The purpose of this short chapter is to call attention to the relevance of the remarkable Vatican manuscript Urbinas latinus 276 to the history of natural history, and specifically here to the history of ichthyology.1 Very briefly, this manuscript bears witness to three centuries of natural history, from the mid-13th-century text, De natura rerum, by Thomas de Cantimpré (1201–1272), found, anonymous, two centuries later in some old manuscripts in Naples, and portions revised as De animantium naturis by the Lombard humanist Pier Candido Decembrio (1399–1477). Decembrio had a fair copy made at the request of Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga of Mantua in the mid-15th century. This copy was then illustrated, over 130 years later in the 1580s and 1590s, probably, as I concluded in 1984 and 1996, by Teodoro Ghisi of Mantua (1536–1601), basing himself largely on the woodcuts of Conrad Gessner of Zurich’s (1516–1565) multi-volume Historiae Animalium and Icones volumes (1551–1560, and the posthumous volume on serpents of 1587).
More recently, a further connection has been made with the natural history illustrations of the Antwerpian father and son artists who ended their careers in the Hapsburg court, Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel (1542–1600 and 1573–1632), who also relied often on Conrad Gessner’s works for the outlines of many of the creatures they depicted.2 There are thus three traditions behind the Hoefnagels’ work, and to which they contribute in a major fashion: the painted natural history tradition, the moralizing emblematic tradition, and, emphatically, the printed graphic tradition in the arts and what we now call the natural sciences. In preparing this chapter, further exciting possibilities, many beyond the scope of the present context, have arisen, and will be dealt with in a second edition of the 1984 book.
Pier Candido Decembrio’s work, De animantium naturis (ca. 1460), which appears in three other manuscript drafts,3 is in six books: On Four-footed Animals; On Birds; On Marine Monsters and Fish (our principal focus here); On Serpents; On Lowly Creatures (Vermes); and On Things Worthy of Memory and Note. Cantimpré’s text was found in Naples by Pier Candido, who resided there from 1456 to 1459, first in the court of King Alfonso d’Aragona (Alfonso il Magnanimo, 1396–1458), then briefly at that of his successor, Ferrante d’Aragona (1424–1494). While in Naples, as Decembrio recounts in his opening paragraph, he found a number of anonymous old books, whose texts he studied before rewriting them, in part for stylistic reasons and in part for content, and presenting them in 1460 to Ludovico Gonzaga, who asked that a fair copy be made and – most significantly – that room be left at the bases of the folios for a fine painter to depict the creatures described, ‘so that I may better understand the text’. This request, while not fulfilled during the potential patron’s lifetime, very clearly moves the more than five hundred animal images we do find in the manuscript from the realm of illumination (or decoration) to that of illustration. And the illustrations, through good fortune being created by a 16th-century naturalist-artist (one who could not have been found with this expertise when the manuscript was prepared, in spite of the scientific quality of practices like humanistic philology and history in the fifteenth century), do indeed follow and illustrate the text closely. The codex was transcribed and, yes, decorated for Ludovico in the fifteenth century just after his request was made, the Gonzaga arms on fol. 1 being painted, and the book and chapter initials being rubricked, in the atelier of the Maestro d’Ippolita Sforza, who was active in Milan 1450–1465.4
A number of the over 500 tempera illustrations are diagnostic for the sources consulted by the manuscript artist, and several of these crucial illustrations occur among the animals described in Book III, De beluarum maritimar[um] et piscium naturis omnium (fols. 121v–168). The third image in this third book, at fol. 126v, is a unique illustration in the manuscript, consisting of a gold-framed rectangular patch of blue water, with the heads of four whale-like beluae emergent from the ocean waves [Fig. 7.1]. This image can be explained by the artist’s source, Conrad Gessner’s Historiae animalium,5 but was probably modeled more on Gessner’s Icones volumes [Fig. 7.2].6
Teodoro Ghisi (attrib.), Vatican MS Urb. lat. 276, fol. 126v (detail): Beluae
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City
Gessner Conrad, Nomenclator aquatilium animantium. Icones animalium aquatilium (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1560) 176: Cete (Whales)
Bibliothèque du Muséum National d’histoire Naturelle, Paris
Gessner Conrad, Nomenclator aquatilium animantium. Icones animalium aquatilium (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1560) 177: Cete (Whales)
Bibliothèque du Muséum National d’histoire Naturelle, Paris
