Scientist of the Day - Carolus Clusius

Marmoset (sagoin), a South American monkey, woodcut, Exoticorum libri decem, by Carolus Clusius, p. 372, 1605 (Linda Hall Library)

Carolus Clusius, a Flemish botanist, died Apr. 4, 1609, at the age of 83. He is sometimes referred to as Charles L’Ecluse. Born in Artois, now a part of France, he studied law and theology at Louvain, Marburg and Wittenberg, before deciding that botany was the love of his life. He transferred to Montpellier in southern France to study medicine with Guillaume Rondelet, because botany was then a branch of medicine. While serving as a tutor in the 1560s, he made a trip to Spain to study plants there, and then, in 1573, he was invited by Emperor Maximilian II to head up the imperial botanical garden in Vienna. There he presided over the introduction of many Turkish plants into Europe, such as the crown imperial and the tulip, thanks to the help of a Flemish friend, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, who was imperial ambassador to Constantinople, and who had helped obtain the job in Vienna for Clusius. When Clusius moved to Leiden in 1593 to head up their botanical garden, he brought all manner of exotic plants with him from Vienna, including the tulip, introducing them to the Netherlands, and then published a large herbal in 1601 which illustrated them all. We told this much of the Clusius story, although too briefly, in our first post on Clusius.

Portrait of Carolus Clusius, oil on canvas, by Jacob de Monte, 1585, Leiden University Library (Wikimedia commons)

We have the Rariorum, the herbal of 1601, in our collections. But we also have a work that Clusius published four years later, equally large and filled with woodcuts, that is quite different from his herbal, but equally worthy of attention. It is titled: Exoticorum libri decem (Ten Books of Exotica, 1605). Here the focus is not on plants (although some are included), but rather on little-known animals from around the world – little-known because many have just been discovered and brought back to Europe.

Engraved title page, Exoticorum libri decem, by Carolus Clusius, 1605 (Linda Hall Library)

One of the prominent features of late Renaissance natural history is that the field was swelling rapidly with introductions of animals and plants from the New World, south Africa, and the East Indies. Some of these were known to Conrad Gessner, who included a few New World animals, such as the opossum and armadillo, in his natural history volumes of the 1550s. But by 1600, what had once been a trickle had become a flood. Clusius’s Exotica was one of the first attempts to publish a natural history of the non-European world (third image).

Manatee, from the Caribbean, woodcut, Exoticorum libri decem, by Carolus Clusius, p. 133, 1605 (Linda Hall Library)

Presumably someone has made a list of animals that appear or are illustrated in the Exotica for the first time, but I have not run across it. I am not certain if the woodcut of the marmoset (sagoin) from South America is a first (first image), but I am pretty sure that the manatee from Caribbean waters never made it into Gesner’s Historia animalium, even the later editions (fourth image).

Penguin, from southern hemisphere, woodcut, Exoticorum libri decem, by Carolus Clusius, p. 101, 1605 (Linda Hall Library)

And I am almost certain that the penguin had not appeared in a natural history book before the Exotica (fifth image). This was a confusing bird, since it shared its name with the auk from the northern hemisphere, yet is not related. The woodcuts of most of the animals included in the Exotica are small, not at all like the full-page prints in the volumes of Gesner (and later in those of Ulisse Aldrovandi). To demonstrate, I show the entire page that contains the penguin woodcut (sixth image).

Entire page with woodcut of penguin, Exoticorum libri decem, by Carolus Clusius, p. 101, 1605 (Linda Hall Library)

Other animals in the Exotica that had not been pictured before (at least in natural history books) include the hummingbird and the horseshoe crab (not shown here). But the most famous creature to make its debut in the Exotica is surely the dodo (seventh image). It had only been discovered in 1598 by a Dutch trading fleet that stopped on Mauritius, off the eastern coast of Africa, and it was figured on the engraved title page of the fifth volume of Johann Theodor de Bry’s Indiae orientalis series in 1601. In the Exotica, the woodcut of the dodo lies on the page facing the penguin (pp. 100-101). I should have taken a photo of the two-page spread; it would have been doubly exotic.

Dodo, from Mauritius, woodcut, Exoticorum libri decem, by Carolus Clusius, p. 100, 1605 (Linda Hall Library)

You may have wondered why Clusius, a botanist, compiled a book on exotic animals. He was not himself an explorer or a zoologist, and he never saw any of these animals in their natural habitats. But he lived in a country that was a hub of global trade, and where ships came to port every day with riches from all around the world. The Dutch East India Company had been founded in 1602 to encourage that trade. So it is not surprising that a naturalist like Clusius, even if he had botanical leanings, would be excited by the animal and bird skins and occasionally live specimens, that flowed into the Netherlands. And he had a publisher, the Plantin Press, that was thrilled by the success of his 1601 herbal, and was happy to issue another folio volume by Clusius, even if its subject matter was, well, exotic.

First sloth specimen, from Brazil, woodcut, Exoticorum libri decem, by Carolus Clusius, p. 111, 1605 (Linda Hall Library)

One of the dangers of being a stay-at-home naturalist is that you must work mostly with skins, which makes reconstruction chancy, if you have never seen the animal in the wild. Clusius’s sloth is a good example of the problem. He obtained a skin of the Brazilian animal and fleshed it out as best he could in a woodcut for the Exotica (eighth image). But while the book was in press, he obtained another specimen, and possibly a first-hand description, and he realized his woodcut was incorrect. So he had another woodcut made and included it in an appendix (ninth image). This one is not that accurate either – clearly Clusius did not understand that the animal cannot stand up – but the image would have a long legacy. Many years later, when Georg Markgraf saw living sloths in Brazil, he drew more accurate pictures, but those particular drawings were lost, so when the editor of Markgraf’s book cast about for a replacement, he looked to Clusius. You can see the Clusius/Markgraf sloth of 1648 in our second post on Markgraf.

Second sloth specimen, from Brazil, woodcut, Exoticorum libri decem, by Carolus Clusius, p. 377, 1605 (Linda Hall Library)

Clusius was 79 years old when the Exotica was published. There is an engraved portrait of the older botanist in the Rariorum of 1601, but the best portrait is an oil painting in Leiden, painted in 1585, 20 years before he published the Exotica (second image).

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.