Original hand-coloured engraving drawn by J. C. Keller and executed by J. M. Seligmann. From Christoph Trew's “Hortus Nitidissimis Omnem Per Annum Superbiens Floribus” published in three volumes over a 36 year period from 1750-1786.
Painted in a more opaque gouache to resemble a painting rather than the traditional practice of using translucent water-colours that allowed more of the engraving to show through. Each piece was meant to capture the flower at the peak of it's beauty instead of focusing solely on scientific detail.
Johann Christoph Keller was a prominent German painter, engraver, and drawing master at the University of Erlangen. His name is most frequently associated with the "Nuremberg School" of botanical illustrators who worked under the patronage of Christoph Jakob Trew. He was a versatile artist and educator whose work spanned biological illustration and academic instruction.
Keller served as the official Universitätszeichenmeister (Drawing Master) at the University of Erlangen, where he taught the principles of artistic draftsmanship, and he was a key figure in the prestigious 18th-century artistic community in Nuremberg, which was a global hub for botanical science and publishing at the time.
While famous for plants, Keller also illustrated animals. He produced detailed etchings for natural history, such as a noted 1795 coloured etching of a monitor lizard held in the Wellcome Collection. His work was often a three-part collaboration: a botanist (like Christoph Jakob Trew) provided the specimen, Keller provided the original drawing, and an engraver (like Johann Michael Seligmann) transferred it to copperplate.
His plates for the Hortus Nitidissimis are celebrated for their vibrant hand-colouring and focus on "florists' flowers"—cultivated varieties like tulips and hyacinths that were highly prized by 18th-century collectors.
He frequently captured the first "new" species arriving in Europe from the Americas and South Africa, helping to document the era's botanical discoveries.
Johann Michael Seligmann trained at the Nürnberg Malerakademie, and studied with the Preisslers, a well known family of painters and engravers of Bohemian origin. After undertaking the obligatory “Grand Tour” he returned to Nüremberg, and set up a business making his reputation engraving anatomical and botanical plates.
