"Secale"

This wonderful and unusual landscape botanical was included in Michael Bernard Valentini’s reissue of Matthaus Merian’s 1646 Der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft… A fascinating image of grain (wheat or rye) next to a large bread oven , with a far distant landscape beyond.

Valentini was a physician, a medical professor, a natural historian and a bibliophile.  He republished a variety of decorative and important natural history works that had been created during the preceding century, including the one containing this engraving published in 1719.  The prints from this edition of the work are so beautifully engraved that is it presumed that Valentini used the actual plates originally engraved by Merian, a justifiably renowned engraver of topographical views.

Hand colored copperplate engraving.
13 ½ x 8 ¼ inches sheet.
Very good condition with some transference as expected.