Pasta for Nightingales
A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore
Great tit, Parus major, L. 1758
circa 1619circa 1622Watercolour and bodycolour over black chalk; the outlines incised. Cage, tree trunk and foliage in pen and ink over black chalk; trimmed at the bottom. Mount G type | 12.9 x 17.0 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 927621
This drawing of a great tit 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 appears on fol. 27 verso of this book.
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. 61.
