MENU

Botanical Models

 

The Botany collections include among its holdings botanical models in terracotta, wood pulp, marble, wax and papier-mâché. The collection was created for educational and documentary purposes: that is, it served to show the great variety of shapes, colours and plant types that were introduced in European and Italian gardens between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coming from the explorations of lands then little known from a naturalistic point of view.

Curiosity of the collection is the series of mycological models that reproduce the fruiting bodies of many macro fungi in plaster, papier-mâché and other materials. It was made by the French scholar Jean Baptiste Barla, also director of the Natural History Museum of Nice. Most of its collections are accompanied by extensive documentation which, starting from plant finds, extends to watercolour graphic documentation. Its notoriety, however, is due precisely to the macro-mushroom models.

Head of collections Chiara Nepi

Learn more on the fungi models (English text at the bottom of the pages)
Cuccini, P., The fungi of Jean-Baptiste Barla, artist and naturalist, in Raffaelli, M. (ed), 2009, The Museum of Natural History of the University of Florence: The Botanical Collections, Firenze University Press

 

Last update

07.09.2021

Cookies

I cookie di questo sito servono al suo corretto funzionamento e non raccolgono alcuna tua informazione personale. Se navighi su di esso accetti la loro presenza.  Maggiori informazioni