VOLCKMANN, GEORG ANTON. 
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BOTANICAL MANUSCRIPT WITH 245 WATERCOLOURS OF WILD AND GARDEN FLOWERS OF SILESIA Sciagraphia et Icones Plantarum Indigenarum, maxime vero Exoticas jum turissimo labore collectarum à vivis depicta additis synonymis et locus natalibus singulari industria et penicillo … A Very Fine Herbarium and Botanical Folio with 245 Full Page Watercolours with Manuscript Descriptive Text Leaf to Each Drawing. Finely executed and carefully coloured drawings with manuscript captions and descriptive manuscript text leaf to each watercolour. Extensive manuscript with 245 Watercolours of Garden Flowers; Wild Flowers and Plants of Silesia. Legnica/ Silesia circa 1690/1700 , Folio (320 x 220 mm). with Manuscript title, 254 Latin descriptions all but 10 on separate leaves, mostly interleaved, 245 watercolours on 245 leaves, Later calf with gilt printed morocco label on cover: “Hr Ct Dubois. Buttes”, Title page a little stained and mounted at time of binding, overall in excellent condition. The 245 full-page watercolours executed in gouache and opaque colours are titled in ink with latin names Extensive, yet unrecorded botanical manuscript on the Silesian wild and garden flora by the well - known Silesian physician and naturalist Georg Anton Volckmann (1664 - 1721), who is still known today as the author of the geological work ‘Silesia Subterranea’, printed in 1720, which includes elaborate sketches of fossils including Carboniferous plants from the Lower Silesia region. Georg Anton Volckmann was the son of the botanist Israel Volkmann (1636 - 1706), whose fundamental collection ‘Phytologia magna’ he continued. The series on the Silesian wild and garden flora, comprising a total of 10 volumes was written between 1666 and 1716, but never printed; the manuscripts are now in the Saxon State and University Library (SLUB) Dresden: Mscr.Dresd.B116-125. The renowned Liegnitz physician Dr. Israel Volckmann and subsequently his son Dr. Georg Anton Volckmann wrote the manuscript in their own hands and illustrated the work with plant depictions, sometimes accompanied by insects, after nature in watercolours and opaque colours. The names commonly used in older botanical literature and the medicinal uses of the plants are recorded on the reverse of the nearly 3.600 leaves. The work was intended for publication but would have been too expensive because of the many copper plates required. This manuscript might be a condensed or shorter version of these 10 vols. also intended to be published which however never happened. Georg Anton Volckmann was born in Liegnitz/ Legnica in 1663, studied medicine (where is unknown; only his stay in Padua is known) and settled as a doctor in Legnica/Silesia around 1687. His father was the doctor Israel Volckmann, born on 6 December 1636 in Nikolstadtnear Legnica, where his father was a priest from 1630-1633, attended the town school in Legnica, then the Elisabeth gymnasium in Wroclaw, studied medicine and philosophy in Leipzig from 1655 to 1659 and, after a stay in Italy, settled as a doctor in Legnica in 1660 or 1661, his mother was Ursula Marianne née Schultheß. His father introduced Georg Anton to botany at an early stage and, from 1687 onwards, entrusted him with the continuation of his ‘Phytologia magna’ (vol. I, 1666/68; II, 1668/70; III, 1670; IV, 1671/77; V, 1678/85), a large manuscript work with his own plant drawings, which his son enlarged by a further five volumes (VI, 1678/85). 5 volumes (VI, 1686/89; VII, 1689/91; VIII, 1692/97; IX, 1698/1703; X, 1704/18). Georg Anton’s drawings are more artistic, his locations more varied than those of his father, who died in Legnica on 5 February 1706. This magnificent work came with G. A. Volckmann’s collection to Dresden, first to the Zwingers collection of vegetation, later to the State Library. G. A. Volckmann explored Silesia on numerous journeys; he recorded his mineralogical, geological and prehistoric observations in ‘Silesia subterranea’ (Leipzig 1720). He also produced a handwritten ‘Historia Conchyliorum’ and an ‘Ornithologia’ (before 1712, now lost) as well as a collection of Silesian town coats of arms drawn by him. He analysed the water of the Hedwigsbrunnen fountain discovered in the Grüntal valley near Legnica; in 1716, together with Maximilian Preuß, Gottfried David Mayer and Gottfried Ernst Wilhelm, he described the health springs in Skarsine. He undertook excavations at Töpferberg in 1697/98 and 1707, at Simsdorf near Legnica in 1712 and at Großendorf near Steinau in 1716. Volckmann died on 21 March 1721 Reference: H. Neumann, ‚Liegnitzer Naturforscher’ in Mitt. d. Gesch. u. Altertums Ver. Liegnitz, Heft 8, 1920/21, Liegnitz 1922, p. 246-262); Heinrich Robert Göppert, Über ältereschlesische Pflanzenkunde als Beitrag zur vaterländischen Kulturgeschichte, Schles. Provinzialbl., 96, pp. 1–27. Provenance: Maybe looted property in the Napoleonic Wars, as an ownership note of a French officer ‘à l’ Etat major du 5 corps d’ armée à Breslau, le 12 may 1808 is on the title. Later added ownership note “à Ami Dubois”, dated July 1836; since then privately owned in Switzerland.
58500,- EUR
inkl. 19% USt./incl. 19% VAT
Sachgebiete: Papier/Buntpapier, Botanik, Handschriften, Naturwissenschaften
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