FLORENTINE TAXIDERMY
PAGANORI, Vincenzo, photographer, and Riccardo MAGNELLI, attributed taxidermist.
[Cover title:] Saggio della collezione centrale degli animali vert[ebrati] ital[iani] fundata dal Prof. E.H. Giglioni nel R. Museo di Firenze.
[c. 1880s?]
Portfolio, 13 albumen prints, various sizes but mostly 195 x 254 mm, captioned at the foot within the print, mounted on card; in a red pebbled cloth portfolio, front cover lettered gilt; the prints in excellent condition, mounts with photographer’s blindstamp at foot, portfolio sunned, a few marks to front cover, ties wanting; contemporary attribution note to front pastedown.
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[Cover title:] Saggio della collezione centrale degli animali vert[ebrati] ital[iani] fundata dal Prof. E.H. Giglioni nel R. Museo di Firenze.
An unusual and very rare photographic portfolio of taxidermy, featuring twelve displays – including flamingos, a brown bear, seabirds, and ibex – and one scene of work under preparation, showing the taxidermist and his young apprentice.
The Central Collection of Italian Vertebrates at the Museo di storia naturale in Florence was founded in 1876 by an Anglo-Italian, Enrico Hillyer Giglioli (1845–1909), who had been born in London to an English mother and an Italian father and educated in England. In his thirty-four years of activity he assembled an extraordinary collection of Italian fauna, comprising 35,000 specimens of 1235 different species.
Paganori (fl. 1860–1900) is known for his documentation of the artistic heritage of Florence, including the works of Donatello. He operated his own studio from 1873 until 1891, when he joined Fratelli Alinari to assist his nephew Vittorio Alinari, director of the studio from 1890. A note to the front pastedown attributes the taxidermy to Riccardo Magnelli, who worked at the zoological division of the Museo di storia naturale, called ‘La Specola’.
We can find no record of this publication in any of the usual databases. Giglioli later published a history of the collection 1876–1908.
