Shells - plate 22

For "Index Testarum Conchyliorum", first edition.

They are at once scientific studies, and also decorative works of art exhibiting the interplay of the natural colours, textures, and shapes of the shells in an Italianate arrangement.

Giuseppe Menabuoni and Antonio Pazzi were both Italian painters, printmakers and Niccolò Gualtieri was a medical doctor and professor at the University of Pisa, whose avocation was the study of mollusks. He devised a system of classification of the shells for this book, which was admired by the zoologists who based their studies on his works, such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Menabuoni's splendid plates reproduce specimens of Gualtieri's shells, some of which are still in the collection of the Museum of Natural History and the Territory in the Certosa di Calci, operated under the auspices of the University of Pisa.

Original copper plate engravings with fine later hand-colouring for "Index Testarum Conchyliorum", first edition.