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Possessing Nature

University of California Press

Aldrovandi's Museum

On 13 May 1572, the very day that Ugo Buoncompagni had chosen to return to his hometown to be invested as Gregory XIII (15721585), a fearsome dragon appeared in the countryside near Bologna, an omen of terrible times to come. Soon word of its presence spread, and a party was sent out to overtake it. The captured portent was duly carried inside the walls of the city for its citizens to inspect. Entrusted with its disposal, the senator Orazio Fontana consigned the large serpent to his brother-in-law Ulisse Aldrovandi, a collector of strange and wonderful things and an expert in draconology. As cousin of the newly elected Pope, Aldrovandi had an added claim to possess the prodigious serpent; in a strange way, his fortune too was bound to its discovery.

The naturalist promptly displayed his latest acquisition in his famous museum, where "an infinite number of gentlemen came to my house to see it."2 The appearance of the dragon was an occasion for extemporaneous poems such as the one by Augustus Gottuvius, describing Aldrovandi as no less fortunate than the first Ulysses, encounterer of other quasi-mythical creatures,

This quotation comes from the epitaph of the British collector John Tradescant (ca. 15771638):

As by their choice collection may appear,
Of what is rare, in land, in seas, in air:
Whilst they (as HOMER's Iliad in a nut)
A World of Wonders in one closet shut.

In Arthur MacGregor, "The Tradescants: Gardeners and Botanists," in Tradescant 's Rarities : Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum 1683 , Arthur MacGregor, ed. (Oxford, 1983), p. 15.

BUB, Aldrovandi , ms. 70, c. 24r.

for now his museum was complete.3 Almost immediately Aldrovandi set about writing a treatise on the dragon, including examples of all other serpents he had ever seen or heard of.4 "In that time, I wrote a Latin history of that dragon in less than two months, divided into seven books and entitled the Dracologia ," he explained to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francesco I.5 The naturalist also used this opportunity to reopen the debate about one of the many paradoxes that bedeviled the community of naturalists: whether or not serpents generated spontaneously from an alleged rooster's egg. In addition, he had one of the artists whom he employed full-time in his museum illustrate the dragon for posterity (fig. 1). Aldrovandi lost no time in maximizing the scholarly yield out of this well-publicized natural curiosity. Soon his authoritative descriptions were the talk of Italy.

While the appearance of the serpent was initially a local event, its connection with the election of a new pope ensured that it would be widely publicized beyond the confines of the city. Furthermore, the addition of the serpent to Aldrovandi's collection immediately elevated it from the realm of popular lore to the domain of science.6 In a matter of a few weeks, naturalists, collectors, and the simply curious in all parts of Italy bombarded Aldrovandi with requests for information about the papal portent. From Imola, Filippo Sega wrote to inquire whether a sign"almost an emblem or a hieroglyph"7 had been impressed in the dragon. Like many other correspondents, he desired a full description of the dragon's remarkable parts to read properly the significance of this unnatural phenomenon. Aldrovandi, in his capacity as the owner of the portent, was the one person authorized to have complete knowledge of this singular piece of nature.

By summer, the attributes of the papal portent had been duly magnified, as the story made its way through the Italian cities. "The other day cer-

BUB, Aldrovandi , ms. 3, n.p.: "Lustris tercentum bis septum [sic ] dum additur annus/Bis, Draco Felsineo sibilat ortus Agro. Sibilat eo quoque Coeli Cardine, eodem/Tempore, Romana Sceptriger Urbe DRAGO. Tertius ut Mundi Decus, estque Secundus Olympi. Sic Aldrovandi Primus Ulysses erit/Fortunate Draco Scriptoris Ulysses egebas: Qui celebrem toto redderet Orbe Gravis/Non minus indiguit te Fortunatus Ulysses, Omnia, Musaeum nunc Microcosmus habet."

BUB, Aldrovandi , ms. 3; see also his Serpentium et draconum historiae libri duo , Bartolomeo Ambrosini, ed. (Bologna, 1639).

BUB, Aldrovandi , ms. 82, cc. 372v373r (Bologna, 6 September 1578). The naturalist sent the Grand Duke a precis of the book entitled Del dragone da duoi piedi monstruoso .

Here I am paralleling an interpretation made by Ottavia Niccoli in her Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy , trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, 1990), pp. 189196. However, I do not agree with Niccoli's argument about the complete disappearance of the prophetic overtones of prodigies after the Sack of Rome in 1527. Instead, I would describe the "secularization" and "scientization" of prodigious phenomena as a more gradual process that occurred in the course of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

BUB, Aldrovandi , ms. 3, c. 21 (Imola, 1 June 1572).

Figure 1.
The dragon of 1572. From BUB,  Aldrovandi , Tavole di animadi , IV, 130.

tain Monks from Certosa told me about the monstrous serpent with a bird's feet . . . and fish's head found on the Bolognese," wrote the physician Alfonso Pancio from Ferrara on 6 July 1572, "and they said that Your Excellence has it and has had it illustrated. They begged me to write to you and find out if such a thing were true."8 Discussing the news with the good of Ferrara, Pancio discovered that his nephew Francesco Anguilla had already seen the serpent and could testify to its existence. Accordingly, Pancio asked his friend to send a picture to his patron Duke Alfonso II d'Este, as a token of their mutual affection. Eager to please a powerful prince, the Bolognese naturalist promptly discharged his obligation. "I received your letter, together with the picture of the Dragon, which is most dear to me," reported Pancio on 25 November, "and I thank Your Excellence infinitely, awaiting to see the history of it."9 Once again, Aldrovandi's authority in the true reporting of the phenomenon was acknowledged. His possession of the object gave the illustrations that he sent to the physician Pancio and the Duke of Ferrara a heightened credibility.

BUB, Aldrovandi , ms. 38(2), II, c. 173 (Ferrara, 6 July 1572).

BUB, Aldrovandi , ms. 38(2), II, c. 177 (Ferrara, 25 November 1572).

The Duke of Ferrara was not the only patron anxious to see the Dracologia in print. In Padua, naturalists such as Melchior Wieland (known to the Italians as Guillandino), prefect of the botanical garden, and the humanist Giovan Vincenzo Pinelli clamored for news of the latest marvel. "Now he and I greatly desire that Your Excellence favor us with your history of the two-footed Dragon," wrote Pinelli on 25 August 1572. In the winter of that same year, no doubt in response to Aldrovandi's protests that he had neither the time nor the scribes to disseminate adequately the manuscript version of the Dracologia to everyone who requested it, Pinelli urged him to publish it as soon as possible. "We will await the printed history of the dragon."10 Despite these pleas, Aldrovandi's history of serpents was not...