Iris Nostras Hartensis From Elisabethae Blackwell Herbarium Selectum Emendatum Et Auctum Centuriam.
Nuremberg, Germany: Christoph Jacob Trew, Circa 1754. Hand-coloured copperplate engraving. Some spotting and foxing on edges of print common to similar works of this age, two small localised areas of browning without loss of image; otherwise a very good example of 18th Century botanical illustration. This hand-coloured engraving depicts the sculptural yet delicate form of Iris Nostras Hartensis, an elegant iris commonly known as Blue Bird, Florentina Blue, Germanica ancient or Purple Queen. Illustrated and described by Elizabeth Blackwell in her vast two-volume work A Curious Herbal, this engraving is plate 69 of the 500 botanical illustrations the herbarium contained. The herbarium took Blackwell six years to complete, with the first volume being published in 1737 and the second a year or so later. This plate is a leaf from the German extended edition, Herbarium Blackwellianum, published in Nuremberg between 1750-1773. This edition's initiator and editor was Doctor of Medicine Christoph Jacob Trew, who called it Herbarium Blackwellianum emendatum et auctum [...]. Trew, along with Professor Christian Gottlieb Ludwig, expanded the original entries and employed new plant nomenclature established by Carl Linnaeus. Additional smaller illustrations were created and added by the Nuremberg painter and chalcographer Nikolaus Eisenberger.
Blackwell, a talented artist, initially created the herbal to raise money after her husband, unable to pay off his debts, was sent to prison. She was the first woman to publish a herbal in Europe. Item #4875
Price (AUD): $500.00