1551 Barley, Leonhard Fuchs, 2 woodcuts, hand colour, grain, botany

Leaf with 2 superb original handcolored woodcuts (recto and verso of one leaf).

FUCHS, LEONHARD

DE HISTORIA STIRPIUM COMMENTARII INSIGNES

Lvgdvni: Apud Balthazarem Arnolletum, 1552

Leaf size: 11.5 x 7.3 cm

Historically significant early leaf with two woodcuts from Fuchs' celebrated herbal, published nine years after the work first appeared, offered here with unusually careful hand coloring. 

The woodcuts have a clear aspect of modernity based on firsthand observation of the living plant and establish a standard of plant illustration which has been followed down to the present. The leaf on offer is from the scarce second Lyon edition, distinctive as the first printing of a smaller version of the woodcuts used in the first edition, issued in 1542 in Basel. The small editions of these works would have been used in the field, the kitchen, and the apothecary shop.

Light age toning to leaf.