Cenni di etnobotanica: piante nel passato e per il futuro.

Description

The medicinal plant, as well as the edible plant represents the most ancient botanical field of uman observation and experience. The knowledge of the species was born as knowledge of edible and healing plants. From the medicinal plants catalogues of Hippocrates and Dioscorides, to the first classification attempts by Aristotle, to the work of Theophrastus, the studied plant is the plant which possesses proved therapeutic activity. In the Middle Ages Mattioli translates Dioscorides describing and representing edible, aromatic and medicinal plants. The iconography representation of the studied species develops on one side with the herbarium descriptions, copy works often misrepresenting the morphological characters of the original representation, and on the other side with images inside artistic expressions not meant for scientific purposes, often related to complex symbologies. Therefore, the masterpiece of the past ages becomes a subject for study also from the botanical and the pharmacetical-botanical point of view. My contribution on the species of ethnobotanical interest in the paintings studied by the Genuese team of the Eu project "Plants in European Masterpieces" is derived from this thought: the examination of the past and present traditional and therapeutical uses of botanical species is understood as a mean of deep investigation and completing tool of the analysis of a masterpiece, as the ethnobotanical knowledge – the whole of people uses, traditions, beliefs and therapeutical uses – is of great interest in our history and consequently in the artistic expression.

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