BUONANNI,FILIPPO.

Recreatio Mentis st Oculi in Observatione Animalium Testaceorum Curiosis Naturae Inspectoribus...nunc denuo ab eodem latine ablata,centum additis testaceorum iconibus...

Rome,Varesi,1684,First Latin Edition,4to,contemporary calf gilt,Two Parts in one volume,first part with engraved frontispiece and 7 engraved plates on 6 leaves ;second part with engraved frontispiece and 137 engraved plates,including 3 sectional titles.

A Fine copy of the first shell iconography.This edition enlarged from the first Italian edition of 1681 by the addition of one hundred more shells and six plates which depict Archimboldo Grotesques composed of shells.The plates which describe over five hundred shells, and the frontispieces are most likely drawn and engraved by Giovanni Francesco Venturini.They are divided into three classes :the non-turbinate univalves,

the bivalves,and the turbinate valves.

The first part encourages the reader to,study both living and fossil shells and their composition,their usefulness and mentions collections in museums.The second part descibes the shells individually,their colours,habitat,etc.

Buonanni was  librarian at the Collegio Romano.He believed,partly on the authority of Aristotle and his mentor Kircher, in the spontaneous generation of molluscs.This book rekindled the controversy over generation that had flared in 1671 between Kircher and Francesco Redi.

Nissen ZBI,754 ;Dance.Shell Collecting,p.43.