This particular iconography is odd, even in Gessner’s volumes, and can be explained in turn by Gessner’s artists’ use of the Carta Marina of Olaus Magnus as their model7 [Fig. 7.3] Gessner’s engravers simply copied onto their woodblocks portions of the Carta Marina containing “beluae” or monsters of the sea (often whale-like creatures) which are indeed reversed in Gessner’s volumes, copying rectangles of sea along with the (elaborate) marine animals, and our manuscript artist used Gessner’s copies as his models for the tempera illustration. If my 1984 attribution to Teodoro Ghisi (younger brother of the great engraver, Giorgio Ghisi, and therefore highly familiar with the printed tradition) is correct – and it has not been substantively or successfully disputed to my knowledge, though I am now in this chapter suggesting a nuanced approach to the question – then his (and possibly his collaborators’, as below) use of primarily printed sources throughout the manuscript and even in his oil paintings, like Symbolum Apostolorum, is explained.8
Olaus Magnus, Carta Marina, 1539 (detail)
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. Shelfmark: Mapp. VII,1
One of the many examples is the “Orcha” (fol. 137v), which some now term unsympathetically the killer whale. In our manuscript it does not sport its striking black and white coat, but other characteristics, such as its conical teeth and its blow-spout are present.9 These tamer whale-like illustrations, with their typically fanciful cloud-like spouts are unmistakable, and probably familiar to all readers of this book as originating in Guillaume Rondelet’s (1507–1566) De piscibus marinis (1554) [Fig. 7.4].10 The illustration in MS Urb. lat. 276, however, is headed left, since our artist usually resorts to Conrad Gessner’s woodcut images, where the reversal occurs through the engraving process [Fig. 7.5].11
Guillaume Rondelet, De piscibus marinis (Paris, 1554), 483 (detail): Orca
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Gessner Conrad, Nomenclator aquatilium animantium. Icones animalium aquatilium … (Zurich: 1560), 169 (detail): Orca
Ernst Mayr Library, Harvard University
In only a few instances (notably the electric ray, or “Torpedo”, at fol. 165v, shown both dorsally and ventrally), does the manuscript artist consult both Gessner’s Nomenclator …. Icones III and Gessner’s source, in this case Pierre Belon’s De aquatilibus, resulting in a confusion in the twist of the tail in the two views.12
Among the Monsters of the Sea there figures, too, a Maris homo (fol. 136v), whose model’s physique and beard closely resemble those of a lean human male figure in a lower right-hand panel of Teodoro Ghisi’s Symbolum Apostolorum, created while he was in the court at Graz. If Teodoro Ghisi is the artist, this would reinforce our dating of at least some of the manuscript illustrations during his three years in Graz (1587–1590).13
The second half of Book III (fols. 142v–158) is devoted to marine and river fish closer to reality, including swordfish, mullet, scorpion fish, sturgeon, carp, etc. Many of these are modelled on the woodcut illustrations of Pierre Belon and Guillaume Rondelet, again through their use and reversal by the woodcut engravers of Conrad Gessner of Zurich.
Other illustrations in the manuscript appear to require dates in the 1590s. When one reaches Book V, Vermes, including insects, frogs, arachnids, and another aquatic animal, a leech, many of these can also be traced to the printed version of the wash and gouache painted drawings of Joris Hoefnagel published by his son, Jacob Hoefnagel in 1592.14 And one critical folio (fol. 201v) in the manuscript, where two aquatic worms (the smooth ascarid horsehair worm and the segmented annelid worm, the medicinal leech) are juxtaposed, is particularly important for the tracing of the relationships of these illustrations to others [Fig. 7.6].15 It is through this folio that one is able to link the work of the Vatican manuscript artist with that of the Hoefnagels, for on this folio, the unsegmented horsehair worm, Gordius sp. (“Seta”), appears to the left of the segmented leech, Hirudo medicinalis (“Sanguisuga”), just as in the watercolor by Joris Hoefnagel in his Four Elements (dated internally at 1575–1582, and probably worked on for much of his life16) [Fig. 7.7]. However, the manuscript artist’s illustration of a leech, while clearly inspired by this image, and even copying the juxtaposition of the two aquatic worms, is reversed and far less finely drawn, which tells us that it was taken from the son Jacob Hoefnagel’s engraved image in his 1592 Archetypa studiaque patris Georgii Hoefnagelii [Fig. 7.8].17 This of course also provides us with evidence for dating at least the later manuscript illustrations in the codex as around or after 1592 (while granting that the manuscript artist may have been shown engravings before they were actually published).18
Teodoro Ghisi (attrib.), MS Urb. lat. 276, fol. 201v (detail: horsehair worm, leech): Seta and Sanguisuga
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City
