Tre serpi, tre vedove e alcune piante: i disegni ‘inimitabili’ di Jacopo Ligozzi e le loro copie o traduzioni tra i progetti di Ulisse Aldrovandi e le pietre dure

Jacopo Ligozzi’s depictions of animals and plants have been celebrated for their uniqueness and quality by his contemporaries as well as by modern art historians. They seem to confirm Leonardo’s dictum of painting as “una scienza inimitabile”. Yet what was their impact on natural history and scientific illustrations? In which ways did they circulate, if indeed they did at all? To study these questions this article concentrates on Ulisse Aldrovandi, who was in permanent search for illustrations of flora and fauna from all over the world and fully aware of the artistic and scientific value of Ligozzi’s drawing. He tried by all means to incorporate originals or copies in his collection and used what he obtained as templates for woodcuts to be published. Through three case studies, concerned with snakes, birds, and plants, this article reconstructs the complex and varying processes of translating Ligozzi’s prototypes into print. Whereas in this translation Ligozzi’s drawings lost their primary quality of colour and his painted archive of animals and birds remained relatively inaccessible, one can find the impact of Ligozzi’s drawings in another artistic technique, namely the commesso delle pietre dure. Here, some of his painted birds, butterflies, and plants were revived in colored stone.