The collection of the 'Alexandrovskaya Sloboda' museum-reserve has been supplemented by another book engraving — the fourth!
“These woodcut illustrations have great scientific significance for the study of the mid-17th-century Herbal-Medical manuscript from our collection, whose fate is very interesting. It had a whole series of 'royal predecessors.' The first, in 1492, was the German medical handbook 'The Garden of Health.' In 1534 it was translated for Grand Prince Vasily III by his personal physician Nikolai Bulev (originally from Lübeck, hence another name for this translation — the Lubecian Herbalist). In 1616 the manuscript was recopied at the Kremlin Aptekarsky Prikaz, but this time for the young Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov. It was from this copy that the museum 'version' of the Herbal was created. Today we are enriching and supplementing the information that has been obtained about our edition. In fact, with the acquisition of the engravings the illustrative 'completion' of the 'Sloboda' medical book has begun for its further public presentation.”
— said Elena Zhestkova, collections curator of the 'Alexandrovskaya Sloboda' museum-reserve.
The narrative is continued by B.N. Morozov, senior research fellow at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and member of the RAS Archaeographic Commission:
“It is interesting that, to illustrate the aforementioned 1616 Herbal from the Aptekarsky Prikaz, more advanced and expressive engravings from a completely different edition — the work of the well-known Italian scholar, physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli — were used creatively. His 'Commentaries on the Six Books of Pedanius Dioscorides on Medicinal Substances' could have reached Russia as early as the era of Ivan the Terrible. In the 'Sloboda' copy of the Herbal, which bears the title 'Blagoprohladny Vertograd Zdraviyu', illustrations were entirely absent.”
Museum staff consider especially important the acquisition of the drawings that originally accompanied these texts in 1616. They are an invaluable source for Russian book culture of the 16th–early 17th centuries. The engravings discovered by B.N. Morozov, which have now become museum property, were printed as part of two editions of the European 'Commentaries' from 1572 and 1604. They provide important information for continuing research on Russian–European contacts in the fields of science and culture. The museum's collection now contains illustrations for the chapters 'Cucumbers,' 'Rowan,' 'Turnip,' and 'Radish' with detailed descriptions of species and medicinal properties. The most recent purchase to date is 'Raphanus agrestis' — 'Wild radish.' It is described in the museum manuscript in chapter 434.
In the illustration we see a plant with leaves and an elongated root; below — text in Italian. Colored with green and brown paints. On the reverse side — a drawing of three similar plants with leaves and roots, narrower; at the bottom — the end of the previous text. This is a radish of another variety.
Boris Nikolaevich summarizes:
“The new acquisition shows that at that time there was no manuscript in Moscow with reduced engravings. The compilers had to copy the large variant of the Russian radish. They did this very carefully. And a copy of such an engraving continues to be kept in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. The 'Alexandrovskaya Sloboda' museum-reserve will continue the search and research of invaluable information about medieval medicine.”
Press service of the 'Alexandrovskaya Sloboda' museum-reserve
