Article ID: CBB001200289

A Collection within a Collection: Rediscovered Animal Drawings from the Collections of Conrad Gessner and Felix Platter (2013)

unapi

This article reports on the re-identification of two late-sixteenth-century albums in the University Library of Amsterdam, each containing large numbers of watercolour drawings of animals, pasted on to sheets of paper. Discussing the images, annotations, artists, watermarks, and bindings, as well as the relationships of the images with printed illustrations, the essay demonstrates that these albums were created by the Swiss physician Felix Platter (1536-1614) and that they contain, in addition to many animal drawings collected by Platter, several hundred more that belonged to the Swiss humanist and naturalist Conrad Gessner (1516-65). It emerges that the drawings are, in fact, the long-lost models (Vorlagen) for illustrations in his famous Historiae Animalium. Twenty-four folios are reproduced in an online appendix.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001200289/

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Authors & Contributors
Canington, Stephanie L.
Simonini, G.
Céline M. Stantina
Rogers, Ethan S.
Bass, Marisa Anne
Hans-Jörg Wilke
Concepts
Scientific illustration
Science and art
Natural history
Zoology
Animals
Visual representation; visual communication
Time Periods
16th century
18th century
17th century
Renaissance
19th century
Early modern
Places
Germany
Europe
Netherlands
Switzerland
Sweden
Institutions
McGill University (Canada)
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