This celebration of horticulture provides a microcosmic visual representation of contemporary European understanding of botany, illustrating exotic, rare and fragrant plants from the New and Old worlds. Following on from Johann Theodor de Bry’s Florilegium Novum of 1612, this much enlarged version by de Bry's son-in-law Merian incorporates the original plates and augments them with an exquisite rendering of the successful Frankfurt merchant Johannes Schwindt’s (1580-1648) famed garden on Eschenheimer Gasse, engraved plans of garden design and a Wunderkammer of plant species.

"Florilegium renovatum is a much richer work than the earlier Florilegium novum, many illustrations from other sources having been added to de Bry's seventy plates. The allegorical title-page and the first thirty-two plates—illustrating parterres, urns of flowers and gardening tools, as well as plants—were drawn from De florum cultura by the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Ferrari, published in Rome in 1633. Merian reproduced Ferrari's plates, reversing them in the printing process, and sometimes adding butterflies or other features or combining figures from more than one illustration" (An Oak Spring Flora).

In keeping with other florilegia (see, for example, Collaert's early florilegium of circa 1590, lot 41), the plates are left to speak for themselves, without explanatory text, beyond the brief Latin captions which usually provide the name of the plant and sometimes a little more information; some captions name the botanist Caspar Bauhin (1560-1624), whose classification and nomenclature of plants anticipated Linnaeus. The final engraved plate depicts a rose which flowered in Prague in August 1647; another very similar version of this plate is known with the signature of Willem Hondt. The four leaves of drawings of fruits and seeds at the end are on the same paper as the interleaving.

The variety of plants is quite breath-taking; tulips, lilies, narcissi, irises, anemones, roses, sunflowers, many of which we now consider to be regular garden plants, and more exotic specimens such as cacti, peppers, and a yucca in Basel. The hand-colouring brings the plates to life in a remarkable way, in particular for the different varieties of tulip and iris. The colouring is very similar but not completely identical to other coloured copies of this edition, all of which were most likely presentation copies.

REFERENCES: Hunt 237 (Latin text), “Most copies seem to have variations in the plates”; Nissen BBI 274; Oak Spring Flora 16; VD17 14:074315H

PROVENANCE: M.A. Talbot, signature on flyleaf; notes from W.D. Parish, of the Librarians Association, regarding the book, concluding that it must have been the author's own copy, with a letter by him dated Selmeston, Polegate (Sussex), 7 December 1883, addressed "My dear Mount"

ESTIMATE: 100,000-150,000 GBP