Basilius Besler
(German, 1561-1629)
Four Besler Botanicals from the Hortus Eystettensis, circa 1613 (4)
hand colored engravings on laid paper
Later hand colored engravings from the first edition published in two issues (one with descriptive text printed on the verso and one without) all four here are those with text; limited to 300 copies. Published by Nuremberg and Eichstatt. The plates were laid together in accordance to the seasons within which the flowers appeared; the four plates here are decidedly mid-spring Tulips, and late spring to early summer Lillies.
20 x 16 1/2 in. (51 x 42 cm)
Provenance:
Property from a Private Collector Santa Barbara, California.

Footnote:
"The Hortus Eystettensis is itself apaper museum, a pictorial record of the flowers grown in the greatest German garden of its time, that of the Prince Bishop of Eichst?tt, Johann Conrad von Gemmingen. As part of a radical building programme at his seat, the Willibaldsburg castle overlooking the river Altmuhl, the Prince Bishop created an extensive pleasure garden comprising eight separate gardens, each staffed with its own gardeners and each filled with flowers from a different country, imported through the international centres of Amsterdam, Antwerp and Brussels; the Prince Bishop boasted of having tulips in 500 colours. Painted halls and pleasure rooms further adorned the gardens. The great German botanist, Joachim Camerarius the Younger, advised the Prince Bishop on the gardens early design, and it may have been Camerariuss own manuscript florilegium which first suggested the creation of a pictorial record of the Eichst?tt gardens to the Prince Bishop. After Camerariuss death, a Nuremberg apothecary, Basilius Besler, advised on the gardens, and it was he who undertook immortalising the garden in detailed and delicate engravings for the year-round enjoyment of his patron and for posterity in the Hortus Eystettensis. Flowers were drawn from life with flower boxes sent to Nuremberg so that artists there could work from fresh specimens, with the result that these plant portraits serve both as documentation and pleasure; here is a garden made perennial and evergreen"

All four prints are uniformly matted and framed. 32 1/2 x 29 in (83 x 74 cm.) Considerable toning and spotting overall as well as some moisture staining to both lower and side margins. Engravings remain bold in detail and brilliant in color.