Hortus Eystettensis

The Renaissance style garden was located at the bishop's palace at the Willibaldsburg and was created over eight terraces overlooking the city of Eichstätt.

[4] The Bishop, Johann Konrad von Gemmingen (1561-1612), commissioned Besler, who was in charge of the garden, to produce the work in 1611, to record his achievements for posterity.

Kilian and his team engraved the initial copper plates, but after the bishop’s death, the operations moved to Nürnberg and a new team of engravers, among whom were Johannes Leypold, Georg Gärtner, Levin and Friedrich van Hulsen, Peter Isselburg, Heinrich Ulrich, Dominicus Custos and Servatius Raeven.

The work was first published in 1613 and consisted of 367 full-page copper engravings, with an average of three plants per page, so that a total of 1,084 species were depicted.

Besler could finally purchase a comfortable home in a fashionable part of Nürnberg at a price of 2,500 florins – five coloured copies' worth of Hortus Eystettensis.

The modern French translation of the herbal appears under the title Herbier des quatres saisons, and the Italian version (1998) is L'erbario delle quattro stagioni.