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Release date 2011

Dimensions cm 17 x 24

Pages 256

Illustrations: 107

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Hot stamped canvas boxed edition containing facsimile and commentary.

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Flora Sinensis, published in Vienna in 1656, represents one of the first printed texts dedicated to the natural history of China. It is an extremely rare opus, preserved only in select prestigious European libraries.

It was compiled by the Polish Jesuit Michal Boym (1612 – 1659), a well-educated and fearless missionary who spent a long period of his life in the Celestial Empire, where he described numerous examples of plants, fruit and animals, capturing each of them in realistic images, diligently accompanied by their respective Latin and Chinese names.

Following a now well-established tradition, Aboca has produced a facsimile edition of this valuable and fascinating work in order to disseminate one of the first books on China’s age-old medical and botanical wisdom to have an impact in the European continent.

This volume, which has been reproduced with great care, is enhanced by an in-depth commentary, in which a range of experts share medical and scientific insights, the historical and political context and local religious beliefs.

The original edition, that includes engraved coloured plates using exquisite pigments, is preserved in the Trivulziana library in Milan’s Castello Sforzesco (Triv. B 809).

Facsimile:

Flora Sinensis

Format 23.2 x 32.8 cm

Facsimile pages: 80, 23 of which are illustrated Red canvas cover decorated with a floral motif.

Commentary:

Una Nuova Natura The Jesuit Michał Boym in Seventeenth-century China

Edited by Duilio Contin and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi

Pages: 120.