Amaryllis

This alluring and rare folio, botanical engraving is from Christoph Jakob Trew’s work Hortus Nitidissimus omnen per annum superbiens floribus, sive amoenissimorum florum imagines… In publicum edidit Iohannes Michael Seligmann. The work was published in Nuremberg by Johann Joseph Fleischmann between 1750 and 1772.

The engravings feature beautiful original watercolor and gouache hand-coloring. The work was begun by J. M. Seligmann but based on the collection of drawings owned by Trew. Forty of the plate for the work were completed by Georg Dionysius Ehret, one of the greatest botanical artists of that era. The other illustrations were by artists J.C. Keller, Professor of Drawing at Erlangen University, the court painter Nikolaus Eisenberger, and A. L. Wirsing.

Hortus Nitidissimus was one of the finest published florilegia. The work featured the colorful flowers cultivated in European gardens including tulips, hyacinths, ranunculi, and roses. It is one “of the finest records of the cultivated flowers of the period” (Dunthorne), and “a valuable florilegium of the plants, especially the florists’ plants of the gardens of that time” (Great Flower Books).