Civetta Carine Noctua

Color lithograph, finish by hand, taken from the rare Iconografia dell'avifauna italica, ovvero, Tavole illustranti le specie di uccelli che trovansi in Italia: con brevi descrizioni e note / testo del dott. Enrico Hillyer Giglioli; tavole di Alberto Manzella, edited in Prato first and in Florence then between 1878 and 1882.

In 1876 Enrico Hillyer Giglioli, professor of zoology and comparative anatomy, published, at the Museum of Natural History of Florence, la Collezione Centrale degli Animali Vertebrati Italiani (Central Collection of Italian Vertebrate Animals), a collection that strongly influenced his scientific production. In particular, the ornithological section has been the subject of numerous and important works, which document the image that scholars had of these species on the threshold of the twentieth century.

Giglioli began work on the Iconography of the Italian birdlife in 1879, an ambitious but unfinished editorial program that had as its purpose the live representation of all species of birds of the Italian fauna. The work was to be published in about eighty monthly issues, of which fifty-four actually saw the light, and each issue was accompanied by five lithographs, obtained from the plates drawn, and colored by hand by Alberto Manzella.

In excellent condition.