The Drawings of Mushrooms by Claude Aubriet

 In 1730, noted painter and miniaturist Claude Aubriet created ninety-seven color plates that depicted a wide-range of mushrooms. Because of their high quality, the paintings were used by numerous scientists from the period, including Carl Linnaeus. In this book, Xavier Carteret and Aline Hamonou-Mahieu reproduce Aubriet’s stunning images, describing the rarity of color illustrations of mushrooms before the end of the eighteenth century. They reveal that these drawings reflected the period’s lack of understanding of fungi, when the structure, reproduction, and general existence of mushrooms remained a mystery. A welcome volume for mycologists and for fans of Aubriet, this book underlines the decisive role scientific illustration has played throughout history.