Exotic Butterfly with Wing Details, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1812

This antique butterfly print shows an exotic butterfly in four views, the upperside, the underside and two separate wings, on an original hand colored plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Insecten LVII.

The butterfly has wings with pointed, slightly hooked tips and short tails, colored in soft rose and silvery gray with small eye spots ringed in yellow and orange. The separate wings, lettered a and b, show the pattern of each side in more detail, and the underside at the bottom is shaded in gray with a row of orange eye spots. The species named in Bertuch's text has not yet been confirmed, but the delicate coloring makes this an elegant plate.

The plate comes from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch, published in Vienna under the title Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend. Its source is the celebrated Bilderbuch fuer Kinder, the picture book for children conceived and edited by Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar, whose plates were engraved afresh by Viennese engravers for this edition. Most plates carry their subject class and number in German, Latin and French across the top, so that the work could teach languages as well as natural history. Here the heading belongs to the series of insects, a class that allowed the engravers to show exotic butterflies, moths and beetles in striking color. The small engraved mark XIII.B.29 places the sheet in volume 13 of the Vienna edition, which corresponds to the seventh volume of the Weimar original, dated 1810, so this Vienna plate cannot be earlier than that.

It is a copperplate engraving, colored by hand with watercolor in the manner of the Weimar original. Bertuch drew his images from the best natural history books of his time, and the result is a lively, accessible record of how the natural world was understood around 1800. Single plates from the Bilderbuch are popular with collectors of antique natural history prints, and a group of related plates makes a handsome display in a study, library or hallway.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a few small spots and a small chip at the upper right edge, all confined to the margins; the image is clean.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.