Bear - Conrad Gesner

A hand-coloured woodcut of a brown bear, heightened with egg-white, from Conrad Gesner’s Icones animalium quadrupedum uiuiparorum et ouiparorum.

From the Latin edition.

Zürich, Christoph Froschauer, 1555.

Conrad Gesner was a Swiss Renaissance physician, bibliographer and naturalist, and a pioneer of scientific bibliography and zoology. His Bibliotheca universalis (1545–1549) brought together the literature known to him. The four volumes of Historia animalium published between 1551 and 1558 brought together written accounts and images of animals from a wide range of sources.

The sheet measures 38.3 × 24 cm. Condition is good.