Orta, one of the first to express admiration for the civilisation and learning of China, had first arrived in India in 1534, as part of the entourage of the Viceroy de Sousa. In 1998, as the Haskell F. Norman copy, it made $48,000; in the Freilich sale (Sotheby's New York on January 10 and 11) it made $50,000 (£34,480).
Tractado de las drogas, y medecinas de las Indias orientales...
Tractado de las drogas, y medecinas de las Indias orientales..., published in Burgos in 1578 and here seen in a later 16th Spanish goatskin binding (dated 1593 in a lettered cartouche to the fore-edge) bearing the gilt stamped arms of the Marques de Moya, is nominally the work of Cristóbal de Acosta, a Portuguese soldier and physician, but in his woodcut-illustrated book on drugs and the medicinal plants of Asia he readily admits his debt to the work of García da Orta, a Lisbon physician.
