Basilius Besler

The Seventeenth century is commonly regarded as the golden age of botanical illustration. Among the many florilegia produced, the most impressive was Basil Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis. Besler, an apothecary of Nuremberg, was entrusted with the care of the gardens of the Prince Bishop of Eichstätt, Joseph Conrad von Gemmingham, around the end of the sixteenth century. The gardens surrounded the Bishop's residence on the Wilibaldsburg of Eichstätt and Besler was presented with 3000 florins to cover the cost of producing a book to illustrate all the plants growing there.

Besler's project stretched over sixteen years, the major part being completed between 1610-12. Six engravers worked on the 374 plates which illustrated 1000 plants, over 600 different species. During the years before publication many individual sheets were given away by the Prince Bishop as gifts to his friends and fellow botanical enthusiasts. The two volume Hortus Eystettensis was finally published in 1613, one year after the death of the Prince Bishop.

The book is arranged by season, each plant being shown life size, several to each plate. Weeds, wildflowers and garden plants are often combined in such a way as to use up all the available space with engraved titles adding to the decorative element. New and exotic plants were also illustrated -tobacco, sorghum and potatoes- alongside more ordinary vegetables including aubergines, tomato and red and green peppers. Bulbous plants were particularly well represented, the eleven tulip plates catering for the phenomenal amount of interest in this plant. No botanical details are shown on the plates and this work should be seen as more of a decorative Florilegium than a scientific endeavour.

Whereas sixteenth century herbals were primarily concerned with herbs for their usefulness, the florilegia of the seventeenth century focused on the decorative qualities of the flowers they depicted. This crucial difference in representation had it’s origin in a new attitude towards gardening whereby the cultivation of ornamental plants began to take precedence over that of vegetables and medicinal plants. In the fashionable gardens of Europe, newly discovered flowers from America and tropics were planted alongside species from the Ottoman Empire, providing spectacular displays of a vast range of exotic specimens hitherto unknown in Europe.

None of the original plates or drawings remain and it is difficult therefore to judge the plates as examples of Besler's skill as a draughtsman. These plates are amongst the earliest botanical engravings on copper and their style owes much to the rather formal woodcuts of previous years. Each plate was accompanied by a brief description and list of references to other authors. The gardens at Eichstatt did not long survive the publication of the Hortus Eyestettensis. Von Gemmingham's successor was no great plant lover and the gardens quickly deteriorated; at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War they were unrecognisable and by 1633 a vegetable plot.