturalis Brasiliae gives the impression of abundance in a tropical paradise. Two European-looking Amerindians head an avenue of tropical trees that focus the eye onto a village scene with people dancing. In the foreground, a wreathed Neptune slouches behind a shell, his left elbow on a turtle and his right hand on a vase that overflows with the animal bounty of the sea. An anteater in the lower right laps from a clam shell, a sloth climbs a tree on the left and a snake coils around the palm behind the Amerindian man.

To the right of the sloth is a tree in fruit that is related to the Brazil nut; the fruits are known as monkey pots and are traditionally used to make traps for simians. Two anthropoid-looking primates hang either side of the title, holding a swag replete with tropical fruits, including a member of the fig genus (right of sloth’s head) and cashews (immediately left of the fig). A realistic-looking marmoset is portrayed at the female Amerindian’s feet.

Behind Neptune is a row of plants (left to right): the enigmatic pineapple; the Brazilian staple manioc; and a costus. A passionflower, with flowers and fruits, twines around the trunk of the tree to the left of the female Amerindian. The female Amerindian holds a bunch of cashew fruits, which she has presumably harvested from the tree immediately behind her.