![]() Exotic flowers were imported from the Netherlands, Americas, and the Ottoman Empire. Each garden was devoted to flowers of a different country. Eight separate gardens were constructed at Willibaldsburg castle, the residence of Johann Konrad von Gemmingen, the Prince Bishop of Eichstätt. Work on the first comprehensive botanical garden devoted to flowering plants in Germany was begun in 1596, under the direction of the German botanist and physician Joachim Camerarius the Younger. “The designs are really impressive, and the invention rarely flags the rhythmic pattern of the roots, the calligraphic possibilities of lettering, are fully explored and utilized and the dramatic effect of the whole is enhanced by the noble proportions of the plates, which, when colored make decorations that remained unrivaled until the publication nearly two centuries later of Thornton’s Temple of Flora.” Wilfred Blunt, noted author of The Art of Botanical Illustration an Illustrated History, writes of the Besler Florilegium, The first botanical in history to portray flowering plants as objects of beauty, Hortus Eystettensis deviated from non-aesthetic and awkward representations of preceding publications that focused on plants as herbal subjects and set the standard for great flower folios of the following centuries. Over 1,000 varieties of flowers are depicted in 367 exquisitely engraved and colored plates. ![]() The first large-folio natural history botanical, Basilius Besler’s magnificent work, Hortus Eystettensis (Garden of Eichstätt), is the earliest pictorial record of a specific garden and the oldest of all of the great botanicals. ![]() ![]() 16, White auricula, Purple auricula, Yellow auricula Original Antique Print 22" x 16-1/2" (approximate) ![]()
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