Single Greeting Card of Crocus Flowers From Hortus Eystettensis By Basilius Beseler of Prince Bishop Eichstätt’s Garden in Nuremberg C1640

Description

We at Philo Hooke Publishing adore the iconic collection of botanical plates in Hortus Eystettensis, some of which we chose to make this assemblage of Victorian and Vintage Greeting Cards. Hortus Eystettensis (The Garden at Eichstatt), produced by Basilius Besler in 1613 for the Prince Bishop Johann Konrad von Gemmingen, is quite possibly the most famous botanical record in history. The Garden was built up on eight different terraces around his palace on the Willibaldsburg, overlooking the Bavarian city of EichstŠtt. The codex depicted the many flowers, herbs, vegetables and exotic plants present in the Garden of Eichstatt. Hortus Eystettensis was revolutionary in that it was the first botanical collection that depicted botanicals in an aesthetically pleasing way with near life-size images that supported identification rather than the crude manner present in previous collections. This collection was very modern in concept, including extensively detailed hand-coloring. The plants names are written in Latin, showing a surprisingly accurate form of the later developed binomial nomenclature. This work was published twice more in 1640 and 1713 in Nuremberg.