Hippopotamo finto - 1565

Xylographic depiction of the hippopotamus drawn by Giorgio Liberale da Udine and carved by Wolfang Meyerpeck for the 1565 edition of Pietro Andrea Mattioli's famous herbarium titled "De i discorsi di m. Pietro Andrea Matthioli sanese, medico cesareo", a work on which generations of apothecaries, botanists, and physicians have formed, in which a portion of the second book is devoted to certain animals.

The illustrated hippopotamus is described as "fake" to the extent that its description was uncertain: Mattioli reports the accounts of some Ancients, deeming them reliable, to the point of defining the "true hippo" as the one with a mane like a horse, hooves like cattle, tail like a boar; by contrast it is called "fake" the one with legs like those of dogs or wolves or foxes and teeth like a crocodile, without tusks.

On the back of the sheet four Roman coins are shown, in which one of the two faces bears the image of a "true" hippopotamus.

The sheet has a beautiful and homogeneous coloration of relatively recent craftsmanship and is in excellent condition except for an old marginal restoration.

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