Author: SWEERTS, EMANUEL
Title: Florilegium Pars Prima ; Pars Secunda…
Date: 1612
Price: GBP £ 16,000
Book Code: 227

Franfurt :A.Kempner,sumptibus Autoris (Pars Secunda,E.Kempffer],1612.

Folio (400 x 260mm),  Two parts in one volume, with engraved allegorical title, portrait, and 110 engraved plates with 560 figures of plants, interleaved with blanks,contemporary blind-stamped pigskin over wooden boards,brass catches, a very good copy on thick paper.

FIRST EDITION of one of the most attractive and popular of the early florilegia. The first part of the work is devoted to bulbous plants, and the second to miscellaneous beautiful and sweet- smelling garden plants.

Sweerts was born in Zevenbergen, Holland, in 1552, but spent the greater part of his life in Amsterdam, where he worked as an artist and as a merchant in objects d'art and rare or curious natural specimens. His inventory included a wide variety of cultivated and bulbous plant species. His coupling of professions was an auspicious one, for rare flowers were considered prized items by collectors, but unlike the other objects in the connoisseur's collection, their beauty was transient and could only be captured on paper or canvas.

Sweert's fame as a floriculturist spread far and wide, and a white iris was even named after him (the Iris sweertii) His name often appears in the correspondence of naturalists, botanists and floriculturists of the period, and he himself corresponded with many of them, including the floriculturist Matteo Caccini...

The Hapsburg emperor Rudolf Dispossessor of many magnificent collections, tried unsuccessfully to entice Sweerts to join his court in Prague as director of the royal gardens.

‘[In the dedication] Sweerts states that it was Rudolf II.who encouraged him to depict the more rare and unusual flowers in his collection and to have them etched in copper...'(Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, An Oak Spring Flora p.43)

The designer or engraver of the plates is unknown, although many of the plates are similar to de Bry's Florilegium.

Engraved title with faint signs of contemporary colour,some minor restoration.

Nissen BBI 1921:Hunt 196.