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BOCK, Hieronymus (1498-1554). De stirpium, maxime earum, quae in Germania nostra nascuntur. Translated from German by David Kyber. Strasbourg: Wendel Rihel, 1552.
The first Latin edition of a major contribution to German botany.
4to (232 x 170mm). Woodcut portrait of Bock and 568 woodcuts of plants, by David Kandel (occasional marginal dampstain reaching into the text of some gatherings, Conrad Gessner’s name obscured by a 16th-century hand, and old repair in VV8). Contemporary blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards, one pair of brass catches (boards each with a repaired crack, corners worn, lacking clasps, small punctures from earlier bosses, some soiling). Provenance: Fulda, Franciscan Friars (title inscription, light marginalia) — Landau (armorial stamp on pastedown and title inscription, in an earlier hand, of Laurentius Landau).
Bock is with Otto Brunfels and Leonhard Fuchs one of the three founders of modern German botany. He made such significant contributions to Brunfels’s work that Brunfels encouraged him to publish his own botanical book. As Bock states in his introduction, his aim was to describe plants in a systematic manner that was based on his own observations. This departure from Dioscorides and other predecessors, and his remarkably clear descriptions and discussion of 'families' of plants, laid the ground-work for later systems of classification. Bock was 'probably the first botanist of the 16th century to feel the necessity for some sort of classification' (Hunt). There are three principal editions of this work, all published by Wendel Rihel. The first edition, with German text and no illustrations, was published in 1539. The second edition in German appeared in 1546 and was the first to include illustrations in the text (477 woodcuts). The present edition is the most complete, with nearly one hundred additional woodcuts, and is enhanced with valuable prefatory texts by Conrad Gessner and Benoit Tixier, including a bibliography of botanical works. While many of the woodcuts are copies from Fuchs and Brunfels, a number are original designs by David Kandel, often with charming peripheral depictions of people, animals or insects (including a unicorn under a date palm). Kandel was sent as a young artist to Bock to make the illustrations, and clearly worked from living or dried specimens in a number of instances, while also depending on earlier illustrations of Fuchs editions and Weiditz. This copy was earlier in a Franciscan collection; a diligent friar, perhaps in the 17th century, has obscured the name of Conrad Gessner, a protestant, by carefully modifying the letters in his name with pen and ink. Perhaps the same friar also censored the woodcut illustrating the wine grape, in which a drunk is passed out under a vine with his pudendum in plain sight (p.1056). Hunt 66; Nissen BBI 183; Stafleu & Cowan 576.
The first Latin edition of a major contribution to German botany.
4to (232 x 170mm). Woodcut portrait of Bock and 568 woodcuts of plants, by David Kandel (occasional marginal dampstain reaching into the text of some gatherings, Conrad Gessner’s name obscured by a 16th-century hand, and old repair in VV8). Contemporary blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards, one pair of brass catches (boards each with a repaired crack, corners worn, lacking clasps, small punctures from earlier bosses, some soiling). Provenance: Fulda, Franciscan Friars (title inscription, light marginalia) — Landau (armorial stamp on pastedown and title inscription, in an earlier hand, of Laurentius Landau).
Bock is with Otto Brunfels and Leonhard Fuchs one of the three founders of modern German botany. He made such significant contributions to Brunfels’s work that Brunfels encouraged him to publish his own botanical book. As Bock states in his introduction, his aim was to describe plants in a systematic manner that was based on his own observations. This departure from Dioscorides and other predecessors, and his remarkably clear descriptions and discussion of 'families' of plants, laid the ground-work for later systems of classification. Bock was 'probably the first botanist of the 16th century to feel the necessity for some sort of classification' (Hunt). There are three principal editions of this work, all published by Wendel Rihel. The first edition, with German text and no illustrations, was published in 1539. The second edition in German appeared in 1546 and was the first to include illustrations in the text (477 woodcuts). The present edition is the most complete, with nearly one hundred additional woodcuts, and is enhanced with valuable prefatory texts by Conrad Gessner and Benoit Tixier, including a bibliography of botanical works. While many of the woodcuts are copies from Fuchs and Brunfels, a number are original designs by David Kandel, often with charming peripheral depictions of people, animals or insects (including a unicorn under a date palm). Kandel was sent as a young artist to Bock to make the illustrations, and clearly worked from living or dried specimens in a number of instances, while also depending on earlier illustrations of Fuchs editions and Weiditz. This copy was earlier in a Franciscan collection; a diligent friar, perhaps in the 17th century, has obscured the name of Conrad Gessner, a protestant, by carefully modifying the letters in his name with pen and ink. Perhaps the same friar also censored the woodcut illustrating the wine grape, in which a drunk is passed out under a vine with his pudendum in plain sight (p.1056). Hunt 66; Nissen BBI 183; Stafleu & Cowan 576.
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