Book ID: CBB321065086

The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art (2017)

unapi

Sleigh, Charlotte (Author)


University of Chicago Press


Publication Date: 2017
Physical Details: pp. 256
Language: English

As children, our first encounters with the world’s animals do not arise during expeditions through faraway jungles or on perilous mountain treks. Instead, we meet these creatures between the pages of a book, on the floor of an obliging library. Down through the centuries, illustrated books have served as our paper zoos, both documenting the world’s extraordinary wildlife in exquisite detail and revealing, in hindsight, how our relationship to and understanding of these animals have evolved over time. In this stunning book, historian of science Charlotte Sleigh draws on the ultimate bibliophile’s menagerie—the collections of the British Library—to present a lavishly illustrated homage to this historical collaboration between art and science. Gathering together a breathtaking range of nature illustrations from manuscripts, prints, drawings, and rare printed books from across the world, Sleigh brings us face to face (or face to tentacle) with images of butterflies, beetles, and spiders, of shells, fish, and coral polyps. Organized into four themed sections—exotic, native, domestic, and paradoxical—the images introduce us to some of the world’s most renowned natural history illustrators, from John James Audubon to Mark Catesby and Ernst Haeckel, as well as to lesser-known artists. In her accompanying text, Sleigh traces the story of the art of natural history from the Renaissance through the great age of exploration and into the nineteenth century, offering insight into the changing connections between the natural and human worlds. But the story does not end there. From caterpillars to crabs, langurs to dugongs, stick insects to Old English pigs; from the sinuous tail feathers of birds of paradise to the lime-green wings of New Zealand’s enormous flightless parrot, the kakapo; from the crenellated plates of a tortoise’s shell to imagined likenesses of unicorns, mermaids, and dinosaurs, the story continues in this book. It is a Paper Zoo for all time.

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Reviewed By

Review Caroline Grigson (2019) Review of "The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art". Archives of Natural History (pp. 369-370). unapi

Review Florike Egmond (2018) Review of "The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art". Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology (pp. 150-151). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB321065086/

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Authors & Contributors
Attenborough, David
Lederer, Roger J.
Jennifer Garland
Simon Martin
Fairman, Elisabeth R.
Baione, Tom
Concepts
Scientific illustration
Science and art
Natural history
Visual representation; visual communication
Collectors and collecting
Painters and painting
Time Periods
17th century
Early modern
Modern
18th century
19th century
20th century
Places
Europe
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean
London (England)
Americas
Netherlands
Institutions
Royal Society of London
McGill University (Canada)
Accademia Naturae Curiosorum
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