Bry and Merian | [Florilegium renovatum et auctum], 1641[–1647]

BRY, JOHANN THEODOR DE AND MATTHAEUS MERIAN

[Florilegium renovatum et auctum: Das ist: Vernewertes und vermehrtes Blumenbuch.] Frankfurt: Matthaeus Merian, 1641[–1647]

Folio (315 x 205mm.), engraved allegorical title, woodcut headpiece, type-ornament headpiece, 2 woodcut initials, with blank B⁴, 177 engraved plates: full-sheet engraved view of the garden of Johann Schwinden, the dedicatee, 32 engraved plates (numbered 1–32) of parterres, urns of flowers, gardening tools, and flowering plants by Merian after G.B. Ferrari, 144 fine engraved plates (numbered 1–49, 50A, 50–142, [143]; six full-sheet) of flowering plants by de Bry and Merian after de Bry, Merian, Emanuel Sweerts, and Caspar Bauhin, eighteenth-century vellum, slightly extending fore-edges, manuscript title on spine, plain endpapers, red edges, black half morocco folding-case, lacking letterpress title, A³ remargined at bottom and with tear, A⁴ repaired with minor loss of text, gathering of garden design plates (5–8) bound upside-down, plate 112 slightly shorter, a few scattered marginal stains, binding very lightly soiled

A FINE COPY OF THE GERMAN-TEXT ISSUE. This work is the expanded edition of the 1612 Florilegium novum by Matthaeus Merian's father-in-law. "Florilegium renovatum is a much richer work than the earlier Florilegium novum, many illustrations from other sources having been added to de Bry's seventy plates. The allegorical title-page and the first thirty-two plates—illustrating parterres, urns of flowers and gardening tools, as well as plants—were drawn from De florum cultura by the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Ferrari, published in Rome in 1633. Merian reproduced Ferrari's plates, reversing them in the printing process, and sometimes adding butterflies or other features or combining figures from more than one illustration" (An Oak Spring Flora).

Although Nissen calls for 177 plates, copies with the full suite of engravings are very rare. The majority of copies are lacking at least one plate among 50A, 142 (evidently issued in 1644), or the terminal rose of Prague.

LITERATURE:

Blunt, p.100; cf. A Cleveland Herbal 203 (Latin text); De Belder sale 93; Hunt 237 (Latin text); An Oak Spring Flora 16; Nissen BBI 274; Pritzel 1299 note