Trew, Christoph Jakob

[Hortus nitidissimis omnem per annum superbiens floribus.  Nuremberg: Seligman, 1750–86]



Folio (21  1/8  x 14  1/2  in.; 536 x 368 mm).  124 fine handcolored etched and engraved plates after Georg Dionysus Ehret, Barbara Regina Dietzsch, Nikolaus Friederich Eisenberger, and others, by Johann Michael Seligmann, Johann Michael Stock, and Adam Ludwig Wirsing, plates numbered 1–136 including double-plate 121–122(lacking 14, 17, 23, 42, 44, 51, 73, 78, 81, 94, 126, and 130); title-page and text not present, plate 1 creased, rubbed and frayed at edges, remainder of plates generally clean and bright with occasional marginal finger soiling or minor creasing.  Half calf; worn. 

Dunthorne 310; Great Flower Books 144; Pritzel 9499; Stafleu TL2 15.130

A superb collection of beautifully colored plates from the Hortus nitidissimis.  Christoph Jakob Trew was a physician at Nuremberg and an amateur botanist.  While his great Plantæ selectae (1750–73) is justly celebrated for its scientific accuracy as much as its attractiveness, the Hortus nitidissimis is an overwhelming aesthetic triumph, certainly one of the most sumptuous flower books ever produced.  While botanical detail is not neglected, the artists working on this  project concentrated on depicting flowering plants at the height of their beauty and luxury.  The present volume is a bound collection of plates with no preliminaries.  It comprises Tulips, Hyacinthus, Narcissus, Lillo-narcissus, Rosa, Iris, and others. 

As the Hortus nitidissimis had an unusually long publishing span, it is often absent form the major collections or represented only by fragments.  The present collection contains plates dated as early as 1741 and as late as 1778.