Birds
Birds
‘First, therefore, that whole class of birds which has hooked talons, and lives as much as possible on flesh, will be brought forth from this my aviary’.
Ulisse Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae hoc est de auibus historiae libri XII[I], 3 vols (Bologna, 1646), i, p. 7.[1]
Aldrovandi chose to concentrate on birds in the first volume of his projected Natural History: Ornithologiae hoc est De auibus historiae libri 12. … Cum indice septendecim linguarum copiosissimo (Bologna, 1599). This was the first of three-volumes on birds (Worth owned the later posthumous 1646 edition: Ornithologiae hoc est de auibus historiae libri XII[I]). Unlike his fellow encyclopaedist Conrad Gessner (1516–65), who adopted an alphabetical order, and to whom Aldrovandi was indebted for many illustrations, Aldrovandi sought to classify all birds together (including bats among them).[2] As Lind notes, Aldrovandi concentrated on elements such as habitat, food and the shape of the beak, dividing birds between dust-bathing and water-bathing groups, but his classificatory system was not wholly consistent and, as Lind ruefully comments, at times, his ‘erudition submerged his critical judgment’.[3]
Ulisse Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae hoc est de auibus historiae libri XII[I], 3 vols (Bologna, 1646), i, p. 215, eagle.
As Hall notes, while Aristotle had no specific sub-groupings of birds, he consistently discussed four types: ‘Hook-taloned birds, terrestrial birds which fly weakly (i.e. Gallinaceous birds), web-footed birds, and fissipede waterside birds’.[4] Aldrovandi would have been very familiar with this proto-classification and also with that of Pliny who declared that ‘The primary distinction between birds is established especially by the feet; for they either have hooked talons or have digiti or are in the web-footed class like geese and water birds generally. If they have hooked talons they live only on flesh for the most part; Crows eat other food also’.[5]
Aldrovandi decided to order birds by dignitas and so it comes as no surprise that he began his first volume with eagles, an obvious choice given the prevalence of eagle imagery in imperial Habsburg iconography, not to mention its religious connotation with St. John. Eagles also featured in the coat of arms of noble Italian families such as the Gonzaga and, as Paula Findlen has noted, Aldrovandi was always interested in including information that he felt might attract official patronage.[6] Aldrovandi was deliberately following in the footsteps of Aristotle for he declared that ‘For the philosopher names the Eagle in the first place in the order of diurnal raptors’.[7] Volume I duly concentrated on raptors such as eagles, vultures, hawks, falcons, nocturnal birds of prey, and crows (though he also included parrots, bats, ostriches and mythical birds such as griffons). Volume II focused on ‘dust-bathers’: non-rapacious land birds such as peacocks, pheasants, partridge, quail and domestic fowl, along with pigeons, sparrows etc. Volume III was devoted to water birds, which he divided into web-footed birds and birds that lived near water.[8]
We know that Aldrovandi analysed the habits of captive eagles but he did not stop there. Findlen relates that, after he had spent eight days observing the habits of one eagle he had acquired, he dissected it – indeed, as she ruefully notes, ‘Few living creatures that entered Aldrovandi’s museum remained intact’.[9] Aldrovandi was aware that a dead bird, while clearly not a useful to a naturalist as a live one, could provide detailed information in other ways. He was a committed anatomist and drew attention to this in his Ornithology:
Who wishes to judge these natural things, beyond theory, must have practice, not only in the description of the exterior parts, but also to the particular anatomy of plants and animals, as is evident in several birds [described] in my Ornithology, now in press.[10]
Indeed, Aldrovandi included a number of images of bird skeletons in his Ornithology (for example, a parrot, a swan and the skull and tongue of a woodpecker). As his letter to Alfonso Cataneo, professor of medicine and natural philosophy at the University of Ferrara, in which he commented on the anatomy of the swan, makes clear, Aldrovandi was often an observer in the process, leaving the actual dissection to either Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1545–99) or the latter’s student Giovanni Battista Cortesi (1553/4-1633/4).[11]
Ulisse Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae hoc est de auibus historiae libri XII[I], 3 vols (Bologna, 1646), i, p. 802, toucan.
