In the wake of Columbus’ voyages, early travel accounts and natural histories offered Europeans vivid glimpses into previously unknown lands of what eventually came to be called the Americas. Travelers and armchair explorers alike captivated readers with tales of exotic landscapes, indigenous cultures, and never-before-seen flora and fauna. Naturalists meticulously cataloged the diverse ecosystems and species, while historians struggled to reconcile the physical and moral realities of a “New” World with the inherited corpus of knowledge from Classical and Biblical sources. These works not only fueled European curiosity and expansion but eventually also shaped perceptions, sparking debates on identity, colonization, and the ethics of exploration.
Francisco Hernández, a Spanish physician and scientist, embarked on a groundbreaking expedition to New Spain (present-day Mexico) in the 16th century commissioned by King Philip II of Spain. His mission was to inventory the flora, fauna, and minerals of the region.
The eventual result was the Nova plantarum, one of the earliest efforts to systematically catalogue the natural history of a region outside Europe. After an initial 1651 edition in Rome with copious interventions by other European scientists, Hernández’s original manuscript was lost. However, in the 18th century, a partial manuscript draft was discovered and finally published in Madrid in 1790. The two works remain invaluable sources for studying the flora, fauna, and minerals of Mexico, as well as for historians of science interested in early efforts to document the natural world of the Americas.
Included in this exhibition are the two rare editions of Hernández’s work (1651 and 1790), as well as original documents from the LAL Manuscripts Collection offering a detailed account of a shipment of the 1790 edition from Spain to Mexico that provides a fascinating window into the book trade at the time.