Joris Hoefnagel, MS The Four Elements, Animalia aquatilia et co(n)chiliata (Aqua), Plate LVI (detail: horsehair worm, leech)
The National Gallery Of Art, Washington, D.C. Gift Of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald, Accession Number: 1987.20.7
Jacob Hoefnagel after Joris Hoefnagel, in Archetypa studiaque patris Georgii Hoefnagelii (Frankfurt: 1592), I, 10 (detail: leech)
Staatliche Sammlung München
As we have seen, leeches are actually primarily aquatic segmented worms, and so we have a remarkable juxtaposition of two aquatic worms in Hoefnagel’s and the manuscript artist’s depictions. Was this due to the artists’ and naturalists’ deep study of the worms’ characteristics? Or was it a completely coincidental juxtaposition? The latter seems unlikely. Attempts were clearly being made throughout the sixteenth century to order or classify the plants and animals in the world around us; Conrad Gessner, in keeping with his bibliographical interests, was among the most perceptive of these classifiers.19
The probable illustrator of the Urbinas manuscript, Teodoro Ghisi, was in the Graz court of Archduke Charles II Hapsburg of Styria (1540–1590, the brother of Eleonora Hapsburg Gonzaga, Guglielmo Gonzaga of Mantua’s wife) for three years (1587-1590), when the Hoefnagels were in Munich, Frankfurt (where Archetypa was published in 1592) and in Austria, where they were in residence after 1600 at the court of Rudolf II Hapsburg. If they had not already met in Antwerp when Giorgio was there (1549/50–1555),20 or during the Hoefnagels’ lengthy European peregrinations as Calvinist refugees from Antwerp since 1576, they may well have met and exchanged ideas on their common love of nature while Teodoro Ghisi was residing primarily in Graz. Joris Hoefnagel is known to have studied nature deeply and reverently; his son Jacob was clearly devoted to his father, judging from their travels together and from his creation of the Archetypa volume, and became court painter to Rudolf II, in whose courts he lived and worked until at least 1612, the year of Rudolf’s death. Ghisi too was a naturalist-artist, and certainly painted in oils many religious subjects replete with animal images, including the Symbolum Apostolorum (now at the Alte Galerie des Landesmuseum Joanneum, Schloss Eggenberg) while he was in Graz.
All this brings to mind yet another possibility, to wit, that Teodoro Ghisi and the Hoefnagels may have collaborated – at least intellectually and verbally – on the illustrations for Decembrio’s text in what is now MS Urb. lat. 276. It should be noted that the beluae mentioned and shown above, besides being immersed in a rectangle of blue sea, are edged or framed with a fine line of gold (a device of manuscript illumination). While gold highlights occur throughout the manuscript for particular animals, such as some birds (including the peacock and the phoenix), some marine creatures and certain insects, the other illustrations are never framed in gold (though the 15th-century Gonzaga arms at fol. 1 are so framed). On the other hand, the illustrations of Joris Hoefnagel’s Four Elements in the volumes of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. are all framed in oval lines of gold, tooled fast (possibly with heat and egg white glair, as used in leather book tooling?) onto the parchment in the same way, and of about the same width as the rectangular frame enclosing the beluae at folio 126v of MS Urb. lat. 276. This may bespeak a very close working relationship between the Hoefnagels and the manuscript artist, if not an intellectual collaboration, as suggested, on the project. It remains to be seen whether a close comparison and study, with recent or future techniques, of the tempera illustrations of the Urbinas manuscript and the watercolor and gouache drawings of the Four Elements and other Hoefnagel works reveal any instances of the same hands at work in both. In other words, did either or both Hoefnagels contribute to the illustration of MS Urb. lat. 276? Not necessarily, but it is not impossible. It may also be significant that Vincenzo Gonzaga, the son of Duke Guglielmo and Eleonora (Hapsburg) Gonzaga, is recorded as having acquired “diversi dipinti di Georg Hoefnagel tra i quali Quattro tavolette miniate” in 1591, and as having purchased “Le Quattro Stagioni” in 1594.21 Furthermore, the Gonzaga manuscript is absent from archival records from 1460 until 1632 (the year of Jacob Hoefnagel’s death, but also two years after the Sack of Mantua), when it reappears in the ducal library of Urbino.22
Further investigations, archival and technical may, with luck, help to clarify the exact relationship between the artists as well as definitively confirm the authorship of the tempera illustrations of MS Urb. lat. 276. It will be of interest to examine archival records of the various towns and courts where the Hoefnagels and the Ghisis travelled or resided, to attempt a more complete understanding of the relationships among these artists and naturalists.
