The John Golden Library: Book Illustration in the Age of Scientific Discovery

The John Golden Library: Book Illustration in the Age of Scientific Discovery

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 47. Trew, Cristoph Jakob — Benedict Christian Vogel | The finest botanical work ever printed in Germany.

Trew, Cristoph Jakob — Benedict Christian Vogel | The finest botanical work ever printed in Germany

Auction Closed

November 22, 05:54 PM GMT

Estimate

50,000 - 70,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Trew, Cristoph Jakob — Benedict Christian Vogel

Plantæ Selectæ [–Supplementum Plantarum Selectarum] quarum imagines ad exemplaria naturalia. [Nuremberg:] 1750–1773; Supplement, [Augsburg:] 1790


1 volume, with the supplement bound in, folio (487 x 355 mm). Letterpress title to supplement, 10 engraved titles, letters in red, black, and gold, most with decuria numbers and dates altered in manuscript (as usual), 4 mezzotint portraits of Ehret, Haid, Trew, and Vogel, 110 handcolored plates by Johann Jacob Haid after Ehret, each with the first word of caption highlighted in gold; some staining to upper inner margins of pages 55-62, plates XI and XXXVI shaved with slight loss to image, CIX and CX with neat repairs to versos of upper blank margins, XL slightly soiled, LXIV with slight smudging to color, one or two short closed tears to margins, a few plates very lightly browned. Contemporary half-calf and marbled paper-covered boards, overall rubbed, spine panel largely separated from upper board but present. 


First edition — the Johannishus Bibliotek copy of one of the greatest eighteenth-century botanical color-plate books, with the very rare supplement by Vogel


The Plantae Selectae is considered by Nissen to be the finest botanical work ever printed in Germany. Trew, physician at Nuremberg and amateur botanist, admired the talent and skill of his younger countryman, Georg Ehret, a gardener and flower painter. This work is their major collaboration, although Ehret did contribute several drawings to Trew's Hortus nitidissimis.


Ehret is one of the great painters of flowering plants in the eighteenth century and all of the Plantae selectae were painted by him. Trew died in 1769, leaving the last three parts uncompleted. The work was finished by Benedict Christian Vogel, Professor of Botany at the University of Altdorf. The work was conceived as early as 1742 when Trew wrote to Christian Thran in Carlsruhe: "Every year I receive some beautifully painted exotic plants (by Ehret) and have already more than one hundred of them, which with other pieces executed by local artists, should later on, Deo volante, constitute an appendicem to Weinmann’s publication but will, I hope, find a better reception than his". In 1748, agreement was reached that Johann Jacob Haid from Augsburg should provide the engravings, and the first part appeared in 1750. Trew died before the text of the last three decuriae was written and before the illustrations of Decuriae IX and X were printed.


Including the first (of two) exceedingly scarce supplements.


REFERENCE:

Dunthorne 309; Great Flower Books 78; Hunt 539; Nissen BBI 1997; Stafleu & Cowan 15.131


PROVENANCE:

U. Frank (signed ink stamp) — Johannishus Bibliotek (bookplate) — Christie's London, 19 May 1998, lot 84 (undesignated consignor)