Beschreibung:

ALDOVRANDI, Ulisse (1522-1607). Ornithologiae, hoc est de avibus historiae libri XII [-XX]. Bologna: Jo. Baptista Bellagamba and Francisco de Franciscis ???Senensem. (vols. I and III), Nicolo Tebaldini (vol. II), 1599-1634-1603. 3 volumes, 2° (c. 351 x 229mm.). Elaborately engraved titles with architectural borders, 2 engraved portraits of the author by Jo. Cornelius Wterwver after Agostino Carraci and Giovanni Valesio (vols. I and III), illustrated with nearly 700 woodcut illustrations of birds, many full-page, by Cristoforo and G. B. Coriolano. (Title of volume II laid down, some marginal worming and spotting, especially to volume II, a little marginal staining.) Old vellum (rebacked, volumes II and III with some wormholes). Provenance: Paul Lebaudy (bookplate). FIRST EDITION of volumes I and III, and an apparently unrecorded variant issue of volume II which collates as follows: (Engraved title by G. B. Coriolano), []1-3, A 6 -4H 6 . The collation for the body of the text is closer to that of the first edition (published by Bellagamba in 1600) than the 'second edition' published by Tebaldini in 1637, which has several mis-signed leaves. (Ellis/Mengel 42-43.) Mengel describes the work as "one of the principal encyclopaedic ornithologies of the Renaissance, and certainly the most ambitious". Aldovrandi, known to his contemporaries as the 'Pontifex Maximus' of natural history, had a large collection of specimens which, with 300 volumes of his manuscripts, formed the nucleus of the natural-history museum in Bologna after his death. Aldovrandi's original drawings from which these woodblocks were cut were transferred by Napoleon to the museum in the Jardin des Plantes, where they remained until after 1814. In his preface, Aldovrandi describes his efforts to procure good pictures of the birds, including paying a painter who was "unique in this art" 200 florins a year for over 30 years. The artists he employed included the Florentine miniature and animal painter, Lorenzo Bennini the Florentine court painter Giacomo Ligozzi and Cornelius Swinte of Frankfurt. Aldovrandi claims that the Coriolani family from Nürnberg cut the blocks "so carefully, so elegantly, that they seemed to be carved not in wood but in copper." Some of the illustrations of turkeys and cardinals are "among the earliest illustrations of American forms" (Ellis/Mengel 42). Nissen IVB 18; Anker Bird Books and Bird Art pp. 11-12, Thieme-Becker VII, 415-6 for the Coriolani family. (3)