Close-ups
Framed and on the wall
Frame and rooms are illustrations of how the print could look; the description says what is included.
1805 Handcolored Engraving of Unique Mammals from Bertuch's "Bilderbuch"
$135 (£100, €120)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- 1805
- Size
- 9.1 × 7.5 in (23 × 19 cm)
- Condition
- Good. Condition with some foxing and age-related wear, consistent with its age and due to handling over 200 years, adding to its patina. Original hand-coloured. Study the images carefully.
- Period
- Early 19th century
- Artist or book
- Bertuch
- Section
- Mammals
- Reference
- f_42836832
Five mammals on one sheet, an original hand-colored copper engraving of 1805 from Friedrich Johann Bertuch's Bilderbuch fuer Kinder (Picture Book for Children), published at Weimar. The plate is numbered LXX in the heading in German, French and Latin, and the figures are numbered 1 to 5 on the sheet.
The pangolin (Fig. 1) takes the middle of the sheet, climbing along a branch with its scales shaded in tawny brown and its long tail curling down the right side. Above it, a nine-banded armadillo (Fig. 2) stands on grass beside a bush, and a larger armadillo (Fig. 3) walks across the top left in the same pose. At the upper right a porcupine with a brush at the end of its tail (Fig. 5) turns its head toward the armadillo, and at the foot of the sheet a crested porcupine (Fig. 4) raises its long quills over a grassy bank.
The armadillos and the American porcupine are animals of the New World, set here beside two Old World animals to show the forms of armor and spines in mammals. The picture book was issued in twelve volumes between 1790 and 1830.
