Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), Common or spectacled caiman and South American false coral snake, c.1705-10. Credit line:The Royal Collection (c) 2007, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

LONDON.-The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, will present Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery, on view 14 March – 28 September 2008. This extraordinary exhibition, recently shown in Edinburgh at The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, has been selected from the collections of the Royal Library by curators of the Royal Collection in collaboration with the distinguished naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough. It brings together the works of four artists and a collector who have shaped our knowledge of the world around us.
Leonardo da Vinci, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby are diverse figures who shared a passion for enquiry and a fascination with the beautiful and bizarre in nature. All lived at a time when new species were being discovered around the world in ever increasing numbers. Many of the plants and animals represented in the exhibition were then barely known in Europe. Today some are commonplace, others are now extinct.

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