Aldrovandi was particularly eager to display acquisitions from the new world. Toucans, which Smith notes are found wild only in American tropical forests, were striking because their huge bill was almost the length of their body.[12] Aldrovandi was by no means the first to comment on them; as early as 1526 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478–1557) had provided a detailed description in his Sumario de la natural y general historia de las Indias (Toledo, 1526):
There is in Tierra Firme a bird that the Christians call picudo [‘big bill’, toucan] because it has a small body and large beak. The beak weighs more than the whole body. This bird is only slightly larger than a quail, but it appears much larger because of its beautiful thick varicoloured plumage. Its turned-down beak is as much as six inches long. At the head the beak is about three finger-breadths wide. The bird’s tongue is a feather, and it can whistle loudly. With its beak it makes holes in trees, where it nests and raises its young. It is a very strange bird…[13]
Aldrovandi may not have known of Oviedo’s description as it only became more widely known after his death, but he certainly was aware of the noted French naturalist Pierre Belon’s comments on the bird in his Histoire de la nature des oyseaux, published in 1555. As Smith notes, it was this description (albeit only of a toucan’s bill), which would dominate descriptions of toucans in early modern Europe. Aldrovandi was likewise influenced by an illustration of toucans in the 1575 Parisian edition of Andre Thevet’s Cosmographie universelle and by a composite image in Conrad Gessner’s Icones avium (Zurich, 1560). The latter was not an image of an actual bird, and included a number of errors which were subsequently reproduced in Aldrovandi’s watercolour.[14]
One of the reasons for these discrepancies was because naturalists such as Gessner and Aldrovandi were not always in the happy position of dealing with live birds. Toucans were rare in sixteenth-century Europe and it was only in the decades following Aldrovandi’s death in 1605, that they became more common in the cabinets de curiosités of early modern Europe.[15] Those which were present were usually stuffed, not having survived the sea voyage, and, as Sculze-Hagen et al. note, developments in taxidermy played a vital role in early modern ornithology.[16]
Ulisse Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae hoc est de auibus historiae libri XII[I], 3 vols (Bologna, 1646), ii, p. 328, freak rooster at the palace of Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–87), Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Aldrovandi was as interested in drawing attention to unusual birds as he was in delineating actual birds. He included a chapter on ‘Freak Chickens’ in his second volume on birds and this image, of a rooster he claimed to have seen in the palace of Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–87), Grand Duke of Tuscany, certainly ‘struck fear into brave men with its terrifying aspect’.[17] Aldrovandi considered this particular rooster one of the most freakish birds he had encountered and described it in detail:
Its head was not adorned with a fleshy crest as with ordinary roosters, nor were its wattles fleshy; both were made of feathers similar to the apex on a helmet. It had in front two feathers, or rather the quills of feathers (for they were naked), standing up straight like two horns. There were also two others on each side of the beak near the nostrils; at their extremities were very thin feathers like bristles, together with another quill on top of the head, which almost from the beginning was adorned with the same kind of bristles. The colour of the entire body was rather dark; the roots of the feathers were white. The feathers were of such a form that they resembled scales over the entire body. Near the rump, where the tail grows forth, there was a round whitish tubercle. The tail was not made of feathers like that of birds, but was fleshy like the tail of quadrupeds – free of hairs, but with a lock at the extremity as usually is found in the tails of four-footed beasts. The lock was whitish. The tail was rather blue. The tibiae were covered with greaves or leggings’.[18]
While Aldrovandi claimed to have seen the above rooster with his own eyes, his second image of another type of freak rooster (see below) was sent to him by a colleague, Pompilio Tagliaferri of Parma (c. 1560–1639).
Ulisse Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae hoc est de auibus historiae libri XII[I], 3 vols (Bologna, 1646), ii, p. 329, freak rooster.
Tagliaferri had reservations about the image, for in his letter to Aldrovandi he mentioned that the artist had failed to capture the bird. To compensate, Tagliaferri included the following textual description:
I wish you to know that there are two features to be found worthy of admiration in this rooster which do not appear in our ordinary roosters and hens. First and foremost is the fact that the wing feathers are situated in a manner contrary to those in other chickens, for the lower part of the feathers, which in other birds, according to their nature, slant inwards, in this rooster turn outwards, so that the entire wing seems inverted. The second fact worth noting is that the little neck feathers near the head are erect like a crested ringlet; the entire tail is also lifted towards the neck over the bird’s back.[19]
Aldrovandi not only included Tagliaferri’s description, he also alerted the reader that ‘Neither the picture he sent me nor the one printed here gives an accurate impression of these details; his words reveal that this is due to the unskilful work of the artist’.[20] Aldrovandi here draws our attention to dangers involved in the production of the printed text: the original image failed to capture the bird correctly and errors were further compounded by the copy made for the printed text.
