Popular dragon
Mirrored: Ulysse Aldrovandi - De piscibus et de cetis (1623) - Rare Fish Books Amsterdam - Photography Cees de Jonge
Such a sweet face, right? It would have been a familiar sight to experts at the time: specimens like this would have been around for over a century by then.
There’s a 1623 book, for instance, based on an old collection of naturalia, with an image that’s nearly identical to this dragon. The head is lifted and the mouth is open. It’s got a strong chin, and some sort of spike on its head. Almost exactly like our dragon.
The image is part of a posthumously published work by 16th century Italian naturalist Ulysse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), the first professor of natural history at the University of Bologna. Aldrovandai owned one of the largest early modern collections of naturalia, including several dragons.
Aldrovandi also copied images of dragons from other books. So it seems safe to say he was well-informed on the subject. Every dragon he pictured looks just a bit different, and the fact that he was able to picture several different models, leads us to believe that there were quite a lot of these kinds of objects in circulation.