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

FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566)

Lot 111
12.07.2023 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 30 240
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 993207
Lot 111 | FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566)
Estimate value
£ 25 000 – 35 000
FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566)

Historia Stirpium Commentarii insignes. Basel: Officina Isingriniana, 1542.

First edition of ‘perhaps the most celebrated and most beautiful herbal ever published’ (PMM). Fuchs, along with Otto Brunfels and Hieronymous Bock, was one of the three German fathers of modern botany. While his main objective in writing the present work remained in the tradition of Dioscorides and subsequent herbals, describing plants for their medicinal use, Fuchs also gives accurate botanical descriptions of more than 500 plants, including 100 foreign plants, such as the first description of several recently-discovered American plants: maize, pumpkin, chili pepper, and snap bean. The detailed plant-portraits were highly influential. They were drawn from life, largely based on plants in Fuchs' garden at Tübingen, by Albert Meyer, transferred to the woodblock by Heinrich Füllmaurer, and cut into the wood by Viet Rudolph Speckle. Portraits of the artists appear at the end of the book. The woodblocks were reused in later editions of Fuchs's herbal, successfully compressed in the smaller-format editions, copied in the works of Bock, Dodoens, William Turner and others, and pirated in contemporary botanical works. Fuchs was ‘the first of the modern era to attempt to give a botanical glossary of terms, presenting it in an alphabetical order’ (Hunt), and he is the oldest source to be cited by Linnaeus in his ground-breaking Species plantarum, and several plant names conferred by Fuchs are retained today. Adams F-1099; Davies, Murray German 175; Grolier/Norman 17; Hunt 48; Nissen BBI 658; PMM 69; Pritzel 3138.



Folio (372 x 240mm). Greek, roman and italic types. 509 full-page botanical woodcuts, 3 smaller cuts in the text, by Veit Rudolph Speckle after Heinrich Füllmauer and Albert Meyer, full-page full-length portrait of Fuchs on title verso, portraits of the 3 artists on fff5r, printer's device on title, repeated on final verso, historiated initials in several sizes (minor worming at beginning and end, thumb-soiling to a few margins, some dampstaining to upper margin, scattered spotting). Contemporary blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards, spine lettered in ink, two fore-edge clasps (spine ends and corners expertly repaired). Provenance: ‘Andrea ?’ (erased inscription on title).





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Artist:Leonhart Fuchs (1501 - 1566)
Place of origin:Western Europe, Europe, Switzerland
Auction house category:Printed books
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
12.07.2023 – 12.07.2023
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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Conditions of purchaseConditions of purchase

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