Pasta for Nightingales - Rambling Readers

Hardcover

English language

Published 2018 by Royal Collection Enterprises Limited.

ISBN:: 978-1-909741-49-2

(1 review)

Foreword by Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk.

A unique celebration of the beginnings of ornithology, designed to reflect the charm of the seventeenth-century original.

Cassiano dal Pozzo, now celebrated as one of the most important art patrons of the seventeenth century, commissioned a number of exquisite studies of birds as part of his famous ‘Paper Museum’. In 1622 the lawyer and ornithologist Giovanni Pietro Olina used these drawings, which are now kept in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, as the basis for the illustrations in his Uccelliera.

Pasta for Nightingales combines Cassiano’s original artwork with selections from the first modern translation of Olina’s text. It includes such enchanting insights as the idea that robins suffered from dizziness and that the hoopoe overindulged in grapes until it became ‘dazed and half-drunk.’ However, it also includes much fascinating early natural history and ornithological observation – as well as …

Foreword by Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk.

A unique celebration of the beginnings of ornithology, designed to reflect the charm of the seventeenth-century original.

Cassiano dal Pozzo, now celebrated as one of the most important art patrons of the seventeenth century, commissioned a number of exquisite studies of birds as part of his famous ‘Paper Museum’. In 1622 the lawyer and ornithologist Giovanni Pietro Olina used these drawings, which are now kept in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, as the basis for the illustrations in his Uccelliera.

Pasta for Nightingales combines Cassiano’s original artwork with selections from the first modern translation of Olina’s text. It includes such enchanting insights as the idea that robins suffered from dizziness and that the hoopoe overindulged in grapes until it became ‘dazed and half-drunk.’ However, it also includes much fascinating early natural history and ornithological observation – as well as the secret recipe for pasta to keep your nightingale happy and encourage it to sing.

An historic and delightful gift book, which is bound to appeal to every bird-lover.

1 edition

Fionnáin reviewed Pasta for Nightingales by Helen Macdonald

A beautiful oddity

3 stars

I'm not sure what to write about this book. It is a print edition of a 17th Century encyclopaedia of birds published by a writer and artist working in Italy at that time. The text is full of wild assumptions and ideas about the birds from that time, and the images, although wonderfully made, are often very strange – some are made from taxidermied critters and some from life.

The book becomes a documentation of a time when a type of observational science was becoming very popular in western Europe. For that, it is a fascinating document, even if it is strange to have it presented this way in modern print and type. While reading, I felt like I needed more information on the book and its content, and on what it may have led to or been useful for. But it's also hard to know what this book is …

I'm not sure what to write about this book. It is a print edition of a 17th Century encyclopaedia of birds published by a writer and artist working in Italy at that time. The text is full of wild assumptions and ideas about the birds from that time, and the images, although wonderfully made, are often very strange – some are made from taxidermied critters and some from life.

The book becomes a documentation of a time when a type of observational science was becoming very popular in western Europe. For that, it is a fascinating document, even if it is strange to have it presented this way in modern print and type. While reading, I felt like I needed more information on the book and its content, and on what it may have led to or been useful for. But it's also hard to know what this book is useful for, maybe as a reference point for a historical science that we have left behind. Or maybe just as a coffee table book with interesting moments that pique mild curiosity.

Subjects

Birds, pictorial works
Birds, europe
Birds in art