De Monstris, Fortunio Liceti

(De Monstrorum Causis, Natura et Diferentiis, 1st Edition: Padua 1616)

Very few of the world’s great libraries can boast of owning a copy of this edition, a true collector’s item.

The Renaissance brought its own rhythm and a whole new dynamic to diverse fields of human knowledge and, in a very special way, to anatomy and medicine. It is therefore not surprising that the De Monstris was so successful and widely disseminated.

Throughout that period, a large number of treatises with suggestive and almost provocative iconographic, allegorical and symbolic apparel began to appear and disseminate. Standing out from most of them was the De Monstrorum Causis, Natura et Diferentiis, by Fortunio Liceti (Rapallo, 1577 – Padua, 1657).

This book was actually much better known as the DE MONSTRIS, of which numerous editions were made, and it ended up arousing enormous interest and obtaining considerable popular acclaim.

One edition stands out above all others: that by Paolo Frambotti in 1668. It is the most valued and coveted for its painstaking care, for the unparalleled beauty and abundance of its fantastic engravings, and, above all, for its rarity and the enormous difficulty in obtaining a copy today.

De Monstris is one of the great repertoires of symbols, allegories, hieroglyphs and mythographs that were so popular in Renaissance culture. But over and above that, it marked a real milestone in the study of genetic anomalies and malformations.

It also represents an important step in the evolution of medicine, as it represents a serious effort of scientific analysis as to the causes and appearance of deformities, eliminating the divine attribution that had until then been given to them. This laid the foundations of modern teratology, which nowadays studies much more broadly and deeply the embryology and pathology of the causes and development of congenital deviations in human beings, animals and plants.

Images of De Monstris