Hortus sanitatis - photo 1
Hortus sanitatis - photo 2
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Hortus sanitatis

Lot 25
02.02.2024 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 44 100
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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Archive
ID 1129643
Lot 25 | Hortus sanitatis
Estimate value
$ 40 000 – 60 000
Hortus sanitatis. Mainz: Jacob Meydenbach, 23 June 1491.

Unrestored first edition of "the most important medical woodcut book printed before 1500," heavily illustrated and with interesting early provenance and notes (Hunt). The Hortus sanitatis is a greatly expanded Latin version of Peter Schoeffer's 1485 Gart der Gesundheit, an illustrated natural history encyclopedia with a focus on the uses of the natural world to foster human wellbeing. In particular the parts on animals, birds, fishes, and minerals have been substantially enlarged. While the copious woodcuts are copied in part from the Gart, many new designs have been added to the supplementary sections, increasing the number to over 1,000. Among them features what is probably the first depiction of oil collection: petroleum is described and a woodcut shows it pouring from a rock and being collected in a vessel. In addition to many plants and animals—from the prosaic (worms, snails, frogs) to the fantastic (mandrakes, unicorns, merpeople)—the woodcuts contain many compelling and charming scenes of Medieval life and craft. These iconic images were much copied, not only in other scientific books but even making their way into other genres, such as Grüninger's illustrated edition of Horace (in which Maecenas is attacked by giant garlic cloves obviously copied from the woodcut here).

In Sir David Attenborough’s Cambridge University Library exhibition The use and abuse of books 1450-1550, Private lives of print, he wrote of this work that it “is the first natural history encyclopaedia. Today we consult such works to discover more about wonders of the world we live in, but readers at the end of the fifteenth century had more practical concerns. They believed that the natural world had been created by God to be of use to humanity and that animals and plants were there to provide cures for diseases. So this encyclopaedia is entitled Hortus sanitatis, 'The garden of health.' Two earlier such books had dealt with plants, but this one, compiled by Jacob Meydenbach, adds sections on mammals, fish, birds, and rocks, and concludes with a description of the diagnostic qualities of urine, presumably so that readers might discover the sources of the remedies they needed. Many of the plants Meydenbach describes are immediately recognizable, but there are some where fantasy has taken over. The mandrake, in truth, has a near magical ability to relieve pain. Its wrinkled forked root, however, was believed to represent a man. Furthermore, if it was pulled up it would emit a shriek so appalling that it would kill the collector. Meydenbach provides the solution: the collector should take a dog with him and tie its lead to the plant. Then, after stopping his ears to shut out the lethal shriek, he should beat the dog so that it flees and so pulls up the root … For most of us, however, the charm of this wonderful book rests in its woodcut illustrations. Many of the plants, while delightfully stylized, are easily recognizable. But it is the human figures, surrounded by birds or standing by rivers containing not only fish but mermaids, that take us back most vividly to the birth of scientific natural history.”

This copy has had a long life of use. It bears various annotations in Swedish by an early reader, as well as the impressions of pressed flowers in De urinis. The flyleaf is filled with medical notes on herbal remedies, and an inscription dated 1642 on the final leaf says a sweet goodbye to the owner's friend, a citizen of the Danish city of Aarhus. It was later in the collection of Johan Nordenfalk Jr, the President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. HC *8944; BMC I, 44 (IB. 343-4); BSB H-388; Schreiber 4247; Early Herbals 45; Davies, Murray German 193; Goff H-486.

Chancery folio (288 x 200mm). 451 leaves (of 454, without final blank and bound without text-only bifolium v3.4 of De Urinis, as the early manuscript foliation is continuous). 48 lines and headline, double column, table in 3 columns. Type: 155G, 92G. Xylographic title, 7 full-page woodcuts and more than 1,000 column-width woodcuts, a few partially colored, foliated in an early hand (minor marginal worming at beginning and end, light dampstaining at beginning and to a few margins throughout, a few leaves lightly browned or finger-soiled, and a few short tears just into text). 16th-century German blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards, bevelled on inner edge, engraved clasps, lettered in manuscript on spine (repair at lower right of upper board, some splits, foot of spine defective). Provenance: contemporary and 16th–early 17th century annotations in two or three hands, in Swedish and Latin, often with vernacular plant names given (some trimmed by the binder) – two pages of medical notes on rear free endpaper, with a list of diseases and their herbal remedies – Paul Platth (inscription dated 1642 giving date of publication and cost, with a note presenting the book to a friend: "Goodbye most honorable and sweet of Aarhausians, foster my endeavors; Paul Platth gives thanks to you always") – P. J. Hyckerstrom (later ownership inscription) – Johan Nordenfalk Jr, 1830-1901, president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts (ownership inscription dated 1855).
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