Pfitzer

Chinchillas, civets, deer, beetles and marine shells share the hand-coloured plates in these prints by Johann Baptist Pfitze...

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Chinchillas, civets, deer, beetles and marine shells share the hand-coloured plates in these prints by Johann Baptist Pfitzer, a natural-history engraver born in 1789. He contributed to the Dictionnaire pittoresque d'histoire naturelle et des phénomènes de la nature, directed by Félix-Édouard Guérin, and these plates are dated 1833–1834. Domestic horses appear too, some plates combine animals and plants whose French names fall close together in the alphabet, and studies of mammalian teeth add a more analytical strand. The dictionary was an encyclopaedic project that brought natural history to general readers.

Chinchillas, civets, deer, beetles and marine shells share the hand-coloured plates in these prints by Johann Baptist Pfitzer, a natural-history engraver born in 1789. He contributed to the Dictionnaire pittoresque d'histoire naturelle et des phénomènes de la nature, directed by Félix-Édouard Guérin, and these plates are dated 1833–1834. Domestic horses appear too, some plates combine animals and plants whose French names fall close together in the alphabet, and studies of mammalian teeth add a more analytical strand. The dictionary was an encyclopaedic project that brought natural history to general readers.

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