Moray eel - Conrad Gesner

An original woodcut leaf depicting a moray eel, from Conrad Gesner’s Nomenclator aquatilium animantium.

From the first edition, with Latin text.

Zürich, Christoph Froschauer, 1560.

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 34.5 × 21.8 cm. Condition is good.