Close-ups
Framed and on the wall
Frame and rooms are illustrations of how the print could look; the description says what is included.
Set of 7 Antique Prints of an Egyptian Cobra and other Snakes and Reptiles
£755 ($1,005, €890)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- Not stated
- Size
- 9.2 × 6 in (23.4 × 15.3 cm)
- Condition
- Good. General age-related toning. Minor wear and soiling. With original protective sheet attached. Blank verso. Please study image carefully.
- Section
- Reptiles and amphibians
- Reference
- f_34631472
Seven plates of snakes and lizards from the Dictionnaire universel d'histoire naturelle, edited by Charles Henry Dessalines d'Orbigny and published in 1861. Each sheet is a hand-colored engraving headed "Dict. Univ. d'Hist. Nat." and "Reptiles", with the species named in French and Latin beneath.
Most plates pair two animals, one above the other, in a small landscape. The set includes an Egyptian cobra with its hood spread in yellow-green, a boa-like snake coiled on a branch, a slender green snake in foliage, and banded snakes with red, black and white rings. Smooth-bodied lizards and slow-worms fill several plates, and a pair of heavy-bodied vipers with dark diamond markings appears on another.
The prints are a good sample of how a French natural history of the 1860s organized the reptiles by order, with each animal drawn with a few plants or rocks to set the scene.
D'Orbigny was a French botanist and geologist who identified many of the flowering plant species returned to France from his brother's collecting journeys through South America.
