Author: TREW, Christoph Jacob
Title: Hortus Nitidissimis omnem per annum superbiens floribus sive amoenissimorum Florum Imagines
Date: 1772
Price: GBP £ 110,000
Book Code: 231

Hortus Nitidissimis omnem per annum superbiens floribus sive amoenissimorum Florum Imagines.... Der das ganze Jahrhindurch im schönsten Florstehende Blumengarten, oder Abbildungen der lieblichsten Blumen... herausgegeben von Johann Michael Seligmann.

Nürnberg, Auf Kosten der Seligmännischen Erben ,Ludwig Wirsing, [1750-] 1772-1786. 3 volumes bound in 1. Folio (506 x 343mm). Parallel text in Latin and German. With 155 splendid handcoloured engraved plates on 153 leaves (plates 60/61 and 121/122 combined on one leaf). Contemporary mottled calf gilt,elaborate gilt central device on upper and lower covers in the design of floral sprays held within gilt  frames,spines elaborately gilt in compartments,vellum gilt title-piece,hinges repaired.

A fine copy in a superb binding.

A beautifully preserved  copy of one of the finest German botanical works ever published. It is described by Dunthorne as 'one of the finest records of the cultivated flowers of the period' and by Blunt as 'one of the most decorative florilegia of the mid-eighteenth century. This copy has plates 1 to 143 and 12 more plates numbered between 147 and 179. Complete copies should have 180 plates. Complete copies however are of the greatest rarity.

Only one copy has been offered for sale at auction with 180 plates and the complete text. This was the celebrated De Belder-Mackenzie copy, which was sold by Sotheby's in London 10 May 2001, lot 19 for £500,000, exclusive of commission.  That same copy had been sold by Sotheby's 28 April 1987, lot 362 for  £308,000.

This superbly produced work belongs together with Besler's 'Hortus Eystettensis' to the finest German publications on botany.  It is a gallery of the most colourful and ravishing flowers that could be grown in European gardens, including tulips, hyacinths, ranunculi, and roses. On many of the plates, the opacity of the finely applied gouache makes the image appear as a painting rather than an engraved or etched plate. This is especially the case with tulips, which are akin to some of the great studies on vellum executed by botanical artists of the seventeenth century, the golden age of tulipomania.

The plates are made by the best artists of the period. Forty four are by Georg Dionysius Ehret, the foremost botanical artist of the 'Golden Age of Botanical Art'. Ehret's art combined botanical exactitude with great beauty and design, and his work has never been surpassed.  'The genius of Ehret was the dominant influence in botanical art during the middle years of the eighteenth century' (Blunt).Other artists are Johann Michael Seligmann, Johann Michael Stock, Adam Ludwig Wirsing after Barbara Regina Dietzsch, Johann Christoph Keller and others.

"Trew was a Nuremberg physician, anatomist, and botanist who at various times served as dean of the medical school at Nuremberg, as an Imperial Counsellor, and as personal physician to the Emperor. He was made a Palzgraf and served as patron of botanical (and anatomical) illustrators, filling roughly the same position in Germany as that occupied by Sir Hans Sloane in England" (Johnston 429). Trew was Ehret's lifelong friend and patron.  After London, Nuremberg was the most important botanical centre of the day. "All in all Trew's versatility as a collector, scholar and
Maecenas was outstanding in the Germany of his time. His English contemporaries and colleagues whose collections matched or surpassed his own are remembered to this day, notably Sloane, founder of the British Museum, whereas Trew's name is practically unknown in Germany today "(Calmann, 'Ehret flower painter extraordinary', p. 26).

Due to the long period of publication the 'Hortus nitidissimis...' is conspicuously absent from some of the major collections, or else represented only by fragments. The work is considered complete with 180 plates, however 10 more plates were issued of which only a handfull were distributed. The only copy in libraries to have the 190 plates is the copy in the Arnold Arboretum, of Harvard University.

Dunthorne 310 (calling for 180 plates on 178 leaves); Great Flower Books, p. 78 (180 plates); Pritzel 9500 180 plates), Stafleu TL2, 15.130 (190 numbered plates on 188 leaves); see also W.J. Tjaden, "Hortus nitidissimis', Taxon, 20 (4) 461-466 & Ludwig, 'Nürnberger naturgeschichtliche Malerei im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert',  pp. 151-180.