Page 55 - La Naturaleza como inspiración

Paulus Potter, Equus hispanicus, s. XVII. Colección Van Berkhey, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, csic, Madrid
Paulus Potter, Equus hispanicus, XVIIde eeuw. Van Berkhey collectie, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, csic, Madrid
Paulus Potter, Equus hispanicus, 17th century. Van Berkhey Collection, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, csic, Madrid
our prints, such as J. l’Admiraal’s four-colour prints, a remarkable collection of birds and G.W. Knoor’s en- gravings of fossils. Berkhey often cuts out the silhou- ette of an animal and glues it to another piece of pa- per. Another curious technique is the one he uses in the inked butterflies, which combine drawing with direct printing of parts of the animal.
The vastness of the collection, the rich variety of themes, the high quality of many of the pieces it includes, the diversity of the techniques used and the singularity of the compilation work carried out by van Berkhey make these zoological illustrations one of the most important documentary sources housed in the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Natu- rales. Two hundred and twenty-two years after its arrival, even today this collection still serves the purpose assigned to it by van Berkhey of contribut- ing to the advancement of natural history studies.
1 Lack and Sipman (2007, p. 69) point out that it is 53 paradoxical that the Berkheya Ehrh genus of African plants,
which comprises more than seventy species, is better known
among botanists than J. le Francq van Berkhey, to whom the
origin of the name is due, particularly since van Berkhey contributed to knowledge of the family to which the Berkheya belongs.
2 See Lack and Sipman (2007, p. 71). They state that the location of the original drawings used to make the engravings is not known, and these drawings were not included in the subsequent auction of the Van Berkhey collections.
3 Lack and San Pío (2007, p. 38) believe he intended to construct a sort of paper museum, similar to that created by Cassiano dal Pozzo, one of the founders of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.
4 Pedro Franco Dávila was a learned man and a good naturalist, as well as an erudite industrialist. From his residence in Paris he travelled around the Netherlands and other European countries between 1745 and 1771, while collecting his own Library, which he later gave to the Spanish Crown in 1772. He was a member of the most prominent scientific societies of the period, and the first director of the Royal Cabinet.
5 See M.A. Calatayud Arinero (1987).
6 No. 838 in the Catálogo de documentos del Real Gabinete
de Historia Natural. Madrid, 1984.
7 Consulted in the mncn and cited in the epigram in the manuscripts of M.S. Vicente Rosillo and A. Orbiso Viñuelas: (1990).
8 See P. Lorente, p. 262.
9 Adriaan van Royen, Floræ leydensis prodromus, exhibens
plantas quæ in horto academico Lugduno-Batavo. Aluntur. Lugduni Batavorum: Apud Samuelem Luctmans, 1740.
10 English translation: Collection of different plants, coloured after drying, and reproduced by printing their leaves using the method recently discovered by Leibknegt and other amateurs.
11 Ms. Sloane 4033. Bl 28–80, as well as a folio volume with drawings and the herbarium of Hermann, 4 Bde. V. Henry Trimmen in Journal Linn. Society Botany 24, 1888, p. 129.
12 C. Jarvis and M.P. de San Pío Aladrén (2007).
13 Ángel M. de Barcia. Catálogo de la colección de dibujos
originales de la Biblioteca Nacional,Madrid, 1906, p. 742. 14 See the doctoral thesis of Paloma Lorente, 1998.