Three Slender Snakes, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1805

About this sheet

This antique snake print shows three slender serpents stretched across the page in graceful loops, on an original hand coloured plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Amphibien XV.

The snakes are shown in soft greys and browns, one with a pale belly, one with a white lip and one with fine longitudinal stripes, so that the engraved scales carry most of the effect. The colouring on this sheet is restrained compared with the brighter reptile plates, which gives it a quiet, graphic quality. The species named in Bertuch's text have not yet been confirmed.

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.19 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 and a small brown stain in the lower margin, clear of the image, which is clean and crisp.

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.