Plantarum Horti Eystaettensis. Classis Verna.

Title

Plantarum Horti Eystaettensis. Classis Verna.

Description

Titlepage from the famous plant book of Hortus Eystettensis, 1 edition. With allegirical figurative scenes: Pnacea and Flora.

ca. 1613

Artist

Besler (1561-1629)

Basilius Besler (1561–1629) was a respected Nuremberg apothecary and botanist, best known for his monumental Hortus Eystettensis. He was curator of the garden of Johann Konrad von Gemmingen, prince bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria. The bishop was an enthusiastic botanist who derived great pleasure from his garden, which was the only important European botanical garden outside Italy. The work was named Hortus Eystettensis (Garden at Eichstätt). The emphasis in botanicals of previous centuries had been on medicinal and culinary herbs, and these had usually been depicted in a crude manner. The images were often inadequate for identification, and had little claim to being aesthetic. The Hortus Eystettensis changed botanical art overnight. The plates were of garden flowers, herbs and vegetables, exotic plants such as castor-oil and arum lilies. These were depicted near life-size, producing rich detail. The layout was artistically pleasing and quite modern in concept, with the hand-colouring adding greatly to the final effect. The work was first published in 1613 and consisted of 367 copper engravings, with an average of three plants per page, so that a total of 1084 species were depicted.The work Hortus Eystettensis is the short title of a plant book by the Nuremberg apothecary Basilius Besler (1561-1629) with 367 full-page copper plates, which was first published in 1613 at the instigation of the Eichstätt Prince-Bishop Johann Konrad von Gemmingen (1561-1612). The subject of the work is the plants of the Hortus Eystettensis garden in the Renaissance style at Willibaldsburg Castle in Eichstätt. Archbishop Gemmingen, in office from 1595, commissioned the physician and botanist Joachim Camerarius (1534-1598) to expand the castle garden. After Camerarius' death, the Nuremberg apothecary Basilius Besler (1561-1629) continued his work. The work shows plant species from all over the world, including 349 species that occurred in Germany, 209 of southern and south-eastern European origin, 63 Asian, 9 African and 23 American species. Whether these plants all grew in the prince-bishop's garden at Willibaldsburg remains to be seen. The book contains almost all cultivated plants known at the time. "Wild plants" such as grasses and mosses, which were already described at the time, are not included, so the book is not a botanical textbook. Nor is it a pharmacopoeia, as only 250 of the plants described were recognized as having medicinal properties. Rather, the book is an important contribution to the prince-bishop's cosmopolitan representation beyond the small principality. The plants are only depicted in natural size where the book format allowed.

Historical Description

The title page is one of the most important parts of an atlas or book. It appears at the beginning of the book and describes the actual title and the context or subject of the book or atlas. The title page often shows the title of the work, the person or institution responsible for its intellectual content, and the imprint, which includes the name and address of the publisher as well as the date of publication. Further information about the publication is often printed on the back of the title page.The first printed books or incunabula had no title pages: the text simply began on the first page, and the book was often identified by its opening words – the incipit. Maps were usually published in atlases, and atlases were books with titles. Even here, title pages were individual works of art. A publisher emphasized the importance of a book by introducing it with a spectacular entrée.Usually, the images on an atlas title page referred to the subject matter: measuring instruments, mythological, astronomical, religious, scientific, and allegorical references and facts were combined in a composition that represented the pride of scientific and intellectual progress. An atlas title page is often no more than an outstanding artistic and expressive cartouche.