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 the "front matter" or "preliminaries" of a book, as the data on it and its verso (together known as the "title leaf") are used to establish the "title proper and usually, though not necessarily, the statement of responsibility and the data relating to publication".This determines the way the book is cited in library catalogs and academic references. The title page often shows the title of the work, the person or body responsible for its intellectual content, and the imprint, which contains the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication. Particularly in paperback editions it may contain a shorter title than the cover or lack a descriptive subtitle. Further information about the publication of the book, including its copyright information, is frequently printed on the verso of the title page. The first printed books, or incunabula, did not have title pages: the text simply begins on the first page, and the book is often identified by the initial words—the incipit—of the text proper. Maps were usually published in atlases. And atlases were books with titles. And, again, titles were individual pieces of art. A publisher emphazised the importance of a book he published with a spectacular entrée. Usually the pictures of an atlas title page pertained in general to the subject matter: Measuring instruments, mythologigal, astronomical, religious, scientific, allegorical hints and facts were united in a composition which depicted the pride of progress in knowledge. An atlas title page often is just one superb artistic and jubilant cartouche.