[Mattioli, Pietro Andrea / Meyerpeck, Wolfgang]. Original large-format woodblock of Pyrethrum verum (bertram).

€ 13,500.00

Original woodblock carved by the editor and printmaker Wolfgang Meyerpeck (ca. 1505-80), based on a design by Giorgio Liberale (ca. 1527-80), to form one of the illustrations for the 1565 Latin edition of Mattioli's seminal Dioscurides commentary. It shows the bertram root (also known as Anacyclus pyrethrum, Spanish chamomile, Mount Atlas daisy, or Akarkara), a species of flowering plants in the daisy family Asteraceae, native to Mediterranean Europe and parts of North Africa, but also grown in eastern Germany. It was widely used as a medicinal herb, especially for toothaches.

Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501-77) was already a famous doctor and botanist when he was called to Prague in 1554/55 to serve as private physician to Archduke Ferdinand II. In 1564 he became private physician to the newly elected Emperor Maximilian II, a position in which he served until 1568, when he returned to Italy. During his time in Prague, Mattioli's Commentary, first published in Venice in 1544, was translated both into Czech and German, published in 1562 and 1563 respectively; a new Latin edition was prepared in 1565. Although most of Meyerpeck's woodcuts were already used in the 1562 Czech edition, this illustration for bertram first appears in the 1565 Latin version. The blocks were preserved for the exceptional quality of their craftsmanship, to be superseded only by copper engraving. Many of these blocks were reused by the French botanist Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-82) in his "Traité des arbres fruitiers" (1768).