Walking Leaf and Chinese Lantern Fly, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1805

This antique insect print shows the walking leaf, the Chinese lantern fly and the small European lantern fly, on an original hand colored plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Insecten XX, a plate of remarkable insects.

The walking leaf at the top is drawn with green, leaf shaped wings and body so perfectly veined that it is hard to tell from foliage, a marvel of camouflage that delighted readers of the period. Below it the Chinese lantern fly shows its long, upturned snout, blue green forewings dotted with pale spots and bright orange red hindwings tipped in black. At the foot of the plate the tiny European lantern fly is shown in two views for comparison.

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 VI.B.34 places the sheet in volume 6 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 shows its age, with a diagonal crease at the upper left corner, a brown stain in the image beside the upper figure and another in the lower margin; the coloring of both figures remains strong.

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