Johann Jakob Walther, Fiori miniati, 1646-1650
A student of the miniaturist Friedrich Brentel, Johann Walther (Strasbourg, 1604-1677) was a painter, draftsman, miniature painter and calligrapher. He worked for several benefactors and clients, in particular Friedrich V von Baden-Durlach and Count Johannes von Nassau-Idstein, for whom he painted a famous illustrated Florilegio (Flowers Catalogue). The aim of the Flower Catalogue - Florilegio, in the intentions of its commissioner, was to perpetuate the memory of his beautiful garden. Two copies of it are now extant: one in London (about 120 tables of plants, flowers, fruits, some views), and one in Paris (kept at the Department of Prints and Photography of the National Library, 54 gouache tables on parchment depicting flowers and fruits, plus a portrait of the prince in his cabinet of curiosities and views of the castle), while the artist's copy was destroyed during World War II. Only a few of the paintings by Walther have survived; while some volumes of Ornithology (stored at the National Library in Paris and in the Albertina in Vienna) confirmed his extraordinary technique as a scientific illustrator. Walther also wrote a chronicle of the life of Strasbourg during the Thirty Years War.
The collection of illuminated flowers preserved at the Library of Sciences (Botany branch) consists of seventy temperas on paper, according to a widespread fashion at the time, dating back to the mid-seventeenth century. It is mostly bulbs (daffodils, lilies, iris and especially tulips). Almost all the tables are dated and report the name of the depicted plants, some are also marked as "Joann Walter fecit".