[Sca-cooks] Red Tomato in Nature Illuminated

[Mark Calderwood]

At 12:27 7/02/03 -0500, you wrote:
>Earlier this week I received a copy of
>Nature Illuminated: Flora and Fauna from the Court of Emperor Rudolf II.
>It reproduces forty-one pages from the original
>These include a distinctly red tomato. There are kidney beans
>and scarlet runner beans also.

I have a reproduction copy of the entire manuscript, and as well as this
tomato there is another which is more yellow in colour and rather knobbly.
The commentary mentions that tomatoes and other such botanical rarities
were grown in the gardens of the Kunstkammer,
Emperor Rudolf's categorised collection of flora and fauna, what we would
think of today as a natural history museum. The manuscript was housed in
the Kunstkammer after the illuminations were completed in 1595.

Numerous food plants are illustrated, mostly old world but including
tomatoes, a pineapple and an avocado (identified in the commentary  as a
gourd).

Giles