Hortus Palatinus

In-folio with 1 title frontispiece, 1 leaf of dedication in French "To His Majesty of Bohemia, Elector Palatine, Duke of Bavaria" dated December 20, 1619; 4 pages "To the reader" with commentary in French, 30 engraved plates of views of gardens, fountains, landscapes including the immense and magnificent folding plate illustrating the castle and gardens of Heidelberg (dimensions of the unfolded plate: 1,025 mm x 683 mm). Ivory vellum, smooth spine. Contemporary binding in vellum. 390 x 250 mm.

Caus, Salomon de. (1576- ca 1626). Hortus Palatinus, built at Heidelberg by Frederick, King of Bohemia and Elector Palatine.
Frankfurt, Theodor de Bry, 1620.

First edition of legendary rarity showcasing the landscaped and architectural gardens by Salomon de Caus for Frederick V, Elector Palatine.
Brunet I, 1691; Hunt 204; Guilmard, p. 395, no. 22; Destailleur, 1895, p. 146, no. 554; not listed by Ganay.

Salomon de Caus was born in 1576 in Dieppe, Normandy. In 1605, Archduke Albert appointed him "engineer for the artificial fountain and for all other things he shall be commanded." In 1608-1609, de Caus was in London to teach drawing to Prince Henry; but he also worked for the court and the nobility as a garden architect. In 1614, thanks to the intervention of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, who had married the Elector Palatine, he answered the call of Heidelberg. He left for Paris in 1620 because of the war, to enter the service of Louis XIII, who employed him as royal engineer and architect. He died in Paris in 1626.

The Hortus Palatinus is a collection of engravings published in 1620 at Frankfurt by the printer and engraver Johann Theodor de Bry in a double original edition, German and French, with identical title pages. It is one of the earliest publications of its kind. Salomon de Caus devoted his entire Hortus Palatinus to a single achievement: the garden that Frederick V, Elector Palatine, crowned King of Bohemia the previous year, had installed for his castle at Heidelberg.

The engravings are by Matthäus Merian, son-in-law of J. T. de Bry, though this is only attested by the signature on the "Scenographia". Merian followed the view of Heidelberg’s garden as painted by the Flemish artist Jacques Foucquiers, reproduced in a larger format. Much more than the plan that follows and the twenty-nine other plates, the "Scenographia" at the beginning of the work provided a visual idea of what the garden should have been, which never existed in the state shown in the views. The dedication to the lord of the place, Frederick, King of Bohemia, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Elector Prince, is dated December 20, 1619.

The Hortus Palatinus can be considered Salomon de Caus’s masterpiece. The history of the influence of this garden, destroyed as early as the 17th century, rests mainly on the treatise, the first monographic collection of prints devoted to the layout of a garden.

"This slim volume of plates, published in 1620, is one of the most moving monuments to the fragility of gardens, however great. Caus had designed and supervised the creation of the renaissance marvel, built on an intractable site beside the castle, high above the town and the river Neckar. The text of his book is an au lecteur of only three [sic: four] pages, in which he speaks of the 'delay to the work' which has occurred," precipitated by the wars of Bohemia. His work was never finished, and what had been built was soon abandoned, but its aspirations were unquestionable: "It had delights within and without -Alberti could not complain about the view- and the intricacy and variety respond to the magnitude of its scale. In the eighteenth century, the debased successors to the formal gardens at Versailles will be grand, but empty. At Heidelberg, every section is 'curious', with the excitement in detailed work which inspires the sculpture of fountains in the palazzo Borghese in Rome, or the knots in the garden at Gaillon" (Christopher Thacker, The History of Gardens, 1979, p. 134).

Of utmost rarity: NUC lists only four copies.