Johann Christoph Volkamer. Citrus fruits

Have you ever thought of citrus fruits as celestial bodies, angelically suspended in the sky? Perhaps not, but J. C. Volkamer (1644-1720) did-commissioning an extravagant and breathtaking series of large-sized copperplates representing citrons, lemons, and bitter oranges in surreal scenes of majesty and wonder. Ordering plants by post, mostly from Italy, Germany, North Africa, and even the Cape of Good Hope, the Nuremberg merchant Volkamer was a devotee of the fragrant and exotic citrus at a time when such fruits were still largely unknown north of the Alps. His garden came to contain a wide variety of specimens, and he became so obsessed with the fruits that he commissioned a team of artists and copperplate engravers to create 251 plates of 174 different citrus species as illustrations for a two-volume treatise on the citrus. The first volume appeared in 1708, with the impressively lengthy title The Nuremberg Hesperides, or Thorough Description of the Noble Citron, Lemon and Bitter Orange Fruits: How They may be Properly Planted, Cultivated, Tended and Raised in This and Neighbouring Regions.Few colored sets of Volkamer's work are still in existence today. This publication draws on the two hand-colored volumes in the city of Furth's municipal archive in Schloss Burgfarrnbach. This reprint also includes 56 illustrations that Volkamer intended to publish in a third volume, making up an at once meticulous and magical line-up of botanical beauty and fantastical imagination.