Plate 8 "Aquilegia" from "Florilegium"

• Artist: Emanuel Sweert
• Medium: Engraving- By Anthony Kempner
• Publish Details: Amsterdam: 1612, original hand coloring
• Measurements: Approx. 15 3/4 x 10 in. (sheet), 18 x 13 in. (mat)
• Condition: Very good condition- minor foxing in image, typical of prints this old
  

Sweert’s florilegium stands as one of the earliest and most celebrated examples of botanical illustration published in the Netherlands. Issued in 1612 by the Dutch publisher Emanuel Sweerts, the work contains little accompanying text beyond a multilingual catalogue of the illustrated plants in Latin, German, French, and English. As noted by Wilfrid Blunt and William T. Stearn, the publication also functioned as a commercial sales catalogue, advertising plants available for purchase from Sweerts’s shop in Frankfurt-am-Main.

The vivid and decorative botanical images exemplify the appeal of the seventeenth-century florilegium, a genre devoted more to the beauty and arrangement of flowers than to scientific originality. Although many of the plates were adapted from earlier sources, including Pierre Vallet’s 1608 embroidery pattern book, the compositions remain highly refined and visually engaging. Sweerts’s work therefore reflects the close relationship between natural history, printmaking, commerce, and the decorative arts during the early modern period.