Watercolour, a Carline thistle, early to mid 17th century Italian school from the 'Paper Museum' of Cassiano dal Pozzo

A flower seen from the side, with five sessile lanceolate leaves with deeply toothed and lobed margins. At the apex of the short stem is a large flower head whose involucre is composed of elongated yellow scales forming a false corolla around the capitulum.The plant ends in a straight taproot with the branches.

From the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657); Helen de Beer, from whom purchased by the museum in 1949

This drawing was originally part of Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Museum Chartaceum (Latin for ‘Paper Museum’; now Windsor Castle, Royal Lib., and London, British Museum).
Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) was a renowned scholar and patron who assembled a vast collection of paintings, medals and books but also drawings and in particular drawings of antiquities and natural history subjects.

The drawings were commissioned from major and minor artists, including Pietro da Cortona, Pietro Testa and Vincenzo Leonardi, as well as collected from other sources. Cassiano’s intention was to form a visual encyclopaedia of the ancient and natural worlds but his project was never published. A group of drawings were however reproduced in a number of books on natural history, and artists and scholars drew on its fund of images of the Classical world. (See other examples in the collection: E.2776-1962, E.426-2009 and E.1026-2011.)

The present drawing represents a carline thistle, a medicinal plant which grows in central and southern Europe. The name derives from Charlemagne, whose army was reputedly cured of plague by its use. The drawing was executed by an unknown artist, probably a minor artist, as it shows an evident lack of volume. It is a good example of a certain type of drawings included in the Paper Museum, which aim only at recording the shape and appearance of a plant rather than reaching a high degree of refinement.

This drawing was originally part of the Paper Museum, a collection of drawings assembled by the Italian scholar Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) in order to form a visual encyclopaedia of the ancient and natural worlds. This drawing belongs to the natural history group and shows a carline thistle, a medicinal flower which can be found in central and southern Europe. Despite Cassiano dal Pozzo’s intentions the encyclopaedia was never published.

E.731-1949