Fruit Moths with Caterpillar in a Cut Apple, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1815

This hand colored copper engraving of small moths that damage fruit and plants, with a caterpillar tunnelling through a cut apple, comes from the later Vienna edition of Friedrich Justin Bertuch's Bilderbuch. The apple, sliced open to show the path eaten through its core, is the memorable image and very probably shows the codling moth, although the species are identified here by appearance only.

The heading reads Insecten LXXXVIII and Insectes LXXXVIII, and the mark at lower right reads XVIII.B.38. At the top a mass of larvae feeds in a woolly web above a cluster of eggs on a leaf, and around the apple are the moths at natural size and enlarged, together with their caterpillars and pupae, each stage lettered for the accompanying text.

The later volumes of the Vienna edition, published in Vienna under the title Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnügen der Jugend, continued the reprint of Friedrich Justin Bertuch's Weimar Bilderbuch fuer Kinder in volumes of fifty plates each, with German and French headings in place of the three languages of the earlier plates. The Weimar original, the great illustrated encyclopaedia for children issued by the Landes Industrie Comptoir from 1790 onwards, was followed subject for subject, and the plates were sold colored by hand. The small mark at the foot, giving the Vienna volume and plate number, is what distinguishes these sheets from the Weimar issue. As a copper engraving colored by hand for a teaching book, it combines scientific ambition with a direct, appealing clarity. This sheet comes from Vienna volume XVIII, which places it circa 1813 to 1818.

A plate like this suits a study, a library or a collection of early natural history, and it hangs well in a group with other Bertuch insect and microscope plates, where the variety of subjects and the consistent format of the series come into their own.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, faint show-through of text, a vertical crease in the right margin and a small spot near the apple; the image is otherwise clean.

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