Franceso Maria SOLDINI

De Anima Brutorum commentaria curiousum nobii Natura ingenium dedit.  [2], 256 pp.  With an engraved frontispiece printed in azure, engraved title-page printed in both sepia and azure, 7 full-page engraved plates printed in azure and 7 elaborate historiated initials printed in sepia.  8vo., 193 x 130 mm, bound in contemporary Italian full armorial calf, spine heavily gilt.  [Florence: Cambiagi Regius, 1776].  

First Edition, a fine copy of this exotic example of eighteenth-century Italian colour-printing.  The subject matter is a mysterious bestiary, illustrated in form with colour-printed copper-plates incorporating elements of mythology, animal psychology, comparative psychology, zoology, evolution and creationism.

Soldini's De Anima Brutorum, issued nearly a century before Darwin's theories of evolution, earned a place on the Index Librorum Prohibitarum (probably on account of its pro-evolutionary position).  In one astonishing plate appear two bizarre prehistoric beasts (one of which can only be described as an eight-legged crocodile-rooster) and a rhinoceros (drawn after Albrecht Durer).

There are plates of shellfish and amphibians invading the land from the sea (obviously anti-creationistic), and several plates of various birds and mammals, including a hairy ape with distinctly human features.  A crisp copy with wide margins, in fine condition.    

PROVENANCE:   Marquises Turinetti di Priero, with the Marquises cote of arms stamped on the front and back covers.

Brunet V, 427.  Eales, Cole Library 1941.