Florilegium renovatum et auctum, Das ist : Vernewertes und vermehrtes Blumenbuch, von mancherley Gewächsen, Blumen...

Article description

Folio. 14 pp. (includes the engraved fronti-spiz and the title page), 1 large double page hand colored engraving (the bird's eye view of the famous garden of Johann Swint, a merchant from Frankfurt) and 176 (32+144) fine hand colored engravings depicting flowers and other botanical illustrations after Ferrari and by de Bry. The first 32 plates were added by Matthaeus Merian after I. B. Ferrari (De florum cultura), which were published in Rome 1638 first. Matthaeus Merian reversed them in the printing process and added etched inscriptions, as well somestimes butterflies or other features. These plates are depicting gardens, garden tools, flower arrangements, plants, etc. Then the Florilegium continues with the 144 engraved plates by de Theodore de Bry, of which six of them are folded plates. All engravings are finely hand coloried throughout. The copy is complete with all the engravings. The de Bry plates are numbered 1-50, 50a, 51-142, the last engraved plate (143) plate depicts a rose, which flowered in Prague in August 1647. The engravings by Theodore de Bry are numbered: 1-50, 50a, 51-142, of which the plates 85, 86, 113, 116, 123 and 142 are folded plates. Among the entirely new plates contributed by Merian are these six doublepage full-sheet illustrations of exotic plants. A very beautiful, later hand colored complete copy of Matthaeus Merian's expanded edition of his father-in-law's 1612 Florilegium novum. Contemporary brown calf, the spine in six compartments with embossed title:,New Vermehrt's Blumenbuch', as well richly glit and floral decorated. The printed title page with old ownership inscription in ink, minor tiny repairs to some of the edges of the first leaves, occasionally minor stains or tiny spots in the paper. Overall a very good copy in its original binding.

Pritzel 1446, Wütherich Bd. II, No. 18