Bibliography
Aldrovandi Ulisse, De animalibus insectis (Bologna, Bapt. Bellagamba: 1602).
Bass M.A., Insect Artifice. Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton: 2019).
Belon Pierre, De aquatilibus Libri duo, cum ειconibus [sic] ad vivam ipsorum effigiem, quoad ejus fieri potuit, expressis (Paris, Charles Estienne: 1553).
Boorsch S. – Lewis M. – Lewis R.E., The Engravings of Giorgio Ghisi (New York: 1985).
Carroll L., The Jabberwocky (available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky).
Gessner Conrad, Bibliotheca universalis (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1545).
Gessner Conrad, Historiae animalium: Liber IIII qui est de piscium et aquatilium animantium natura (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1558).
Gessner Conrad, Nomenclator aquatilium animantium. Icones animalium aquatilium in mari et dulcibus aquis degentium (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1560).
Gonzaga. La Celeste Galeria. L’esercizio del collezionismo, ed. R. Morselli (Milan: 2002).
Hendrix M.L., Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting (Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University 1984).
Hoefnagel Jacob, Archetypa studiaque patris Georgii Hoefnagelii 1592. Natur, Dichtung und Wissenschaft in der Kunst um 1600. Nature, Poetry and Science in Art around 1600, ed. T. Vignau-Wilberg (Munich: 1994).
Hoefnagel Joris, Animalia Aquatilia et Co[n]chiliata (Aqua), National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald. Plate LI (Accession number 1987.20.7.52) available at: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.69871.html and Plate LVI (Accession number 1987.20.7.57) available at: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.69876.html.
Kaufmann T. DaC., The School of Prague. Painting at the Court of Rudolf II (Chicago and London: 1988).
Mozzetti F., “Teodoro Ghisi”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 54 (2000) https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/teodoro-ghisi-(Dizionario-Biografico).
Olaus Magnus, Carta marina et descriptio septentrionalium terrarum ac mirabilium rerum in eis contentarum diligentissime elaborata anno dni 1539 (Venice: 1539).
Pyle C.M., Das Tierbuch des Petrus Candidus. Codex Urbinas Latinus 276. Eine Einführung, tr. T. Honref, J. Schlechta (Zurich: 1984).
Pyle C.M., “Harvard MS Richardson 23: A “Pendant” to Vatican MS Urb. lat. 276 and a Significant Exemplar for P.C. Decembrio’s Opuscula historica”, Scriptorium 42, 2 (1988) 191–198.
Pyle C.M., “The Art and Science of Renaissance Natural History: Thomas of Cantimpré, Pier Candido Decembrio, Conrad Gessner and Teodoro Ghisi in Vatican Library MS Urb. lat. 276”, Viator 27 (1996) 265–321.
Pyle C.M., “Art as Science in Joris Hoefnagel and Teodoro Ghisi”, Center 21. National Gallery of Art. Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Record of Activities and Research Reports, June 2000–May 2001 (Washington: 2001) 112–114.
Pyle C.M., “Insects in [Renaissance] Art”, in Smith S. (ed.), A Cultural History of Insects in the Renaissance (London: Forthcoming).
Robin D. – Westwater L.L., Ippolita Maria Sforza Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations (Toronto and Tempe, Arizona: 2017).
Rondelet Guillaume, Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus verae piscium effigies expressae sunt, 2 vol., t. II: Universae aquatilium historiae pars altera, cum veris ipsorum imaginibus (Lyon, Macé Bonhomme: 1554–1555).
Tellini Perina C., “Teodoro Ghisi: l’immagine fra Maniera e Controriforma”, in Franchini D.A. et al. (eds.), La scienza a corte, collezionismo eclettico natura e immagine a Mantova fra Rinascimento e Manierismo (Rome: 1979) 239–268.
Vignau-Wilberg T., Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel. Art and Science around 1600 (Berlin: 2017).
Wilberg Vignau-Schuurman T.A.G., Die Emblematischen Elemente im Werke Joris Hoefnagels, 2 vols. (Leiden: 1969).
