Female ring-necked Parakeet (Psittacula krameri). Drawing in watercolour and gouache. Italian, 17th century. From the 'Paper Museum' of Cassiano dal Pozzo

Drawing of a female ring-necked Parakeet.

From the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo; purchased by the Museum from Mrs Eliette Bostrom in 1962

The present drawing represents an exotic parrot identified as a female ring-necked or rose ringed parakeet (Psittacula sp). This species has an extremely large range and originates mainly from central Africa and the South Asian Continent. The artist however has remained unknown.

This drawing was originally part of Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Museum Chartaceum (Latin for ‘Paper Museum’; now Windsor Castle, Royal Lib., and London, British Museum).
Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) was a renowned scholar and patron who assembled a vast collection of paintings, medals and books but also drawings and in particular drawings of antiquities and natural history subjects.

The drawings were commissioned from major and minor artists, including Pietro da Cortona, Pietro Testa and Vincenzo Leonardi, as well as collected from other sources. Cassiano’s intention was to form a visual encyclopaedia of the ancient and natural worlds but his project was never published. A group of drawings were however reproduced in a number of books on natural history, and artists and scholars drew on its fund of images of the Classical world. (See other examples in the collection: E.2777-1962, E.426-2009 and E.1026-2011.)

This drawing was originally part of the Paper Museum, a collection of drawings and prints assembled by the Italian scholar Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) in order to form a visual encyclopaedia of the ancient and natural worlds. It depicts an exotic parrot identified as a female ring-necked or rose ringed parakeet and was probably made in the mid-17th century. Despite Cassiano dal Pozzo’s intentions the encyclopaedia was never published.

E.2776-1962