Pasta for Nightingales
A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore
VINCENZO LEONARDI (1590-C. 1648)
Green woodpecker, Picus viridis L. 1758
circa 1619circa 1629Watercolour and bodycolour heightened with gum, over black chalk. Silhouetted around tip of bill and tongue, and tip of tail. Mount type G | 19.8 x 26.4 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 927690
This drawing of a green woodpecker belongs to a group of bird drawings 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 drawings in this group represent the passerines and game birds that are the subject of Olina's volume, but not all of them made their way into print – including this one.
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. 12.
The drawings in this group represent the passerines and game birds that are the subject of Olina's volume, but not all of them made their way into print – including this one.
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. 12.
