Skink and Gray Lizards, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1805

This antique lizard print shows the skink together with a male and female gray lizard and a fourth lizard seen from above, on an original hand colored plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Amphibien XIII.

The skink at the top is painted a striking rose pink with smooth, overlapping scales, a color that makes it the eye catcher of the plate. Below it the male and female gray lizard are shown in profile with their spotted backs, the female with a yellow belly, and at the bottom a fourth lizard is shown from above with outspread legs. The skink was famous in the period as a medicinal remedy, which is why it often headed such groups.

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 amphibians, a class in which Bertuch, following the naturalists of his day, grouped snakes, lizards, crocodiles, frogs and even seals. The small engraved mark VII.B.9 places the sheet in volume 7 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. The plate is signed by Jacob Xaver Schmuzer, one of the Viennese engravers who worked on this edition. 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 pale stain at the upper right near the title and a small chip at the right edge; the figures are clean.

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