This natural history drawing from the 'Paper Museum' of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657) shows a juvenile Italian sparrow, identifiable by the yellow, slightly swollen rim of the bill and mouth. The sheet belongs to a group of bird drawings commissioned by Cassiano from the artist Vincenzo Leonardi to illustrate a 1622 treatise on birds by Giovanni Pietro Olina titled L'Uccelliera, ovvero discorso della natura e proprietà di diversi uccelli ('The Aviary, or Discourse on the Nature and Characteristics of Diverse Birds') – although not all of the drawings made their way into print. Borrowing material from a popular treatise on fowling, Antonio Valli da Todi’s Il canto degl’augelli (1601), Olina selectively combined its practical instructions on how to hunt, catch and care for birds with learned scientific descriptions of birds in Renaissance natural histories such as Aldrovandi’s Ornithologiae(1599–1603), and added Cassiano’s personal observations on birds without attribution.

The plain, dusky plumage of the male Italian sparrow is very similar to that of the female of the species; the fact that the inscription identifies the bird as male implies either that it was dissected or that it had moulted at the end of its first year so that the male plumage was revealed and could be noted correctly. Olina observes that ‘one recognises the young by the plumage, which is lighter, and also by the bill, which is somewhat yellow near the opening’ (Olina 1622, fol. 42). Both this comment and the use of the diminutive forms passerculus (Latin) and passerotto (Italian) represent a rare example of Cassiano’s correct identification of an immature individual.

This sheet demonstrates well Leonardi’s meticulous technique of describing the plumage colour and markings with fine, precise brushstrokes. It is one of only two drawings in the corpus that bears a date, here on the verso along with Leonardi’s name. This anmotation has helped with the attribution to this artist on stylistic grounds of a large group of drawings in the Paper Museum (see Birds, Other Animals and Natural Curiosities 2017, p. 63). The date 1629 shows that Cassiano was continuing to commission drawings of the same species (or variations of species, such as juvenile, male or female individuals, or individuals with plumage variations), for several years after the publication of the book.

Annotations: Lat. Passerculus Mas. / Vol. Passerotto

Verso: annotated at top, in ink: Vo. Leonardi F. 1629

Natural History of Birds album (RCIN 970381), fol. 30; drawing now lifted from the late eighteenth-century mount sheet on which it had previously been laid down (‘type G’ mount).

Text adapted from Birds, Other Animals and Natural Curiosities, Parts B.IV–V of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols, London 2017, cat. 29 [Henrietta McBurney with Carlo Violani].