This example also draws attention to the collaborative nature of Aldrovandi’s enterprise: Pompilio Tagliaferri, like so many early modern natural historians, was a physician with an abiding interest in natural history. He had an academic career at the University of Parma, where he is listed among the first professors in 1601-1602 (the university had only been founded in 1601). By 1609 he was a professor of medicine there, teaching anatomy and medical theory.[21] Aldrovandi does not mention Tagliaferri’s official position at Parma, instead describing him as being ‘in the highest rank of physicians’, so it is likely that this letter predated Tagliaferri’s academic career at Parma.[22] Grendler notes that Tagliaferri, who came from a noble Parmese family, had studied medicine at Padua, Bologna and Rome, so Aldrovandi may have met Tagliaferri at Bologna.[23]
White-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) © Zoological Museum, Trinity College Dublin.
The white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) is believed to have become extinct in Ireland around 1912, largely due to human persecution. Prior to its extinction, it was Ireland’s largest bird of prey, noted for its versatile hunting ability and opportunistic, but ruthless reputation for stealing food from other birds and mammals. Yet they are beautiful too: and just like that carnivorous ground-dwelling icon of the African savannah – the lion – have for centuries been revered as enduring symbols of power and courage.
Toucan. © Zoological Museum, Trinity College Dublin.
Best known for their oversized, often colourful beaks, which can be up to four times the size of their head. Apart from gathering food, toucans use their beaks to attract potential mates and to scare away predators. Despite their large and threatening appearance, beaks are mostly light and hollow, and made of keratin: just like human hair and fingernails.
Text: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian of the Edward Worth Library, and Dr Martyn Linnie, Curator of the Zoological Museum, Trinity College Dublin.
Selected Sources
Aldrovandi, Ulisse, Aldrovandi on Chickens, translated and edited by L.R. Lind (Norman, Oklahoma, 1963).
Antonino, Biancastella (ed.), Les Animaux et les Créatures Monstrueuses d’Ulisse Aldrovandi (Arles, 2005).
Attenborough, David, et al., Amazing Things. The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (London, 2016).
Findlen, Paula, Possessing nature. Museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley, 1996).
Grendler, Paul, The universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 2002).
Hall, J.J., ‘The classification of birds, in Aristotle and early modern naturalists (I)’, History of Science, xxix, no. 2 (1991), 111–51.
Hall, J.J., ‘The classification of birds, in Aristotle and early modern naturalists (II)’, History of Science, xxix, no. 2 (1991), 223-42.
Sculze-Hagen, K., et al., ‘Avian taxidermy in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance’, Journal für Ornithologie, 144, no. 4 (2003), 459–78.
Smith, Paul J., ‘On toucans and hornbills: readings in early modern ornithology from Belon to Buffon’, in Karl. A.E. Enenkel and Mark S. Smith (eds), Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts (Leiden, 2007), pp 75–119.
[1] Translation from Hall, J.J., ‘The classification of birds, in Aristotle and early modern naturalists (I)’, History of Science, xxix, no. 2 (1991), 230–1.
[2] Attenborough, David, et al., Amazing Things. The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (London, 2016), p. 19.
[3] Aldrovandi, Ulisse, Aldrovandi on Chickens, translated and edited by L.R. Lind (Norman, Oklahoma, 1963), pp xxxiv-xxxv.
[4] Hall, J.J., ‘The classification of birds, in Aristotle and early modern naturalists (I)’, History of Science, xxix, no. 2 (1991), 111–51.
[5] Hall, J.J., ‘The classification of birds, in Aristotle and early modern naturalists (I)’, History of Science, xxix, no. 2 (1991), 223–4.
[6] Findlen, Paula, Possessing nature. Museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley, 1996), pp 377–78.
[7] Quoted in Hall, ‘The classification of birds (II)’, 231.
[8] Ibid, 232.
[9] Findlen, Possessing nature, p. 211.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., p. 213.
[12] Smith, Paul J., ‘On toucans and hornbills: readings in early modern ornithology from Belon to Buffon’, in Karl. A.E. Enenkel and Mark S. Smith (eds), Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts (Leiden, 2007), p. 76.
[13] Ibid., pp 77–8.
[14] Ibid., p. 87. Aldrovandi’s watercolour of a toucan, based on Gessner’s composite image is reproduced in Antonino, Biancastella (ed.), Les Animaux et les Créatures Monstrueuses d’Ulisse Aldrovandi (Arles, 2005), pp 136–7.
[15] Smith, Paul J., ‘On toucans and hornbills’, p. 95.
[16] Sculze-Hagen, K., et al., ‘Avian taxidermy in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance’, Journal für Ornithologie, 144, no. 4 (2003), 459–78.
[17] Aldrovandi, Aldrovandi on Chickens, p. 368.
[18] Ibid., pp 368–9.
[19] Ibid., p. 369.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Grendler, Paul, The universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 2002), p. 131.
[22] Aldrovandi, Aldrovandi on Chickens, p. 369.
[23] Grendler, The universities of the Italian Renaissance, p. 130.