FUCHS, LEONHART | Histoire des plantes de M. Leonhart Fuschsius, avec les noms Grecs, Latins, & Fráçoys. Paris: Pierre Haultin, 1549

FUCHS, LEONHART

Histoire des plantes de M. Leonhart Fuschsius, avec les noms Grecs, Latins, & Fráçoys. Paris: Pierre Haultin, 1549

Small 8vo (170 x 105 mm). Letterpress title with Haultin's symbolic woodcut device, 13 pp. index, over 500 full-page botanical woodcuts in text, contemporary handcoloring throughout, with Greek, Latin, and French plant species names and Latin description in single column, some early ink annotations; thumbsoiling, green inks mostly browned, pigment occasionally lifting, with losses to approx. 30 leaves from ink burn, lacking terminal leaf (K4). Contemporary brown calf, covers ruled in gilt; sympathetically rebacked, extremities a bit rubbed (particularly corners), endpapers refreshed. 

The scarce reduced edition of Fuchs, with contemporary handcoloring

The first edition was printed in Latin as De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes (Basel: Michael Isingrin, 1542), and has been described as "perhaps the most celebrated and most beautiful herbal ever published" (PMM). Only about 150 copies of the first edition are known to survive, with even fewer of this French imprint: OCLC locates only two copies in the United States.