Hortus Eyestettensis - The Bishop's Garden by Nicolas Barker 17th century botanical discount art beautiful full color plates gift for gardener

Hortus Eyestettensis - The Bishop's Garden, by Nicolas Barker. 2nd printing (with corrections) from 1995.
Gorgeous 17th century botanical art, taken from a famous garden. There are 120 illustrations, including 100 beautiful full color plates. These would be very suitable for framing...great paper quality. Then again, the book is gorgeous, and in great condition, please see below.

Book is a large, full-size 'coffee table' book, at 12" x 15". Published by Abrams.

"The Hortus Eystettensis is a codex produced by Basilius Besler in 1613 of the garden of the bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria. The Bishop, Johann Konrad von Gemmingen, commissioned Besler to produce the work, which he compiled over sixteen years, although the bishop died before its completion.
The work was named Hortus Eystettensis (Garden of Eichstätt). The emphasis in botanicals of previous centuries had been on medicinal and culinary herbs, and these had usually been depicted in a crude manner. The images were often inadequate for identification, and had little claim to being aesthetic. The Hortus Eystettensis changed botanical art overnight. The plates were of garden flowers, herbs and vegetables, exotic plants such as castor oil and arum lilies. These were depicted near life-size, producing rich detail. The layout was artistically pleasing and quite modern in concept, with the hand-colouring adding greatly to the final effect. The work was first published in 1613 and consisted of 367 copper engravings, with an average of three plants per page, so that a total of 1084 species were depicted. "(wikipedia)
Barker, the 20th-century librarian and bibliophile, extensively researched the original German illustrated book to bring together this partial reprint, which is only half the size of the first edition. Still, outside of a few rare-book libraries, this is the only version most of us will ever be able to own. Basilius Besler's early 1600s project, which brought together the work of many artists and crafts people, was a series of copper-plate engravings that are among the greatest botanical illustrations ever made, the colored copies being especially valued.

In very good vintage condition, pages are clean and without marks or highlights. The dust cover shows absolutely minimal wear, and is unclipped. The cover itself is dark blue, and looks like new...like the whole book, really. Absolutely gift-worthy!
(Gift-wrap option is available, even discount if Etsy is now hiding the icon...please look under FAQs.)

I LOVE botanical art book, and buy them any chance I get...some to keep, some to sell (reluctantly ;-) See what I currently have on offer here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EleanorsVintage?search_query=botanical+art

Heavy at almost 5 pounds.