Hercules Beetle and Lantern Fly, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1805

This antique insect print shows a Hercules beetle, a lantern fly, a mantis, a grasshopper, a cicada and a cockchafer with its grub and pupa, on an original hand colored plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Insecta IV.

The huge Hercules beetle with its long curved horns dominates the top of the plate, and below it the lantern fly spreads its orange and yellow wings with large eye spots. Around them are a slender mantis, a green winged grasshopper, a cicada with clear wings and a cockchafer shown with its curled white grub and its pupa. It is one of the earliest insect plates in the work, and its crowded, colorful design is very appealing.

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 I.B.40 places the sheet in volume 1 of the Vienna edition, one of the volumes issued in Vienna in the first years of the nineteenth century.

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 spots and faint show through from the reverse; the image is bright and clean.

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