Jacquin, Nikolaus Joseph, Baron von.

Plantarum rariorum horti caesarei schoenbrunnensis descriptiones et icones. Vienna: C.F. Wappler, 1797-1804



first edition, number 19 of perhaps 200 copies, 4 volumes bound in 3, folio (465 x 320mm.), 500 fine hand-coloured engraved plates (volume 4 plate 123 is supplied in old watercolour), some folding, after Johann Scharf and Martin Sedelmayer, contemporary diced russia gilt, some leaves in volume 4 extended at inner margin, bindings rebacked

Dunthorne 156; Great Flower Books, p. 61; Nissen BBI 987

the rarest and most beautiful of all jacquin’s works, with exceptionally fine colouring. ABPC only records the De Belder copy at auction.

Described by Blunt and Stearn as "Jacquin’s greatest work on cultivated flowers", this is the rarest and most beautiful of Jacquin’s large botanical iconographies, of which fewer than 200 copies were published. It is a repository of rare and exotic species, many South African, which were grown in the Schönbrunn imperial botanic gardens.

"Schönbrunn under Jacquin’s direction soon became one of the most celebrated gardens of its day. In due course, gigantic glasshouses were erected where, as a French traveller relates, ‘tropical birds, flying among the palm-trees, bamboos and sugar-canes, gave the illusion that the visitor had been transported into the heart of America’… After the loss of many plants in the Schönbrunn conservatories during a severe frost in 1780, an effort was made to obtain new plants by expeditions to foreign countries. Thus in 1786 Franz Boos and George Schall, two of the Schönbrunn gardeners, were dispatched to Mauritius to bring back a consignment of tropical plants. They reached Cape Town in May 1786. The following year Boos went on to Mauritius, returned to the Cape in January 1788, with his plants and then proceeded to Vienna where he arrived in July 1788. Schall remained at the Cape for twelve years, during which time he sent frequent consignments of bulbs and seeds to Vienna; this accounts for the immense number of Cape plants figured in Jacquin’s works" (Blunt & Stearn, pp. 175-177).

The imperial garden was described by another visitor in 1805 as follows: "It is therefore to be considered as a botanical treasure chamber, as a truly imperial repository of living plants, which flourishes most splendidly under…the scientific leadership of the master of the great botanists of Europe" (H. Lack, Garden Eden. Masterpieces of Botanical Book Illustration, no. 43).