Pasta for Nightingales
A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore
VINCENZO LEONARDI (1590-C. 1648)
Common kingfisher, Alcedo atthis (L. 1758)
circa 1619circa 1629Watercolour and bodycolour over black chalk; the outlines incised; corrections in lead white (darkened) along upper edge of bill. Trimmed at top and left. Mount G type | 15.4 x 20.0 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 927655
This drawing of a common kingfisher was commissioned from the artist Vincenzo Leonardi by the seventeenth-century Roman patron and collector Cassiano dal Pozzo to illustrate a 1622 treatise on birds by Giovanni Pietro Olina titled L'Uccelliera, ovvero discorso della natura e proprietà di diversi uccelli ('The Aviary, or Discourse on the Nature and Characteristics of Diverse Birds').
The engraving by Francesco Villamena based on this drawing is present only as a variant plate in some of the extra-illustrated copies of this book, where it is bound between fols 38 and 39.
See Birds, Other Animals and Natural Curiosities, Part B.IV/V of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné (2 vols, Royal Collection Trust 2017), vol. 1, cat. 18.
The engraving by Francesco Villamena based on this drawing is present only as a variant plate in some of the extra-illustrated copies of this book, where it is bound between fols 38 and 39.
See Birds, Other Animals and Natural Curiosities, Part B.IV/V of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné (2 vols, Royal Collection Trust 2017), vol. 1, cat. 18.
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