FLORE TROPICALE. WŁADYSŁAW MICHAŁ ZALESKI’S ICONOGRAPHIC COLLECTION AT THE BOTANIC GARDEN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW FACULTY OF BIOLOGY

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FLORE TROPICALE. WŁADYSŁAW MICHAŁ ZALESKI’S ICONOGRAPHIC COLLECTION AT THE BOTANIC GARDEN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW FACULTY OF BIOLOGY

Journal Title: Muzealnictwo - Year 2014, Vol 55, Issue

Abstract

The Botanic Garden of the University of Warsaw Faculty of Biology houses an interesting iconographic collection of 168 leather bound, embossed folders with approx. 32,000 graphs, figures and prints presenting plants from various parts of the world. It was created by a Catholic priest, patriarch of Antioch, traveller and amateur botanist, Władysław Michał Zaleski (1852–1925), who for nearly thirty years, while acting as an apostolic delegate to the East Indies, gathered illustrations of different species of flora, with particular consideration to tropical ones, after which he named the entire collection, Flore Tropicale. This text aims at presenting the current state of studies over the universally unknown history of the collection and the profile of its creator, taking into account the condition of the collection’s preservation and manners of its compilation and making it available. Following Zaleski’s death in 1925, his heir, Michał Stanisław Kossakowski, in co-operation with the National Museum in Warsaw, brought the collection from Rome to Warsaw, and presumably gave it to the Polish National Museum of Nature by the University of Warsaw; subsequently, it was transferred to the Department of Plant Systematic and Geography of the University of Warsaw. The collection survived the World War II hidden in a library of the School of Commerce. After the war it was returned to the University, to be later transferred to the University of Warsaw Botanic Garden, where it has been kept to date. For years, Flore Tropicale had been known only to specialists, and it had served as research and illustrative materials to generations of botanists. In 2012, thanks to support offered by the National Audiovisual Institute as part of the Digital Heritage programme (operational programme: Digitisation), the University of Warsaw Foundation and the University of Warsaw Botanic Garden accomplished the first stage of the project named Botanic Archives, consisting, among other things, in protecting, digitising and designing a part of Zaleski’s collection, and making it available online. With the support of the Archaeology of Photography Foundation (http://www.archeologiafotografii.pl/), 10% of the whole collection was digitised. The work was successfully completed with the provision of access to a database named FLORATHECA (http://www.ogrod.uw.edu.pl/floratheca). Since its arrival in Warsaw until today, Flore Tropicale has maintained its educational functions and it has been a valuable comparative, scientific and outreach material. Thanks to commitment and assistance of experts specialising in different fields, it can be further duly preserved, developed, digitalised and promoted.

Authors and Affiliations

Katarzyna Mączewska

Keywords

EP ID EP61897
DOI -
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