With a beautiful array of rare, richly illustrated manuscripts and early printed works, The Renaissance Herbal in the Rondina and LoFaro Gallery of The New York Botanical Garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library told the story of how ancient and medieval knowledge about the medicinal qualities of plants survived into the Renaissance, when herbals flourished as a manifestation of that period’s intellectual curiosity and spirit of scientific inquiry.
Describing plants and their useful properties, herbals are among the oldest known written and printed works in both Western and Eastern civilizations and contain the earliest recorded descriptions of the plant kingdom. The Mertz Library, the world’s largest library devoted to botany and horticulture, has a particularly rich collection of herbals.
On display from May 18 through September 8, 2013, The Renaissance Herbal featured more than 50 printed books and manuscripts, drawn almost exclusively from the Library’s collection. The most extensive exhibition of rare herbals to be shown in the United States in decades, The Renaissance Herbal is the Library component of Wild Medicine: Healing Plants Around the World, Featuring The Italian Renaissance Garden, the Botanical Garden’s multifaceted exploration of how medicinal plants have been used to cure and rejuvenate people since ancient times.
Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, curator of The Renaissance Herbal, is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art History at the Universita di Pisa. A prolific writer, Dr. Tomasi focuses on the relationships among art, science, and nature.
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Titles not found in the Mertz Library's catalog are linked to WorldCat.
The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550 by 
Carolus Clusius: Towards a Cultural History of a Renaissance Naturalist by 
Herbals - Their Origin and Evolution by 
The Old English Herbals by 
Handbook of Plant and Floral Ornament from Early Herbals by 
Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions by 
An Illustrated History of the Herbals by 
Herbals Through 1500. The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 1 & 2 by 
Major Medicinal Plants: Botany, Culture, and Uses by 
Botany in the Low Countries (End of the 15th Century - ca. 1650): Plantin-Moretus Museum Exhibition
The Herbal in Antiquity and Its Transmission to Later Ages. From The Journal of Hellenic Studies by 
Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1500 by 
Herbarium: Natural Remedies from a Medieval Manuscript by 
The Book in the Renaissance by 
British Botanical and Horticultural Literature Before 1800: Comprising a History and Bibilography of Botanical and Horticultural Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the Earliest Times Until 1800. by 
The Cleveland Herbal, Botanical, and Horticultural Collections by 
An Oak Spring Herbaria : herbs and herbals from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries: a selection of the rare books, manuscripts and works of art in the collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon by 
The Medieval Health Handbook--Tacuinum Sanitatis by 
