Karl Joseph Brodtmann

Who was Karl Joseph Brodtmann?

Karl Joseph/Ioseph Brodtmann was an accomplished Swiss artist and lithographer, as well as a printmaker, publisher and bookseller who worked in Zurich and Schaffhausen.

Brodtmann's natural history lithographs include Heinrich Rudolf Schinz's works on reptiles and birds, published in the early 1830s. Brodtmann also produced natural history lithographs, as Naturhistorische Bilder Gallerie aus dem Thierreiche.

Brodtmann was born in Überlingen. He produced his lithographs in the post-Linnaean "'Age of Enlightenment". Natural history specimens were depicted in hand-coloured sets for the use of biologists and the aristocracy, the latter being not only great patrons of the arts and sciences, but including many who were actively interested in fauna and flora. The artists respected scientific accuracy and often displayed a remarkable sense of aesthetics. Brodtmann died, aged 75, in Basel.