JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post in the History of LInes series.

This lovely river/tree appeared as a woodcut in Franciscus Maria Pecchius’ Tractatus de Aquaeductus, which was printed in 1670-1673.  It actually is nothing of the sort, as it depicts the construction of a dam in a busy river and forms part of a four volume work on the building of aqueducts–ranging from the selection of sites, to financial considerations and of course engineering and materials studies.  Pecchius’ work was the standard of its day, and it also was the cornerstone work on the (Roman) law of such things, presenting a jurisprudence that stretched back a thousand years.

But the way that the flow of the river is represented makes the image look very much like a tree, in a lovely, naive way.  It might seem a horrible sleight to a work of this importance, but, well, sop it goes–the images, removed from their appropriate context, take on a life of their own…