antique prints, maps and watercolors

Daniel Rabel & Maria Sibylla Merian (Five Tulips Plate VI) Paris 1771. Framed $2,250.00

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Plate VI

These lively tulips with old hand-coloring is from Daniel Rabel and Maria Sibylla Merian’s work entitled: Histoire Generale des Insectes de Surinam et de toute l’Europe… Troisieme edition revue, corrigee et considerablement augmentee par M. Buch’oz… a laquelle on a joint une troisieme parti qui traite des plus belles fleurs. The work was the combination of Merian and Rabel’s artwork by the French botanist Pierre-Joseph Buchoz and published in Paris in 1771 by Louis Charles Desnos.

The work is an unacknowledged fourth edition of Daniel Rabel’s Theatrum Florae. It includes all 69 of the plates that are present in the earlier editions. Rabel’s name was omitted from the work and it is only in the last century that Rabel has been acknowledged. Wilfred Blunt in The Art of Botanical Illustration, p 114, wrote that Rabel was one of the two greatest French botanical artists of the 17th century, noting that his work was ‘consummate in its perfection.’

Beautiful descriptions of broken-stripe or “Flame” tulips so revered during the tulip craze of the 17th century.

Hand colored copper plate engraving
Archivally framed with gold leaf frame measuring 24” x 19” finished size.
Excellent condition.