News: The botany of the Mexican Treasure

The Museo Galileo, together with the University of Cagliari, presents a new digital platform titled L’iconografia botanica del Tesoro Messicano nei commenti di Ioannes Schreck e Fabio Colonna (The Botanical Iconography of the Mexican Treasure in the commentaries of Ioannes Schreck and Fabio Colonna). It is a database of texts and images (over 800) that allows users to explore the corpus of annotations and commentaries to the extensive botanical compendium contained in the Tesoro Messicano (Mexican Treasure), compiled by the Lyncean Schreck (Terrentius) and Colonna.
The Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus, known as Tesoro Messicano, represents the outcome of a work started by the Accademia dei Lincei in the late 1610s and completed, following complex publishing events, no earlier than 1651.
Main purpose of the platform is to facilitate the use of the information assets which, in the printed version of the Tesoro, were disorganized and fragmented. Through various search options, the platform makes it possible to collect images and information related to each botanical specimen in a single space, highlighting the therapeutic properties of plants, descriptions of colours, and the role of the people mentioned, while also allowing comparisons with the literature of the time.
Created in collaboration with the University of Cagliari as part of a PRIN Project (Project of Relevant National Interest), the platform is freely accessible at https://teche.museogalileo.it/tesoro.
On April 10, 2025, the project will be presented at the University of Cagliari.