Aldrovandi — Monstrous Fowl Engraving from the Ornithologiae, Bologna 1640

A remarkable teratological woodcut from Ulisse Aldrovandi's Serpentum, et Draconum Historiae Libri Duo (History of Serpents and Dragons), published posthumously in Bologna in 1640. The principal image — Gallus monstruosus cauda anguina, the "monstrous cock with a serpent's tail" — depicts a horned, bearded rooster suspended by its feet from a perch, its long scaled tail coiling away and terminating in a small tubercle. Aldrovandi presents the creature in his accompanying text as a reported monstrous birth "observed near a tropic," not as a mythological beast — though the figure sits unmistakably in the visual lineage that produced the basilisk and the cockatrice.

The leaf is printed on both sides. The verso carries a second striking woodcut, Bufo monstrificus cauda anguina — the "monstrous toad with a serpent's tail" — together with two smaller subsidiary figures: a caterpillar with a serpentine tail, gifted to Aldrovandi by the Bolognese naturalist Ovidio Montalbano, and a broad-bodied serpent with a compressed tail.

A note on display: as the leaf is printed on both sides, only one face can be framed at a time. Buyers framing the cock as the principal display will be supplied free of charge with a high-resolution archival print of the toad verso, allowing both subjects to be enjoyed together.

Translation of plate text:

• Gallus monstruosus cauda anguina — "Monstrous cock with a serpent's tail."
• Bufo monstrificus cauda anguina — "Monstrous toad with a serpent's tail."
• Eruca cauda anguina, prona & supinè picta, ab Excellentiss. D. Ouidio Montalbano inuenta, & nobis dono data — "A caterpillar with a serpent's tail, depicted from above and below, discovered by the most excellent Don Ovidio Montalbano and given to us as a gift."
• Serpens latissimi corporis cauda compressa — "A serpent of very broad body, with a compressed tail."

The accompanying Latin text (translated): "If any animal in any part is to be reckoned among monsters, doubtless this is to be counted — a cock, horned, bearded, with a serpentine tail, at the extremity of which is a kind of tubercle, observed near a tropic, where the tail adheres to the body."

Aldrovandi (1522–1605) was among the most influential naturalists of the late Renaissance, and his Serpentum et Draconum Historiae remains a cornerstone of early herpetological and teratological literature — a work where empirical observation, hearsay, and the marvellous still sit on the same page.