Our website uses cookies to improve your browsing experience. In order to use this website optimally, we ask you to agree to our use of cookies.
Johann Theodor de Bry
1612 [-1614]
In-folio, 306 x 195 mm, fine engraved title (with an architectural monument framing a garden with a fountain at the centre. Pots of lilies and cyclamens and swags of fruit adorn the structure.). Dedication in German, dated 1611, 'Ad Lectorem' and 'Brevis Descriptio'. Followed by 90 engraved plates = 78 numbered plates + 12 unnumbered plates (of which two on double-page). Minor damp staining in the margin of the beginning of the volume, some minor worm holes, a few incidental minor stains, some engravings with a short margin, on the whole a very good copy. Many non-European plants appear in the Florilegium novum... Other plates show examples of the floral 'monstrosities' that were cultivated in Baroque gardens. Vellum binding, old boards, new spine, marbled endpapers
Ref. Oak Spring Flora 10 ; Hunt 197 ; Johnston 158 ; Nissen BBI, 272 (calls for 78 + 7 plates) ; Pritzel 1299 (calls for 78 + 9 plates) ; Plesch p. 161. First edition of one of the most famous and influential of early florilegia, here with excellent, unworn plate impressions. 'The unsurpassed artistry for which de Bry was renowned throughout Europe emerges clearly in the plates of this florilegium. Each has been carefully composed, and the confident lines of the engraving, with their fine shading, denote the hand of a true master.' Provenance: ex dono Maria Ursula Schreunerin, 1697