Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Europe 1600-1815, Room 6, The Lisa and Bernard Selz Gallery

Drawing

17th century (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

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.


Object details

Category
Object type
Materials and techniques
Watercolour and bodycolour over black chalk on paper
Brief description
Female ring-necked Parakeet (Psittacula krameri). Drawing in watercolour and gouache. Italian, 17th century. From the 'Paper Museum' of Cassiano dal Pozzo
Physical description
Drawing of a female ring-necked Parakeet.
Dimensions
  • Sheet height: 263mm
  • Sheet width: 171mm
Style
Marks and inscriptions
Inscribed in brown ink on the top right hand-side: 'Perrocchetto'
Object history
From the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo; purchased by the Museum from Mrs Eliette Bostrom in 1962
Historical context
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.)
Subjects depicted
Summary
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.
Associated objects
Bibliographic references
  • Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1962. London: HMSO, 1964.
  • Henrietta McBurney, Ian Rolfe, Caterina Napoleone and paula Findlen, Birds, Other Animals and Natural Curiosities, Part B.IV-V of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, London, 2017, Cat.176, pp.426-427, Illus
Collection
Accession number
E.2776-1962

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Record createdJune 30, 2009
Record URL
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