ALDROVANDI, Ulisse Musaeum metallicum in libros IIII distributum... [colophon:] Bologna, Giovanni Battista Ferroni, 1648
Folio (348 x 233 mm), pp [viii, including blank] 979 [13], with a fine engraved title and ca 1200 woodcuts in text; a few leaves with some slight browning, otherwise a fine, clean, unpressed copy on thick paper, contemporary vellum. £11,500 First edition of the great illustrated catalogue of the ÔmetalsÕ of AldrovandiÕs museum, i.e. fossils, shells, minerals and crystals, ethnographic stone objects and utensils, lamps, antique vases and marble busts, terra sigillata, kidney stones, or any other object with the properties of ÔstoninessÕ. AldrovandiÕs museum was one of the first natural history museums, and it has survived intact to this day in Bologna. Aldrovandi (1522-1605) was professor of natural sciences and director of the botanic garden (which he founded) of the University of Bologna. His collections were housed in a special museum and library building within the gardens, and acted as a reference collection for research in natural history. AldrovandiÕs goal was simply to catalogue the entire natural world, and the museum was envisioned as Ôan attempt to transfer the world of nature from the often inaccessible outdoors to the restricted interior of a museumÕ (Giuseppi Olmi in Impey and MacGregor eds, The origins of museums p 8). Rather than being merely a collection of mirabilia in the Wunderkammer tradition, it was a scientific assembly, an encyclopaedia of the natural world presented as a theatrum naturae, although still betraying the Mannerist predilection for the freakish or bizarre. In this respect, Aldrovandi also turned this taste to scientific use, making one of the first studies of teratology. By 1595 Aldrovandi had ca 8000 drawings of his objects and 14 cupboards containing the woodblocks made from them for his publications. The drawings were commissioned from such artists as Lorenzo Bennini and Jacopo Ligozzi and cut in wood by Cristoforo Coriolano and his nephew. The museum contained over 11,000 animals, fruits and minerals, and 7000 dried plants in 15 volumes, one of the earliest known herbaria. Two cupboards alone had 4554 drawers containing Ôcose sotteranee, et conchilii et OstreaceÕ (fossils, shells, and fossilised echinoderms). Aldrovandi collected few artificialia, but those he had were principally ethnographic items of interest to him for the raw materials used. He had an Aztec sacrificial stone knife, a Mexican mosaic mask, and an Amazonian axe (donated by his fellow museologist Giganti), along with Egyptian tablets of hieroglyphs and funerary objects, all illustrated in the above work. AldrovandiÕs text is an extensive history, description, and discussion of the objects, in the encyclopaedic style of Gesner. It took over 60 years after AldrovandiÕs death to complete the publication of the works he had prepared, 13 enormous folio volumes in all. The present work was edited by Bartholomeo Ambrosini, AldrovandiÕs successor as director of the Bologna botanic garden. There remains in Bologna between two and three hundred unpublished essays in manuscript (described by Maxilian Misson in A new Voyage to Italy, 1699, thus: ÔIn a chamber near to the first we saw a hundred and eighty-seven volumes in folio, all written by Aldrovandus his own hand, with more than two hundred bags full of loose papersÕ). In this copy leaf Nn5 (pp 429-30) is a cancel. Cobres 163 14.12; Nissen ZBI 75; Osler 1773; Sinkankas 72
£11500
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