InNature in the New World(translated 1985), Antonello Gerbi examines the fascinating reports of the first Europeans to see the Americas. These accounts provided the basis for the images of strange ...and new flora, fauna, and human creatures that filled European imaginations.Initial chapters are devoted to the writings of Columbus, Vespucci, Cortés, Verrazzano, and others. The second portion of the book concerns theHistoria general y natural de las Indiasof Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, a work commissioned by Charles V of Spain in 1532 but not published in its entirety until the 1850s. Antonello Gerbi contends that Oviedo, a Spanish administrator who lived in Santo Domingo, has been unjustly neglected as a historian. Gerbi shows that Oviedo was a major authority on the culture, history, and conquest of the New World.
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) is now celebrated as one of the most important Gothic revival buildings of the nineteenth century. It is also a temple of science. Built ...between 1855 and 1860, the design of the museum building incorporated input from artists, scientists and cultural figures such as the writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath John Ruskin. The aim of the museum's founders was to teach science—and that the museum building itself should serve as a teaching tool. Geology played a key role in achieving this.
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