About this sheet
This antique lizard print shows a monitor lizard, a basilisk and the flying dragon lizard, on an original hand coloured plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Amphibien XII. Bertuch described them as three remarkable kinds of lizard.
At the top the monitor, then called the Wachhalter or watchman, strides across a grassy bank, its dark body spotted with pale blue rings. In the middle the basilisk shows its crested head and the tall fin along its back and tail, and below the small flying dragon spreads the skin flaps along its sides that allow it to glide between trees. Together they illustrate the most extraordinary lizards known to naturalists around 1800.
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 amphibians, a class in which Bertuch, following the naturalists of his day, grouped snakes, lizards, crocodiles, frogs and even seals. The small engraved mark VII.B.3 places the sheet in volume 7 of the Vienna edition, one of the volumes issued in Vienna in the first years of the nineteenth century.
It is a copperplate engraving, coloured by hand with watercolour in the manner of the Weimar original. The plate is signed by Jacob Xaver Schmuzer, one of the Viennese engravers who worked on this edition. 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 is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a few spots and slight handling creases in the margins; the image itself is clean.
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.
