2025 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Gomes, Rafael, Leo S. Olschki, Carleton R. Richmond, and Henri Schiller. n.d., Erbario, fol. 76v

Erbario (LJS 419), is a 15th century herbal that presents a wealth of contemporary understandings on the medicinal uses of plants. The codex is to some extent a repository of remedial knowledge that reflects both the changing perception of plant life and human relations in addition to an echo of artistic purposes or aspirations. The illustrated folios are strewn with marginalia, scattered superimposed texts in humanistic cursive script that shift from late Latin to Venetian Italian. The images that spread across the 100 folios range from quick, unpainted sketches to vibrant sweeps of verdegris on detailed outlines. The manuscript could be considered a thread within the larger tapestry of herbal history, specifically, the codex weaves in the ways in which medicine and botany grew to become separate disciplines and the gradually complicated utilitarian view of plants through the late Medieval and Early Modern period. Dot Porter, Julia Pelosi Thorpe, Bryce Beasley, and Lourdes Contreras have been working on creating a digital edition of the manuscript together by transcribing, translating, as well as cataloguing details that have previously been overlooked. Through our study of the herbal, we have found echoes of the same recipes and illustrations in other manuscripts held in the special collection library. These texts, when read and studied together, help contemporary readers reach a better understanding of the botanic and medicinal landscape as well as better grasp the networks that exist between various entities across the Italian peninsula. 

On view on Thursday, March 13, 2025.

Only a few decades after Niccolò Machiavelli’s death, the reception of his works, a story of synthesis and adaptation as well as fragmentalization and vilification, begins. As we watch Machiavelli be reinvented and reintroduced to address different political, linguistic, and cultural contexts and concerns, we have to ask whether our receptions in truth have more to say about ourselves than about Machiavelli – then and now.  

Showcasing some of the treasures of the Kislak Center, including treatises, translations, and parodies, Machiavelli through Borders traces this story across both geographical borders – from Italy into France, Germany, and England – and limits of religion, political systems, and literary genre during the first two centuries after his death.

On view on Friday, March 14, 2025.

Right image: Record of receipt of cloth from Giovanni di Luigi Soderini, signed by Niccolò di Giovanni Machiavelli and dated 28 December 1531 in Florence. Niccolò di Giovanni Machiavelli receipt, LJS 271. University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.