Giovanni Battista Ferrari, 1633

FERRARI, Giovanni Battista (1584-1655). De florum cultura. Rome: Stefano Paolini, 1633.

Presentation copy from the author of the first edition of the first treatise on floriculture—a masterpiece of Baroque chalcography and early example of microscopy. Ferrari's work documents the development of the flower garden as a concept out of its precursor, the hortus medicus. It discusses garden layouts, with contemporary examples; specimen flowers and their cultivation; general horticulture; and finally the aesthetic and moral uses of flowers, including flower arranging. Some of the flowers are described here for the first time, including several South African species.

The author, Giovanni Ferrari, was a Jesuit professor of Oriental Languages at Rome before being put in charge of the Barberini gardens; the work is dedicated to Francesco Barberini, who funded its lavish publication. While most of the illustrations are of individual flowers, one, depicting seeds under a microscope, is only the second appearance of a microscopic image in a printed book. Other illustrations are of garden parterres and tools, as well as a series of allegorical plates depicting the life of Flora, and a number of engravings of flower arrangements by Anna Maria Vaiani.

John Collins, in the 1975 sale catalogue of The Magnificent Botanical Library of the Stiftung Fur Botanik Vaduz Liechtenstein collected by the Late Arpad Plesch, distinguished two editions, having different typesettings and slight differences in collation; the present copy corresponds to their no. 259, which he supposed to be a first edition while the slightly altered edition is a reprint. Hunt 222 (other issue); Nissen BBI 620.

Quarto (242 x 171mm). Engraved frontispiece, engraved title page, 45 engraved plates (paper flaw on p. 31 slightly affecting engraved surface, some sheets with light browning). Contemporary Italian vellum, title in ink on spine (outer edges worn). Provenance: presentation inscription on title by the recipient, a bishop or naming the bishopric he belongs to, recording the receipt of the book as a gift from "the most learned and most wise author," dated 1633 – Petrus Franciscus Benassai, possible the Pier Francesco Benassi recorded as a 17th-century book owner in the Cataloghi dei libri antichi Regione Toscana (inscription on front pastedown) – "George E. Hale, Rome April 23, 1911" (pencil inscription on front flyleaf).