ULISSE ALDROVANDI - THE SEA BREAM woodcut fish print - OMNIUM ANIMALIUM 1642

This striking and very beautiful fish print woodcut engraving, with recent professional hand colouring of a Sea Bream, is from Ulisse Aldrovandi's rare first ediition, "OMNIUM ANIMALIUM" published in Bologna in 1642

Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) was a highly celebrated professor of natural history at the University of Bologna, and one of the world’s great encyclopedists who devoted his life, and his money, to lecturing, collecting specimens, and writing and illustrating numerous treatises on biological and zoological subjects.

Aldrovandi copied illustrations from the key Renaissance fish authors, Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, and his one-time tutor, Conrad Gesner.

He also added his own unique and sometimes fanciful illustrations of species mainly from the seas of the Mediterranean, including the Adriatic, and others from more distant shores.

Aldrovandi, a self-confessed beach-comber, had many friends and employed assistants who constantly scoured the fish markets, docks, and coastlines to locate new specimens to add to his collection.

These beautiful and extraordinary woodcut engravings greatly influenced succeeding illustrated zoological works and were copied extensively by such authors as Merian & Jonson.

(Ref, Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy 1996, p. 160 -77; Pietsch, Cuvier - Historical Portrait of the Progress of Ichthyology 1995, p. 46; S. Peter Dance & Geoffrey N. Swinney Classic Natural History Prints; Fish. London, 1990, p. 23-25; Wood; Vertebrate Zoology p. 184 - 185; Allen p. 403 - 405)