Famous First Edition: First printing of 7,500 numbered copies, our review copy is an early number 2313. This magnificent set presents a valuable piece of botanical literature. In line with Dr Besler's original intentions, this facsimile unfurls the garden to a wider audience and captures it for posterity. The large beautifully decorated Latin text has unusual typesetting of the period and a clear layout. Antique-look paper stock has been use, and colour plates gleam at the highest quality. The entire plant from flower tip of a crocus to bulb and roots are depicted by an artist in page after pages of thousands of examples. When Prince-Bishop Johann Konrad von Gemmingen (1593/95-1612) undertook a radical renovation of the Willibaldsburg Castle, overlooking the Altmühl River in Eichstätt, Bavaria, he also created a surrounding palatial pleasure garden of magnificence and grandeur. To preserve the garden for future generations and provide an 'evergreen' record of its contents, compiling plants from all four seasons and presenting them in that order, he commissioned the garden's director, Nuremberg apothecary Basilius Besler (1561-1629), and a team of engravers to immortalise its treasures in print. The resulting Hortus Eystettensis, published in Nuremberg in 1613 and containing 367 hand-coloured plates and detailed descriptions, was a work of meticulous execution and spectacular diversity, and remarkably expensive for its time. As the garden contained a variety of plants imported from exotic locales, the three volumes exhibited a remarkable range, covering a total of 90 families and 340 genera. The book is seen as a milestone in the art of botanical illustration and described by Carl Linnaeus as an "incomparable work". Besler's catalogue long outlived the gardens, which were destroyed in 1634 by invading Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War. However, a lengthy redevelopment project at the historic site has culminated in the opening of the modern Bastion Garden in 1998, containing many of the plants shown in the Hortus Eystettensis. Offering high-quality reproductions of these arresting illustrations, based on the copy of the Hortus Eystettensis at the University Library of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, this facsimile edition is accompanied by detailed plate descriptions of each plant's botanical, pharmaceutical, and symbolic significance and an appendix of further essays which place the garden and the book in their historical contexts. Famous First Edition: First printing of 7,500 numbered copies. Hardbacks in golden cloth binding, UK delivery only, three volumes in matching golden slipcase with colour front cover illus of glorious tulips, satin pagemarkers. 24.3 x 30.4cm, 6.54 kg, 1096 pages, text in English, French and German. Brand new from Taschen.
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