Aldrovandi and New World Volcanoes: The Discovery of a Sixteenth-Century Woodblock of Popocatepetl

Abstract

The Palazzo Poggi Museum and the Bologna University Library hold several thousand woodblocks created by the celebrated naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522‑1605). Among them, a recently discovered woodblock depicts an American volcano. Our analysis of sixteenth-century manuscripts, atlases and printed works in the Aldrovandi collection aims to shed light on the channels through which information and images flowed about the nature of the New World, and on how they reached Bologna. This network of channels highlights the strong connections between the Italian Peninsula and the American territories of the Spanish Crown. The paper establishes that these channels were crucial to Aldrovandi in creating his first printed image of an American volcano, with extensive references to Mount Etna and the use of the taxonomic category of mons flammivomus.