Beschreibung:

FUCHS, LEONHARD. De historia stirpium commentarii insignes. Basel: Michel Isingrin 1542. Folio, 362 x 240mm. (14 1/4 x 9 3/8 in.), eighteenth-century mottled calf, covers gilt-panelled with central gilt cartouche, spine gilt, edges mottled in stripes of green and red, upper cover detached, lower outer joint split, title slightly creased and with short marginal repaired tear, six or seven marginal tears or repairs, a few letters on A6r abraded (apparently from an attempt to efface offsetting from facing page) and supplied in ink facsimile, small rust-hole through l4 affecting woodcut on verso, minor creasing to N3, N4 and R5, tightly bound, the root of plant depicted on mm6r disappearing in gutter, light stain to bb1v, occasional slight staining from the coloring, some offsetting or showthrough of coloring . Roman type (preface in Italic), German plant names in Gothic type, printer's woodcut device on title and verso of final leaf (fff6v, recto blank) full-page portrait of the author holding a flower on verso of title, 506 FULL-PAGE BOTANICAL WOODCUTS and three smaller woodcuts in the text, by Veit Rudolph Speckle after Heinrich Füllmaurer and Albrecht Meyer, three small woodcut self-portraits of these artists on recto of errata leaf (fff5), THE WOODCUTS AND DEVICES DELICATELY COLORED BY A CONTEMPORARY HAND, numerous eight-line and smaller historiated white-on-black woodcut initials. FIRST EDITION OF "PERHAPS THE MOST CELEBRATED AND MOST BEAUTIFUL HERBAL EVER PUBLISHED" (PMM). WHILE OTTO BRUNFELS AND HIS ILLUSTRATOR HANS WEIDITZ WERE THE PIONEERS OF MODERN BOTANICAL ILLUSTRATION, AND HIERONYMUS BOCK WAS THE FIRST TO DESCRIBE THE LIFE CYCLE OF PLANTS AND TO EMPLOY A SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICATION SCHEME, FUCHS, WHO BORROWED JUDICIOUSLY FROM BOTH, DESERVEDLY SHARES WITH HIS TWO FELLOW "FATHERS OF MODERN BOTANY" THE CREDIT FOR HAVING OPENED UP A NEW ERA IN BOTANICAL RESEARCH AND ILLUSTRATION. THE SHEER SCOPE OF THE WORK--OVER 400 GERMAN PLANTS AND 100 FOREIGN PLANTS ARE ILLUSTRATED--, THE BEAUTY OF THE WOODCUTS, AND THE RANGE AND ACCURACY OF FUCHS'S SCHOLARSHIP MAKE IT AN EQUAL AND IN MANY VIEWS A SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT TO BRUNFELS'S HERBARAUM VIVAE EICONES (FOR AN INTERESTING COMPARISON OF THE TWO BOOKS, SEE BLUNT AND RAPHAEL, PP. 124-126). ALTHOUGH FUCHS BASED MUCH OF HIS TEXT ON THE TRADITIONAL DIOSCORIDEAN CORPUS, HE ENRICHED IT WITH COGENT PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS THAT COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN THE PRODUCT OF EXTENSIVE WORK IN THE FIELD. HIS "INTEREST IN PLANTS WAS NOT WHOLLY PHARMACOLOGICAL: HE DILATES UPON THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE, AND HE IS ENOUGH OF A TRUE BOTANIST TO DESCRIBE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PLANTS, THEIR HABITS, HABITATS, AND FORMS" (PMM). THE INCONVENIENCE OF LISTING THE PLANTS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER OF THEIR GREEK NAME IS COUNTER-BALANCED BY THE INCLUSION OF THE FIRST PRINTED GLOSSARY OF BOTANICAL TERMS, AND ABOVE ALL BY THE DETAIL AND ACCURACY OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS, WHICH INCLUDE THE FIRST DEPICTIONS OF APPROXIMATELY FORTY PLANTS, INCLUDING SEVERAL RECENTLY DISCOVERED AMERICAN SPECIES, AMONG THEM MAIZE (WHICH FUCHS BELIEVED TO HAVE ORIGINATED IN TURKEY) AND THE PUMPKIN. UNLIKE WEIDITZ'S LITERAL PORTRAITS, THE WOODCUTS REPRESENT AN IDEALIZED FORM OF EACH PLANT, AND IN SOME INSTANCES THE PLANT'S DIFFERENT STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT, OR DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF A SINGLE SPECIES, ARE SHOWN EMERGING FROM THE SAME ROOT. THE ILLUSTRATIONS SERVED AS MODELS NOT ONLY FOR THE MANY LATER EDITIONS, INCLUDING A NUMBER OF "POCKET-SIZED" OCTAVO OR DUODECIMO VOLUMES, BUT ALSO FOR THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BOTANICAL WORKS OF BOCK, DODOENS, WILLIAM TURNER AND OTHERS. "DESIGNS BASED ON THE PLATES WERE USED IN COUNTLESS WORKS DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH AND EVEN INTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES, AND THE ACTUAL BLOCKS EMPLOYED IN THE FOLIO EDITION OF DE HISTORIA STIRPIUM MADE THEIR FINAL APPEARANCE AS LATE AS 1774 IN SALOMON SCHINZ'S ANLEITUNG ZU DER PFLANTZENKENNTNISS ." (BLUNT, P. 56). "HERE AGAIN, AS WITH BRUNFELS, THE VALUE OF THE ILLUSTRATIO