Flowering Aloe with Umbellifer, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1805

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows a flowering aloe beside a plant of the carrot family with a thick root. The heading reads Pflanzen LI and the Vienna mark V.B.2 is engraved at lower right.

Figure 1 is an aloe with a rosette of fleshy toothed leaves and a tall stem of drooping yellow and orange tubular flowers. Aloe juice, dried into a bitter resin, was one of the standard drugs of the period. Figure 2 is an umbellifer with finely divided basal leaves, a slender stem, open umbels and a dark tuberous root, with a single seed drawn at a; the species of this second figure is not stated here because it could not be confirmed. Together they make a clean, well balanced plate with the aloe as its striking center.

Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747 to 1822) began his Bilderbuch fuer Kinder in Weimar in 1790 as a picture encyclopaedia for young readers, and over four decades it grew to almost 1,200 plates on plants, animals, peoples, antiquities and the sciences. Its success led to other editions, and this sheet comes from the Vienna edition published by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French. The Vienna plates were newly engraved after the Weimar originals, keep the Weimar subject numbering in a heading in German, Latin and French, and carry a volume and plate number in the lower margin, here the mark V.B.2. Vienna volume V follows Weimar volume III, which appeared in 1798, so this plate was published no earlier than that. The plate is a copper engraving with original hand color, as the Vienna volumes were issued colored.

A plate like this suits a kitchen, study or garden room, and it hangs well in a group with other Bertuch botanical sheets of the same size. For a collector it is also a neat example of how the Bilderbuch traveled beyond Weimar in the years around 1800.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, show through of the text on the reverse and some scattered small spots.

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