Wood J.M., Ippolita Maria Sforza. The Renaissance Princess Who Linked Milan and Naples (Jefferson, North Carolina: 2020).
Zanichelli G., “Il Maestro di Ippolita Sforza e il suo atelier: ipotesi di un percorso”, Artes 14 (2008) 5–31.
The manuscript was published in facsimile in 1984, with an introductory volume, first published, in German translation only, and sporting an earlier scholar’s title (it is not a moralizing bestiary, but rather a natural history, based on the encyclopedic tradition), in 1984: Pyle C.M., Das Tierbuch des Petrus Candidus. Codex Urbinas Latinus 276. Eine Einführung, tr. T. Honref, J. Schlechta (Zurich: 1984; Codices e Vaticanis Selecti, LX). Two further translations of the introductory volume, in Italian and Spanish, followed, both in 1985. There then appeared an updated article on the MS in 1996: Pyle C.M., “The Art and Science of Renaissance Natural History: Thomas of Cantimpré, Pier Candido Decembrio, Conrad Gessner and Teodoro Ghisi in Vatican Library MS Urb. lat. 276”, Viator 27 (1996) 265–321. Some specific entries are addressed in Eadem, “Insects in [Renaissance] Art”, in Smith S. (ed.), A Cultural History of Insects in the Renaissance (London: Forthcoming). The editors of the present volume are kind enough to offer space here to bring this remarkable document to scholars’ attention. A second revised edition, in English and with a new title, of the 1984 volume (never published in the language it was written in) is in progress.
Pyle C.M., “Art as Science in Joris Hoefnagel and Teodoro Ghisi”, Center 21. National Gallery of Art. Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Record of Activities and Research Reports, June 2000–May 2001 (Washington: 2001) 112–114; Eadem, “Insects”, in Smith (ed.), A Cultural History of Insects in the Renaissance. Cf. Joris Hoefnagel, Animalia Aquatilia et Co[n]chiliata (Aqua), III, fig. LVI, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Jacob Hoefnagel, Archetypa studiaque patris Georgii Hoefnagelii 1592. Natur, Dichtung und Wissenschaft in der Kunst um 1600. Nature, Poetry and Science in Art around 1600, ed. T. Vignau-Wilberg (Munich: 1994), esp. Pars Prima, Plate 10. On the Hoefnagels, see the thesis of Wilberg Vignau-Schuurman T.A.G., Die emblematischen Elemente im Werke Joris Hoefnagels, 2 vols. (Leiden: 1969); Vignau-Wilberg T., Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel. Art and Science around 1600 (Berlin: 2017) and her other publications in between; Hendrix M.L., Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting (Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University 1984); Bass M.A., Insect Artifice. Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton: 2019). These sources together illustrate the combined emblematic and scientific-naturalistic interests of the Hoefnagels.
Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 593 (which belonged to the naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi); Munich, Staatsbibliothek, clm 508 (which bears the words “emptus 1561” and annotations in a hand very like, if not identical to, Conrad Gessner’s); Florence, Accademia Colombaria, MS 231; for descriptions, see Pyle, Das Tierbuch 73–76.
Zanichelli G., “Il Maestro di Ippolita Sforza e il suo atelier: ipotesi di un percorso”, Artes 14 (2008) 5–31; the Gonzaga arms on fol. 1 of MS Urb. lat. 276 were attributed to this master in Pyle C.M., “Harvard MS Richardson 23: A’Pendant’ to Vatican MS Urb. lat. 276 and a Significant Exemplar for P.C. Decembrio’s Opuscula historica”, Scriptorium 42, 2 (1988) 191–198. Ippolita herself (1445/6–1488) was betrothed to Ferrante’s son, Alfonso II d’Aragona, in 1455 and resident primarily in Naples from their wedding in 1465 until her death in 1488. On her, now see: Ippolita Maria Sforza Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations, ed. and tr. D. Robin – L.L. Westwater (Toronto and Tempe, Arizona: 2017). There is also Wood J.M., Ippolita Maria Sforza. The Renaissance Princess Who Linked Milan and Naples (Jefferson, North Carolina: 2020).
Gessner Conrad, Historiae animalium: Liber IIII qui est de piscium et aquatilium animantium natura (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1558) 137–139 and 249.
Gessner Conrad, Nomenclator aquatilium animantium. Icones animalium aquatilium in mari et dulcibus aquis degentium (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1560) 176–177: Cete (Whales).
