1. The Histoire naturelle by Georges-Louis Leclerc count of Buffon, published by the Imprimerie Royale, which was based in the Louvre palace in Paris, had in a few years many editions, issues, counterfeits and translations throughout Europe, reaching up to Bologna with the series of quadruped animals, which appeared in episodes, on a weekly basis, between 1783 and 1787, testifying to the luck that this type of publication had in the years of more widespread affirmation of Enlightenment thought.

The exhibition “Paper Zoo. The spread of the zoological images of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle in eighteenth-century Italy “by Pierangelo Bellettini, director of San Giorgio in Poggiale, intends to reconstruct the extraordinary fortune that the engravings of quadruped animals had in Italy.

A selection of 132 zoological illustrations recently acquired by the Library of San Giorgio in Poggiale, all printed in Bologna in the eighties of the eighteenth century by the chalcographer Antonio Cattani and Antonio Nerozzi: an editorial enterprise that is one of the most significant episodes in the history of Bolognese typography of the second half of the eighteenth century.