TASCHEN CLOTHBOUND CLASSICS : BASILIUS BESLER. THE GARDEN AT EICHSTATT HC – KLAUS WALTER LITTGER-WERNER DRESSENDORFER

When Prince-Bishop Johann Konrad von Gemmingen (1593/95–1612) undertook a radical renovation of the Willibaldsburg Castle, overlooking the Altmuhl River in Eichstatt, Bavaria, he also created a surrounding palatial pleasure garden of magnificence and grandeur. To preserve the garden for future generations – and provide an ‘evergreen’ record of its contents, compiling plants from all four seasons and presenting them in that order – he commissioned the garden’s director, Nuremberg apothecary Basilius Besler (1561–1629), and a team of engravers to immortalize its treasures in print. The resulting Hortus Eystettensis, published in Nuremberg in 1613 and containing 367 hand-colored plates and detailed descriptions, was a work of meticulous execution and spectacular diversity, and remarkably expensive for its time. As the garden contained a variety of plants imported from exotic locales, the three volumes exhibited a remarkable range, covering a total of 90 families and 340 genera. Due to the decorative, stylized execution of these illustrations, which began to see plants in aesthetic, rather than merely practical or medicinal terms, the book is seen as a milestone in the art of botanical illustration. While published before a time of standardized classification systems, it was nonetheless later described by Carl Linnaeus as an “incomparable work”. Besler’s catalog long outlived the gardens, which were destroyed in 1634 by invading Swedish troops during the Thirty Years’ War. However, a lengthy redevelopment project at the historic site has culminated in the opening of the modern Bastion Garden in 1998, containing many of the plants shown in the Hortus Eystettensis. Offering high-quality reproductions of these arresting illustrations, based on the copy of the Hortus Eystettensis at the University Library of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt, this facsimile edition is accompanied by detailed plate descriptions of each plant’s botanical, pharmaceutical, and symbolic significance and