Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

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Another competition arose to Schoetl from an other side, though in
a quite irreproachable way. It was at least as unpleasant as Egenolff's rivalry. Leonhart Fuchs, whom Brunnfels had himself called (in the German edition of 1532, page 139) "the well learned master Lienhart Fuchss, who is my precious Lord's, the Marggraf Jürgen von Brandenburg's, physician" ("der hochgelernte herr Lienhart Fuchss M.C., herren Marggraf Jürgen von Brandenburg Leibartzt"), decided to publish a herbal, which appeared in 1532 in Latin and the year after in German at Michael Isougrain's at Basel. Fuchs, who in 1533 had given up his post of physician in ordinary at Ansbach, having been called as a lecturer to Tübingen, dedicated his work to Queen Anna; and if already Brunnfels' book could be called a luxury edition, this applies even more to this new work. It is done in biggest folio size and contains 346 chapters with 515 numbered full-page pictures, up to 320 mm in height and 210 mm in breadth. Accordingly, the artists, who cooperated, did not miss to put in their portraits beside that of the author. The latter is represented in full figure, with a beret on his head and a little flower in his left hand, on the back of the title page (size 240 x 112 mm); the last page is divided in two halves, of which the upper one shows the two painters Heinrich Fullmser and Albrecht busy drawing, while the lower one contains the wood-engraver Voeyt Rudolf Speckle, in half-figure with a coat (size 133 x 113 cm).

Though the text, which does not only give name, genus, figure, region and time of flowering, but also powers and properties ("kraft und wirckung") of the plants, is considerably superior to any of the earlier herbals, and though pictures of this high standard were never produced before, the sale did not fulfill the hopes set on it. Probably the book in itself was rather expensive, and the huge plants, drawn only in outline, could only be appre-