The Münch-Bellinghausen collection of botanical illustrations in the Haus der Natur, Salzburg

The Münch-Bellinghausen collection of botanical illustrations comprises around 10,000 prints and drawings documenting vascular plants. Gathered by Konstantin Freiherr von Münch-Bellinghausen (1752–1838) sometime between circa 1790 and circa 1836, this material remained in the hands of his descendants until it was donated to the Society for the Foundation and Maintenance of a Free Catholic University in Salzburg in 1904. Deposited on loan in the nascent Haus der Natur in 1924, the collection was donated to this natural history museum in 2015. Arranged according to the Linnaean system as interpreted by Kurt Sprengel (1766–1833) in the sixteenth edition of the Systema vegetabilium (1824–1828), the collection serves as a time capsule with the illustrations in various formats kept loose in folders. The overwhelming majority are prints taken from a broad spectrum of sources; drawings make up only a small fraction of the whole. There is neither a geographical nor taxonomic focus, though many prints originate from illustrated books published in Vienna. Amongst the watercolours copies of both preexistent prints and new illustrations based on plant specimens are found. Of particular interest is a watercolour ascribed to Franz Anton Scheidl (1731–1801) documenting seed cones of Pinus nigra Arnold, and a colour print illustrating Lilium pomponium L. from a scarcely known early ‘print-on-demand’ re-edition of individual engravings first published in Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s Les Liliacées (1802).