Framed Lemon Print After Johann Christoph Volkamer's "Nürnbergische Hesperides"

Description

A print of a lemon over an 18th-century city after the etchings in the "Nürnbergische Hesperides", by Johann Christoph Volkamer. … more A print of a lemon over an 18th-century city after the etchings in the "Nürnbergische Hesperides", by Johann Christoph Volkamer. 16.25"x22".

Volkamer was a silk merchant from Nuremberg who commissioned artists and engravers to catalog his extensive citrus collection in the 2-volume "Nürnbergische Hesperides", 1708 and 1714, the first botanical study devoted solely to fruit. Citrus fruits were exotic and expensive in Northern Europe at the time, requiring greenhouses to protect them from temperatures colder than those of their Mediterranean origins.

The original prints were hand-colored engravings. This is a later 19th- mid-20th-century lithograph with a platemark, framed in wood with a gold inner border. The banner reads: "Limon con la scorza gien tile". less