Ulisse Aldrovandi

Peter Mason has written and lectured widely in the field of the history of art and visual culture, especially in relation to Latin America. His previous books include The Lives of Images (Reaktion Books, 2001) and Before Disenchantment: Images of Exotic Animals and Plants in the Early Modern World (Reaktion, 2009).

"Sixteenth-century Bolognese naturalist, writer and collector Ulisse Aldrovandi is underexposed today . . . Historian Peter Mason’s eye-catching biography rescues Aldrovandi from obscurity." - Andrew Robinson, Nature"It has always been a huge lack for historians of science, art and natural history that there has been no monograph, let alone one in English, on the man who created the largest scientific collection of sixteenth-century Europe. Now for the first time in Peter Mason’s new book, English readers have a succinct and highly readable account of Aldrovandi’s life and work. Ulisse Aldrovandi: Naturalist and Collector is the latest and welcome addition to the excellent compact Renaissance Lives series . . . Mason states in his Preface that he has drawn extensively on Aldrovandi’s correspondence with his associates spanning more than fifty years of the naturalist’s life. This dependence on correspondence is one of the most appealing aspects of the book . . . In his extensive research, consolidated to fit the compact format of the Renaissance Lives series, together with a careful selection of illustrations, Mason has contributed an enormously rich and helpful fund of information about Aldrovandi and his world. Scholars of early modern science, the history of collecting and natural history illustration will find this book an accessible and invaluable reference tool." - Henrietta McBurney, Journal of the History of Collections"Ulisse Aldrovandi: Naturalist and Collector weaves a vivid, vital picture of this iconic naturalist and collector, bursting with detail and insight. With his characteristic skill, Mason brings the man behind the extensive tomes and copious naturalia to life, placing him in a complex world of patronage and politics, exploration and wonder." - Natalie Lawrence, co-author of Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence"All those with an interest in the emergent understanding of natural history in the sixteenth century will know something of Ulisse Aldrovandi, prolific collector, author and illustrator of a world in which new phenomena were revealed on a daily basis. Peter Mason presents a penetrating portrait of the man himself, extending his discussion to include Aldrovandi’s all-important network of correspondents, his field practice and his attempts to order the natural world with the aid of his vast museum and archive. In this engaging, sympathetically written and densely illustrated volume, peppered with key passages abstracted into English (many for the first time) from Aldrovandi’s publications and from his vast personal correspondence, the reader is presented with an astonishingly detailed picture not only of the working methods but of the social and the scholarly milieu inhabited by this highly original figure from the early history of natural science." - Arthur MacGregor, author of Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600–1874