Woodcut block illustrating cumin made for Pier Andrea Mattioli’s De materia medica.

Georgio Liberale and Wolfgang Meyerpeck.

Woodcut block illustrating cumin made for Pier Andrea Mattioli’s De materia medica.

Prague,

1562.

Gift of Virginia Gardner.

RBS’s original woodcut block of cumin is a teaching powerhouse used in fourteen different classes. It comes from a set of large botanical woodcut blocks designed by Georgio Liberale and Wolfgang Meyerpeck for use in an herbal, De materia medica, originally written in late antiquity by the Greek physician Dioscorides and then later published in the 16th century with a commentary written by Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1577). In the early 16th century, the woodcut was the primary illustration process for books in Europe.

From the collection of Rare Book School