Olaus Magnus, Carta marina et descriptio septentrionalium terrarum ac mirabilium rerum in eis contentarum diligentissime elaborata anno dni 1539 (Venice: 1539).
Pyle, Das Tierbuch 98–102, 104–105, nn. 20, 26–33; Eadem “The Art and Science”, 268, and passim. It should be noted that Jacob Hoefnagel was also an engraver, and thus himself undoubtedly deeply familiar with the printed tradition.
Species are identified, where possible (and under revision in some cases) in Pyle, Das Tierbuch 166–195. There are nowadays videos available on line of orcas following ships like dolphins, and blowing through their spouts as they “gyre and gimble in the wabe” (Lewis Carroll, The Jabberwocky, available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky).
Rondelet Guillaume, Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus verae piscium effigies expressae sunt, 2 vol., t. II: Universae aquatilium historiae pars altera, cum veris ipsorum imaginibus (Lyon, Macé Bonhomme: 1554–1555) 483.
Gessner, Nomenclator aquatilium animantium 169; for the color illustration at fol. 137v of MS Urb. lat. 276, see: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Urb.lat.276#.
Gessner, Nomenclator 125; Belon Pierre, De aquatilibus (Paris, Charles Estienne: 1553) 90–91. Cf. Pyle, Das Tierbuch 91–92; Eadem, “The Art and Science” 301–304. For the color illustration at fol. 165v of MS Urb. lat. 276, see: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Urb.lat.276#.
Pyle, Das Tierbuch 100–102; Eadem, “The Art and Science” 291–296; for the color illustration at fol. 136v of MS Urb. lat. 276, see: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Urb.lat.276#. The Symbolum Apostolorum now hangs in the Alte Galerie Schloss Eggenberg of the Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz.
Archetypa (above, n. 2) 116–117; the leech is understandably termed ‘Nicht bestimmbares Objekt’ (unidentifiable object) by Vignau-Wilberg. It was partly through the headings, “Sanguisuga,” in MS Urb. lat. 276 and in Archetypa, I, 10, that I was able to identify it as Hirudo. The fact that Jacob Hoefnagel’s (bapt. December 1573) age is given on the title page as 17 rather than 19 could indicate that the engravings were already in existence by 1590 or 1591, though published only in 1592.
For the color illustrations at fol. 201v of MS Urb. lat. 276, see: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Urb.lat.276#.
Hendrix, Joris Hoefnagel 39 and 85, n. 32; Bass, Insect Artifice 3.
Jacob Hoefnagel after Joris Hoefnagel, in Archetypa studiaque patris Georgii Hoefnagelii (Frankfurt: 1592), I, 10; cf. Vignau-Wilberg (ed.), in Hoefnagel, Archetypa 116–117.
The Four Elements, III, LI, includes another leech, this one probably the model for Ulisse Aldrovandi’s image (reversed from Hoefnagel’s) in De animalibus insectis (1602) 765. Teodoro Ghisi also worked for Aldrovandi (Pyle, Das Tierbuch 91–92; Eadem, “The Art and Science” 291; Tellini Perina C., “Teodoro Ghisi: l’immagine fra Maniera e Controriforma”, in Franchini D.A. et al. [eds.], La scienza a corte, collezionismo eclettico natura e immagine a Mantova fra Rinascimento e Manierismo [Rome: 1979] 239–268: 248), and could thus have steered him to Hoefnagel’s image before Ghisi died in 1601; nor is it impossible for Aldrovandi and the Hoefnagels to have met. I am further investigating these complex interactions. This second leech does not appear in the Vatican manuscript.
Gessner Conrad, Bibliotheca universalis (Zurich, Christopher Froschauer: 1545); cf. Pyle, Das Tierbuch 29–31, 34; Eadem, “The Art and Science” 272–273.
Boorsch S. – Lewis M. – Lewis R.E., The Engravings of Giorgio Ghisi (New York: 1985) 17; Tellini Perina C., “Teodoro Ghisi”. See also: Mozzetti F., “Teodoro Ghisi”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 54 (2000) https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/teodoro-ghisi_(Dizionario-Biografico).
Vignau-Wilberg, Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel 459; cf. Gonzaga. La Celeste Galeria. L’esercizio del collezionismo (Milan: 2002) 290, 344–345; on Jacob, see also Kaufmann T. DaC., The School of Prague. Painting at the Court of Rudolf II (Chicago and London: 1988) 211–214.
Pyle, Das Tierbuch 68, 72; Eadem, “The Art and Science” 299.