Exotic Butterflies and Saturniid Moth, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1815

About this sheet

This antique butterfly print shows three exotic butterflies and a large saturniid moth with bold eye spots, on an original hand coloured plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Insekten LXXIII.

At the top a large butterfly with sharply hooked, dark wings crossed by an orange band spreads across the page, and below it a big moth in rose and brown shows four yellow ringed eye spots and feathered antennae. Two smaller butterflies complete the plate, one black with white and red bands and one pale green with fine dark lines and rows of silver spots. The species named in Bertuch's text have not yet been confirmed for this sheet.

The plate comes from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch, published in Vienna under the title Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend. Its source is the celebrated Bilderbuch fuer Kinder, the picture book for children conceived and edited by Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar, whose plates were engraved afresh by Viennese engravers for this edition. Most plates carry their subject class and number in German, Latin and French across the top, so that the work could teach languages as well as natural history. Here the heading belongs to the series of insects, a class that allowed the engravers to show exotic butterflies, moths and beetles in striking colour. The small engraved mark XV.B.50 places the sheet in volume 15 of the Vienna edition, which corresponds to the eighth volume of the Weimar original, dated 1813, so this Vienna plate cannot be earlier than that.

It is a copperplate engraving, coloured by hand with watercolour in the manner of the Weimar original. Bertuch drew his images from the best natural history books of his time, and the result is a lively, accessible record of how the natural world was understood around 1800. Single plates from the Bilderbuch are popular with collectors of antique natural history prints, and a group of related plates makes a handsome display in a study, library or hallway.

The sheet has a long curved brown stain running from the upper left margin into the image area left of the upper butterfly, with some spotting nearby; the figures themselves are clean and richly coloured.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.