Abraham Munting | Phytographia curiosa, Amsterdam, 1713, contemporary calf

Abraham Munting

Phytographia curiosa, exhibens arborum, fruticum, herbaru,, & florum icones, ducentis & quadriginta quinque tabulis ad vivum delineatis ac artisiciosissime aeri incisis. Amsterdam: Rod. & Gerh. Wetstein, 1713

First Latin edition, second issue, folio (394 x 242mm.), letterpress title in red and black, half-title, engraved dedication leaf to Dr Benjamin Fagel incorporating his coat of arms, additional engraved title with elaborate emblematic surround bound in as frontispiece, 2 engraved headpieces, second repeated once, by J. Baptiste [Adam] after Jan Goeree, woodcut initials and tailpiece, 245 engraved plates of plants, all but one unsigned but some or all possibly by Joseph Mulder, 5 plates with binomial classifications added in pencil in an eighteenth-century hand (possibly the hand of Elizabeth Cobbold), contemporary calf, spine with raised bands in seven compartments, later red morocco label to second compartment, speckled edges, worming at lower margin affecting approximately first third of textblock, emblematic frontispiece slightly shaved at outer margin, later plates with browning and occasional marginal dampstaining, joints starting to split, extremities rubbed

[with:]

4pp retained draft of autograph letter signed, no date, from "E. Cobbold" (very plausibly the poet and polymath Elizabeth Cobbold, 1767-1824), to an unknown addressee, thanking him "for the two jeux d'Esprit—one the Georgiad I had seen before—the other one an illustrious Personage visiting the vault at Windsor... a most infamous libel bearing in itself incontrovertible Proof of its Falsehood", and "enclos[ing] two short Poems on the plan of the rejected Odes which I wrote before that Volume was announced for Publication" (the volume referred to could be Cobbold's An ode on the victory of Waterloo, 1815), 8vo, creased

Munting's Phytographia curiosa is the most extraordinary botanical work of the pre-Linnean period, with "illustrations that are remarkable for their elegance and originality" (Oak Spring Flora). This is the second issue of the Latin edition of the author's Naauwkeurige beschryving der aardgewassen (1696) based, in part, on his Waare Oeffning der Planten (1672). Abraham Munting "was an eminent professor of botany and chemistry at the University of Groningen...[he also] founded one of the most extensive botanical gardens of the period, known as the 'Paradise of Groningen', which he directed from 1658 up until his death in 1683. Munting wrote a number of works on medical-botanical topics, but [the present work]...enjoyed particular success, at least in part due to the novelty of the plates, which, in a radical departure from...the traditional florilegium, presented its plant species against charming landscape backgrounds...The illustrations are remarkable for their elegance and originality." (Oak Spring Flora, p. 174).

PROVENANCE:

William Beeston M.D. (1672-1732), physician, botanist, and founder of the Ipswich Garden: signature; thence by descent to his great-nephew Dr William Beeston Coyte (1740-1810), member of the Linnaean Society, and author of Hortus botanicus Gippovicensis (1796), an annotated catalogue of his great-uncle's botanic garden: armorial bookplate; ?Elizabeth Cobbold (1767-1824, poet, pioneering geologist, and polymath): autograph letter signed by "E.Cobbold" loosely inserted; thence by family descent

LITERATURE:

Great Flower Books 123 (1702 issue); Hunt 404 (1702 issue); Nissen BBI 1429; Oak Spring Flora 45; STCN 29854704X