Plantae Selectae

£37,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

one of the greatest 18th-century botanical books One of the greatest eighteenth-century botanical books, with 100 fine hand-coloured plates after paintings by Georg Dionysius Ehret. Georg Dionysius Ehret, the greatest botanical artist of the 18th century, was unrivalled in his ability to 'achieve realism, majesty, ineffable colour, all in one breathtaking look' (Hunt). He was born in Heidelberg in 1710, and originally worked as a gardener, practising drawing in his spare time. His artistic abilities led him into the service of a Regensburg banker named Leskenkohl who had commissioned him to copy plates from van Rheede tot Draakestein's Hortus indicus malabaricus (1678-1693). It was during this period that Trew met Ehret. 'Trew was a Nuremberg physician, anatomist, and botanist who at various times served as dean of the medical school at Nuremberg, as an Imperial Counselor, and as personal physician to the Emperor. He was made a Pfalzgraf and served as a patron of botanical (and anatomical) illustrators, filling roughly the same position in Germany as that occupied by Sir Hans Sloane in England' (Cleveland Collections p.397). Trew was to remain a friend and patron of Ehret's throughout his life, and by 1742 the germ of what was to become the present publication was already under discussion when Trew wrote to Christian Thran in Carlsruhe 'Every year I receive some beautifully painted exotic plants [by Ehret] and have already more than one hundred of them, which with other piece

• Binding: Hardcover

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