1773 · Views & Engravings
Exotic Jamaican Lizards: The Large Spotted Fork-Tailed Lizard Engraved, c.1773
$770
€690 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Date
- 1773
- Kind
- Views & Engravings
- Size
- 37 × 25 cm (14.6 × 9.8 in)
- Period
- Colonial America
- Places
- Jamaica
- Reference
- BG-13961
What the condition grades mean
- Excellent
- Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
- Very good
- Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
- Good
- Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
- Fair
- Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.
Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured.
Delivery and import charges.
About this piece
A large Jamaican lizard with a forked tail, an original hand-colored copperplate engraving from Johann Michael Seligmann's Sammlung verschiedener ausländischer und seltener Vögel, published in Nuremberg, circa 1773. The plate is numbered "Tab. XCVIII" at the upper right and titled "Die grose gefleckte Eydechse mit dem gabelförmigen Schwanz". Below the image are the Latin name "Lacertus major cinereus maculatus Iamaicensis, bicaudatus" and the French "Le Gros Lesard Mouché à Queue fourchue", with the credits "G. Edwards ad viv. delin.", "J. M. Seligmann excudit" and "Sebast. Leitner jun. sculps."
The main figure is a gray lizard with a pale mouth and a touch of red at the throat, seen from above and moving to the right. Its back is washed with yellow-green behind the shoulders and bright blue toward the hips, and the flanks are dotted with a pattern of small blue spots. The tail splits in two long curved branches that sweep to the lower left, the feature the Latin name calls "bicaudatus". Below the big animal, a smaller green lizard curls with a slender tail, and three rounded eggs are scattered around the plate, one with a young lizard half emerging from it.
The plate follows a drawing by George Edwards, the London naturalist, and Seligmann issued such plates with German, Latin and French captions for readers on the Continent.
