Tulips – Emanuel Sweerts, 1612
€850
Engraving of tulips from the “Florilegium Amplissimum et Selectissimum“, made in 1612 by Emanuel Sweerts. Coloured by a later hand. Plate size: 26.7 × 17 cm.
Emanuel Sweerts (1552–1612) was an Amsterdam flower grower who astutely capitalized on the seventeenth century’s great demand for exotic plants. In 1612, at the request of Emperor Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire, he published an illustrated catalogue of all the plants he could supply: the “Florilegium Amplissimum et Selectissimum” — “in which are presented not only various kinds of the most excellent and never-before-seen flowers, but also numerous rare specimens.” Among them were dozens of tulip varieties, as depicted in this engraving.
His beautifully rendered bulbs captured the imagination, and the six editions of his book, issued between 1612 and 1647 in Frankfurt and Amsterdam, greatly contributed to the growing enthusiasm that would culminate in the famous Tulip Mania. Sweerts’s “very extensive and most select anthology of flowers” marks the beginning of the professionalization of flower cultivation in the Netherlands.
Literature: Claus Nissen – Die Botanische Buchillustration, nr. 1921
Price: Euro 850,-
