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MATTHIOLI’S COMMENTARY ON DIOSCORIDES 381 
LXXV. MATTHIOLI 
All Italian botanists before Cesalpino, 1583, devoted them- 
selves chiefly to the explanation of the classics ; and among these 
botanical commentators the preéminent name was that of Matthioli.* 
Matthioli’s great work, the labor of his whole life,f was his com- 
mentary on Dioscorides, of more than 60 editions, most of the 
Italian and Latin editions appearing in Venice at the press of 
Valgrisi, 1548 and onward. 
Of the wide acceptance of this commentary we may judge from 
the 32,000 copies of an early edition which Valgrisi stated he had 
printed, and by the translations made into Syrian, Persian, Arabic, 
this name Tunica is heard in Molinaeus’ completion of Dalechamp’s Hist. pl., 187, 
which uses the name 7unca minima for a certain small species of pink; and is h 
in Tunica paw eae etc., name given by Haller, to another, Dianthus haar 
inodorus L.; and in Herba tunica, common name cited for Dianthus caryophyllus by 
C. Bauhin, 1623; “eo Herba Tunica of Gordon the physician (see p. 226), cited 1570 
by Pena of Lobel, 143, was hni 
f his pleasure in it * him elf says: ‘¢ Semper me admodum delectaverit medica 
materia’? ; sarily adversus dleabca: 6, 
wn as Pierandrea Matthioli, or in Latin as Petrus Andreas Matthiolus, he 
was ag at Siena in 1501, lived with his father, a practising physician in Venice, was 
educated at Padua, engaged in medical practice at Siena, and in other cities ; had been 
six years or more at Rome in 1 527; was fourteen years at Valle Anania in the bishopric 
of Trent, and twelve years at GOrz, whence Ferdinand I. called him to’ Prague to be 
Court-physician to his son, 1555; afterward he was court-physician at Vienna to the 
Emperor Maximilian II. Returning to Trent he died there of the plague, in the be- 
ginning of 1577. 
{The first edition of Matthioli’s Commentary (with translation of a 
Was in Italian, printed by Bascarini, at Venice, in 1544, in folio, ex /bris Hoffmann 
the first Latin edition was in 1554, ex /tbrts ied; also a folio, in which figures for the 
first time appeared, 562 small woodcuts, each about 414 X 214 inches; representing 504 
Plants. In the Latin edition of 1 560 (ex Zibris Bu. ), the small figures o is size are still 
Tetained. Matthioli remarks in this, that he had been encouraged by the reception of 
his Italian er 5 ‘to put forth an enlarged edition, to add to it figures, and 
to put it in Latin 
Large figures began to appear with the rare folio Bohemian translation, Prague, 
1562, and in the rare German translation by Handsch, ex libris Meyer, 1563, contain- 
ing 804 plant- Sars Then followed the first Latin edition to show large figures, 1565 
(ex libris E L. Greene), the figures numbering 912 and being the same as in the Ger- 
man tention of 1563 ( fide Meyer), and probably the same as those in the Bohemian 
1562 
But ae antl figures were introduced again in the 1570 edition (ex Hér. Meyer) 
increased to 1023; diminution in size and value followed, till in a French trans- 
lation issued at Lyons by Prost in folio in 1655 (¢* libr, Meyer), the size of the figures 
Went down to 2 % 1% inches, and many were almost unrecogniz 
