The role of images in the development of Renaissance natural history

This review surveys recent scholarship on the history of natural history with special attention to the role of images in the Renaissance. It discusses how classicism, collecting and printing were important catalysts for the Renaissance study of nature. Classicism provided inspiration of how to study and what kind of object to examine in nature, and several images from the period can be shown to reflect these classical values. The development of the passion for collecting and the rise of commerce in nature's commodities led to the circulation of a large number of exotic flora and fauna. Pictures enabled scholars to access unobtainable objects, build up knowledge of rare objects over time, and study them long after the live specimens had died away. Printing replicated pictures alongside texts and enabled scholars to share and accumulate knowledge. Images, alongside objects and text, were an important means of studying nature. Naturalists' images, in turn, became part of a larger visual culture in which nature was regarded as a beautiful and fascinating object of admiration.