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![Pseudopus apodus (Pallas, 1775). The European Glass Lizard is particularly rich of details, like the large dark and bifid tongue, the evident otic aperture, and the covering of large scales that is interrupted on the flanks by a " line " of skin allowing the body to inflate during respiration . [Tempera on paper by Giovanni Neri. Tavole di Animali T. IV, c.136. Ms Aldrovandi, Biblioteca Universitaria Bolognese.]](profile/Alessandro-Ceregato/publication/230084588/figure/fig2/AS:393875295358982@1470918596804/Pseudopus-apodus-Pallas-1775-The-European-Glass-Lizard-is-particularly-rich-of.png)
Pseudopus apodus (Pallas, 1775). The European Glass Lizard is particularly rich of details, like the large dark and bifid tongue, the evident otic aperture, and the covering of large scales that is interrupted on the flanks by a " line " of skin allowing the body to inflate during respiration . [Tempera on paper by Giovanni Neri. Tavole di Animali T. IV, c.136. Ms Aldrovandi, Biblioteca Universitaria Bolognese.]
Citations
... The reflection of the snake encircling the mirror, however, does not visually correspond to the snake depicted inside the mirror. Although there is only one snake, its reflections are deceptive, since the serpent, here associated with a facial portrait of a woman, engages into two different actions: kissing her on the cheek and looking into her eyes (Ceregato, 2008;Conigliello, Cecchi, & Faietti, 2014). 5 Fontana's third mirror is a fictive mirror. ...
... ALDROVANDI -témánkba vágó - könyveiről újabban VISKOLCZ (2014) írt összefoglalót. Kiemeljük, hogy mindkét szerző munkáiban képzőművészeti szempontból is igen érdekes és értékes ábraanyag található, ál- latábrázolással foglalkozó művészeknek javasolt ismeret (DELFINO & CEREGATO 2008, KUSUKAWA 2010) (1. ábra). ...
... Ten years before his death it contained 18 000 items (Sarti, 2003). In addition to the physical specimens in his collection, obtained through his own travels and purchases across Italy, as well as the donations of his students and correspondents, Aldrovandi pioneered the approach of lously and accurately illustrating specimens as part of the process of objectively describing them (Alessandrini and Ceregato, 2007; Delfino and Ceregato, 2008). Such illustrations could record features from life that would be lost in the eventual museum specimen or could document specimens that could not be obtained for Aldrovandi's collection or that could not be preserved at all due to limitations of the technology of the time. ...
... The original pear-wood blocks, 3454 of which are extant in the Palazzo Poggi today (fig. 4 ), were engraved by Cristoforo Coriolano (born Christophorus Lederlein) and his son Gian Battista Coriolano following the drawings of Cornelius Schwindt which were, in turn, based on original paintings executed by Schwindt himself, Jacopo Ligozzi, Giovanni Neri, and other artists (Olmi, 2007; Delfino and Ceregato, 2008). Despite the attention paid by modern authors to other disciplines in Aldrovandi's work, herpetology has been relatively little discussed, and only the herpetological paintings (Delfino, 2007; Delfino and Ceregato, 2008 ) and xylography (Caprotti, 1980) (2008), among others, but the greatest number (21) have been reproduced by Alessan-drini and Ceregato (2007) , and all the original tempera paintings (ca. ...
... 4 ), were engraved by Cristoforo Coriolano (born Christophorus Lederlein) and his son Gian Battista Coriolano following the drawings of Cornelius Schwindt which were, in turn, based on original paintings executed by Schwindt himself, Jacopo Ligozzi, Giovanni Neri, and other artists (Olmi, 2007; Delfino and Ceregato, 2008). Despite the attention paid by modern authors to other disciplines in Aldrovandi's work, herpetology has been relatively little discussed, and only the herpetological paintings (Delfino, 2007; Delfino and Ceregato, 2008 ) and xylography (Caprotti, 1980) (2008), among others, but the greatest number (21) have been reproduced by Alessan-drini and Ceregato (2007) , and all the original tempera paintings (ca. 3000, including 47 depicting 75 individual amphibians or reptiles) have been digitized and are available on the internet (www.filosofia.unibo.it/aldrovandi/). ...
Abstract. The natural history collection of the Bolognese polymath, encyclopedist, and natural philosopher Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) is regarded as the first museum in the modern sense of the term. It was intended as a resource for scholarship and a microcosm of the natural world, not simply a cabinet of curiosities. In addition to physical specimens, Aldrovandi’s zoological material included a large series of paintings of animals (Tavole di Animali) that were integral to the collection.
Following Aldrovandi’s death, his collection was maintained by the terms of his will, but by the 19th century relatively little remained. We examined surviving herpetological components of the collection, comprising 19 specimens of ten species, as well as the corresponding paintings and associated archival material in the Museum of Palazzo Poggi, Museo di Zoologia, and Biblioteca Universitaria Bolognese in Bologna, Italy. Although the antiquity of some of these dried preparations is in question, many are documented in the Tavole di Animali and/or are mentioned in 17th century lists of the museum, verifying them as the oldest museum specimens of amphibians and reptiles in the world. Exotic species are best represented, including
two specimens of Uromastyx aegyptia and several boid snakes – the first New World reptiles to be displayed in Europe.
However, the Tavole di Animali suggest that the original collection was dominated by Italian taxa and that greater effort may have been made to conserve the more spectacular specimens. The Aldrovandi collection provides a tangible link to the dawn of modern herpetology in Renaissance Italy.
... Such rare combinations of supporting evidence also exist for the surviving herpetological collections of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) and Johann Heinrich Linck the Elder (164-134), which were illustrated by their owners. Aldrovandi's tempera paintings have been preserved and only recently published (Delfino & Ceregato 2008;, whereas the paintings of Linck's snakes have survived in their original format (Bauer & Wahlgren 2013;Engelmann & Obst 2014) and were made more widely known almost immediately after their creation through the engravings of Scheuchzer (135). ...
In a recent publication, Dubois et al. (2024) reviewed in detail the type material of Boa murina Linnaeus, 158, now known as Eunectes murinus, and designated a specimen figured in Seba (135), that is considered lost, as its lectotype. Here we explore the known details of the relevant dispersal routes for Seba's Eunectes specimens and discuss the probabilities of their existence in several European museums. Based on this example, we provide recommendations for the identification of specimens used by historical authors like Seba as the basis for illustrations in their works.
