A Linnaean Hall of Fame

Children love to collect trading cards, especially for the sports of their nation: baseball in the U.S., soccer in Italy. Between 1760 and 1774 a similar fandom drove the Bolognese natural historian Ferdinando Bassi to commission a series of drawings done in pen and ink and wash: portraits of the greatest botanists. He was an eminent botanist himself and personally selected the luminaries to be depicted, from the ancients, such as Pedanius Dioscorides, Theophrastus, and Virgil, all the way up to his contemporaries and colleagues, like Linnaeus. The portraits were surrounded by ornate figured frames that made reference to the field in which the subject had earned distinction, sometimes including associated objects – some foliage here, a butterfly there. Among the artists summoned to contribute, one name in particular rose above the others: Gaetano Gandolfi. Out of the 135 ink and wash drawings now owned by the University of Bologna, 68 are by his hand. In these portraits honoris causa, which fall somewhere between picture ID and heraldic crest, one young man destined to become the most acclaimed artist of the late eighteenth-century Bolognese School revealed the stunning depth of his talent.