fied applicant for the new position, 
taught a subject that could be de- 
scribed more accurately as pharma- 
cology than as true botany. Yet, even 
if he was not a great botanist, botany 
owes Bonafede a tremendous debt: in 
addition to securing the establishment 
of a chair in that science, he was the 
first to propose the founding of a bo- 
tanical garden at Padua. 
Apparently an original thinker, Bo- 
nafede was not satisfied with the tra- 
ditional academic curriculum. He 
wanted his students to learn about 
plants not just from the pages of Dios- 
corides and Theophrastus but also 
from the study of living plants. To 
acquire live material with which to 
illustrate his lectures and to give his 
students access to living specimens of 
the plants he described to them, Bo- 
nafede urged the authorities to estab- 
Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek 
Above: Their lack of field research 
and their reliance on ancient texts 
led medieval scholars to produce 
increasingly unrealistic botanical 
illustrations. The chamomile plant 
shown here, from the oldest known 
copy of Dioscorides’ De Materia 
Medica (circa a.d. 512), is drawn in 
considerable detail. But as 
illustrators continued to simply copy 
earlier editions of Dioscorides' work, 
they perpetuated, and added to, the 
errors of their predecessors. The 
renderings of chamomile shown on 
the following pages demonstrate the 
decline in accuracy in botanical art 
throughout the Middle Ages. 
lish a special garden. In this orto me- 
dicinale, or “medicinal garden,” he 
planned to cultivate only plants used 
in the manufacture of drugs. 
Gardens of medicinal plants were 
nothing new in medieval Europe. Mon- 
asteries often maintained small herb 
gardens as a convenient source of 
drugs, and as early as 1447, Pope 
Nicholas V set aside part of the Vat- 
ican grounds for the growing of me- 
dicinal plants. What made Bonafede’s 
proposed garden unique was its em- 
phasis on study and research. 
In time, Bonafede convinced the 
university administrators of the need 
for the garden, and they, in turn, 
sought the necessary funds from the 
government. On July 7, 1545, just 
eight days after the Venetian senate 
gave its approval, a suitable site, con- 
sisting of approximately five acres 
next to what is now the Alicorno canal, 
was leased from the monastery of 
Santa Giustina. Nearly surrounded by 
the canal, the land was both fertile 
and well watered. The abundant water 
supply insured adequate irrigation for 
the plants and permitted the eventual 
construction of seventeen fountains 
and several shallow tanks, which are 
still used to cultivate aquatic plants. 
Francesco Bonafede and his col- 
leagues in the medical faculty had 
intended the garden to be a teaching 
laboratory where a collection of me- 
dicinal plants would be maintained 
and a pharmacological museum would 
be built. In this museum, specimens 
of the plants grown in the garden were 
to be displayed, together with samples 
of the drugs extracted from them. This 
interesting plan would no doubt have 
proved an asset to the medical school, 
but it would not have provided much 
stimulus for botanical research. For- 
tunately for the fledgling science, how- 
ever, the development of the garden 
was entrusted not only to a represen- 
tative of the medical faculty, Piero 
da Noale, but also to an architect from 
the nearby city of Bergamo, Giovanni 
Moroni, and to a Venetian aristocrat, 
Daniele Barbaro. 
Whether by good luck or good plan- 
ning, this triumvirate proved to have 
a happy combination of talents. While 
da Noale could speak for the garden’s 
original sponsors, an architect was 
clearly needed to draw up a plan for 
the project, and Moroni was an ob- 
vious candidate for the job: he was 
already supervising the construction 
of the church of Santa Giustina in 
Padua and had proved his ability on 
David Lee 
Right: This herbarium specimen 
from the Institute of the Botanical 
Garden of Padua University dates to 
about 1730, some years before 
Carolus Linnaeus published his 
system of nomenclature for flowering 
plants. Below: As the Middle Ages 
progressed, many botanical texts no 
longer specified authors and artists. 
This unattributed chamomile 
appears in Medicina Antiqua, an 
early thirteenth-century anthology 
that drew upon many herbals, 
including De Materia Medica. 
Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek 
that project. Like many other figures 
of the Italian Renaissance, Moroni 
was a man of many talents; in addition 
to being an architect, he was a noted 
painter and so was able to provide aes- 
thetic as well as technical expertise. 
At first glance, Daniele Barbaro, 
neither a scientist nor a gardener by 
profession, might seem an unlikely 
candidate for the third member of the 
group. As patriarch of Aquileja, then 
the ecclesiastical capital of northeast- 
ern Italy, he held an important po- 
sition in the ministry of the Catholic 
church, and his formal role in the 
triumvirate was to represent the Ve- 
netian senate. He was well qualified 
to assist in the establishment of a bo- 
tanical garden, however, since in ad- 
52 
