Coral, Sea Life

This superb, originally hand-colored engraving is from Georg Wolfgang Knorr’s Deliciae Naturae Selectae Oder Auserlefenes Natüralien-Cabinet or Selected Delights of Nature, or the Exquisite Collector’s Cabinet. The work was published in Dordrecht by Abraham Blusse and Son in 1771. The engravings are by or after Knorr, B. R. Dietschlin, G. F. Dietsch, and others.

“It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the beauty of some of Knorr’s illustrations exceeds that of their models and that in all cases the artist’s eye has transformed neutral, natural objects into permanent, formal aspects of humanism. The detail and accuracy of Knorr’s engravings not only made possible zoological classification but firmly established the distinction between fossils of organic origin and sports of nature.” (DSB)

Georg Wolfgang Knorr (1705-1761) was a German paleontologist, painter, draftsman, engraver, collector, and art dealer. He learned engraving from Leonhard Blanc and Martin Tyroff and worked on the illustrations in Jacob Scheuchzer’s Physica Sacra.