FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566) - photo 1
FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566) - photo 2
FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566) - photo 3

FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566)

Lot 74
09.07.2025 10:30UTC +01:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 30 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1450496
Lot 74 | FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566)
Estimate value
£ 30 000 – 40 000
FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566)
New Kreuterbuch. Basel: Michael Isingrin, 1543.
First edition in German of ‘perhaps the most celebrated and most beautiful herbal ever published’ (PMM). Fuchs’s herbal represents a significant advance in medical botany. Informed by his humanistic training as a physician, it combines modern medical and botanical knowledge with that of Greek antiquity, especially Galen. Its scientific and medical approach, accurate descriptions and detailed illustrations, led to Fuchs being recognised as one of the three fathers of botany.

Fuchs prepared editions almost simultaneously in Latin (1542) and German (1543) in order to appeal to both a Latinate, scholarly and scientific audience across European and a lay audience interested in herbal applications and remedies or simply in the natural world. The German edition is augmented with an index of illnesses treatable with herbal remedies and 5 additional woodcut, thereby further enhancing the work’s popular appeal and utility.

His detailed plant-portraits were highly influential: they were reused in all later editions, copied in the works of Bock, Dodoens, William Turner, and others, and pirated in contemporary botanical works, a practice which Fuchs fought vigorously. The illustrations depict over 400 German and 100 foreign plants, including the first description of several recently-discovered American plants, such as maize, pumpkin, and chili pepper. The drawings were made from life by Albert Meyer, largely based on plants in Fuchs's garden at Tübingen, then transferred to the woodblock by Heinrich Füllmaurer, and cut into wood by Viet Rudolph Speckle. Portraits of the three artists are included in the work - one of the earliest such honours accorded to contributing artists. The woodcuts new to the German edition depict ‘Hunerbis’, ‘Spitziger Wegerich’, ‘klein Schlangen kraut’, ‘Knabenkrautweible, das mittel’, and ‘Kuchens chell’. Adams F-1107; Cleveland Collections 62; Nissen BBI 659; Pritzel 3139; Stafleu & Cowan TL2 1910; VD16 F 3243.

Folio (365 x 237mm). Full-page woodcut portrait of Fuchs on title verso, 517 botanical woodcuts (a number with light, old hand-coloring) by Viet Rudolph Speckle after Heinrich Fullmaurer and Albert Meyer, woodcut portraits of the three artists on BB7, woodcut historiated initials in several sizes (lacking final leaf with printer’s device, BB7 supplied and misbound after o4, repairs in first 8 leaves mostly marginal but effecting a few words, neat tear in q2 and z6, occasional stains and smudges, various repaired tears). Old vellum over pasteboard (recased, new endpapers); modern green-morocco-backed folding box. Provenance: a few plant identifications added in German in a contemporary hand – Christianus Dillenius, surgeon and physician of Solothurn (title inscription dated 1726, crossed through) – G M 1754 (initials on title) – Kenneth K. Mackenzie; Horticultural Society of New York (bookplate, blindstamp).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
09.07.2025 – 09.07.2025
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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