Vindobonae (Vienna), ex officina Krausiana, 1763.
Folio, (5) ll., vii pp., (5), 284 pp., (3) ll., (1) bl.l., 1 engraved frontispiece, (4) ll., 184 plates including 6 folding. 1 browned quire.
a-b4, c-c2, [1] – 284, [1] leaf, 184 plates et 1 frontispiece (engraved emblematic frontispiece of Native Americans holding up a banner containing a map of the West Indies surrounded by Caribbean flowering plants and animals, engraved title vignette, and 2 headpieces, 184 engraved plates after Jacquin, including 6 folding, woodcut head-and tailpieces). Complete.
Quarter-sheepskin, spine ribbed, lemon morocco lettering-piece, untrimmed, some wear to extremities of the spine and corners. Contemporary binding.
378 x 240 mm.
First edition of Jacquin’s first major publication and his first illustrated work.
Dunthorne 148; Hunt 579; Nissen BBI979; Pritzel 4362; Sabin 35521; Stafleu & Cowan TL2 3243 (‘an important complément to the 1760 Enumeratio and should always be consulted with it’).
One of the earliest detailed accounts of American botany.
In 1752, the Dutch physician and botanist Gerard van Swieten, an old friend of Jacquin’s father, invited the young man, aged 25 at the time, to come study in Vienna. The young man showed such great promise in his botanical studies that he attracted the interest of Francis I, Maria Theresa’s husband, while working in the Schönbrunn gardens. The Emperor soon commissioned him to produce a systematic catalogue of the plants in the gardens, and in 1754 asked him to voyage to the West Indies to collect tropical plant specimens and live animals for the gardens at Schonbrunn and the royal Menagerie.
Jacquin spent the next four years exploring the Antilles and part of South America diligently amassing plants, natural history specimens, and ethnographica. ‘Ants damaged Jacquin’s herbarium material, and he therefore supplemented his descriptions and notes on the new species with watercolour drawings’ (Blunt and Stearn, p.175).
The project was a great success, and Jacquin’s work provided the first solid foundation for European knowledge of the natural history of this area.
“In 1754, at the age of 27, a botanist born in Leiden, Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, made his first expedition to Central America. He was collecting seeds and plants for the Imperial gardens at Schonbrunn in Vienna. He took with him his Dutch head gardener and two Italian zoologists, and initially they concentrated on Grenada, Martinique, and Domingo, then under the control of the French. Von Jacquin sent the others home, in succession, laden with plants, but was himself captured by the British and kept prisoner for over a year. On his release, he remained in America, visiting Cuba and Jamaica to collect more plants before returning to Vienna in 1759. His books are among the finest of the period: ‘Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia’ was first published in 1763” as here (Martyn Rix, “The Golden Age of Botanical Art,” p. 114).
The superb illustration features 184 plant plates, including 6 folding, and a frontispiece showing two Amerindians holding up a banner containing a map of the West Indies surrounded by Caribbean plants and animals.
The plates were engraved by J. Wagner after the author’s drawings. Jacquin had previously published his short Enumeratio of newly-discovered Caribbean plants; “the 1763 publication is an important complement to the 1760 Enumeratio and should always be consulted with it” (Stafleu).
“The magnificent plates engraved according to drawings by the author “are excellent for the period”.
An exceptional untrimmed copy printed on large Holland paper.
See less information
