MATTIOLI, Pier Andrea – LIBERALE, Giorgio (c.1527-1580, designer) and Wolfgang MEYERPECK (1505-d. after 1579, woodblock cutter). Woodblock, depicting Cardus vulgaris [n 669, Carline Thistle]. Prague, c. 1562.

Pear woodblock (221 x 160mm). Back of block with knife trial cuts by the Formschneider and indentations from the support slugs used in the printing press for adjusting the block height (light worming, as usual, not impairing image).

An original woodblock used to print one of the most important Renaissance herbals—among the most important surviving sixteenth-century printing surfaces, and the only major scientific woodcut blocks existing from that period. For more on these remarkable woodblocks, see previous lot. The present image was first printed in the first edition to use the large format series of woodcuts, in 1562 at Prague by Jirí Melantrich z Aventina. See Watson, Raphael, and Bain, The Mattioli Woodblocks (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1989) for a full listing and discussion of the history, and especially Iain Bain’s “Technical note on the blocks.”