Leonhart Fuchs | De historia stirpium, Basel, 1542, "perhaps the most celebrated and beautiful herbal ever published"

Leonhart Fuchs

De historia stirpium commentarii insignes. Basel: Michel Isengrin, 1542

Folio (358 x 242 mm). COLLATION: α⁶ β⁸ A-Z⁶ a-z⁶ 2a-3f⁶: 469 leaves (only, of 470: lacking 3f6 with printer's device). Title-page with large woodcut device, woodcut portrait of Fuchs to verso of title, plain wooduct illustrations, 3f5 with woodcut portraits (errrata on verso), final leaf with portraits (errata on verso), many woodcuts captioned in ink in a nineteenth-century hand, a few manuscript captions/minor textual corrections in an early modern hand, later vellum-backed boards, endleaves renewed, housed in modern slipcase, title restored at foot with small amounts of facsimile, some dampstaining, extremities rubbed, wear to slipcase

"PERHAPS THE MOST CELEBRATED AND BEAUTIFUL HERBAL EVER PUBLISHED" (Printing and the Mind of Man). Fuchs, together with Otto Brunfels and Hieronymus Bock (for the latter, see lot 21), was one of the three German fathers of modern botany. Although Fuchs's main objective was medicinal (he was professor of medicine at Tübingen), he also gives accurate botanical descriptions. The illustrations show over 400 German plants and 100 foreign plants, including the first description of several recently-discovered American plants, such as maize (mistakenly thought by Fuchs to originate in Turkey), pumpkin, chilli pepper, and snap bean. The illustrations themselves were drawn from life by Albert Meyer, mainly using examples found in Fuchs's garden. Füllmaurer transferred the images to woodblock where they were cut by Speckle; all three of these illustrators are named and depicted in the book. The woodcuts, with their elegant economy of style and lack of shading, lend themselves beautifully to the delicately applied colours.

PROVENANCE:

Winkler Bücherei, Innsbruck: bookplate

LITERATURE:

USTC 602520; VD16 F 3242; PMM 69; Horblit 33b; Hunt 48; Nissen BBI 658; Stafleu TL2 1909