imaginative sea creatures

at the herzog august bibliothek, in wolfenbüttel, germany
october 29, 2007 - june 1, 2008

the impact of europe's increasing contact with distant lands in the 18th century cannot be overstated and fantastic
tales abounded of the unknown world of their natural history. the period's intense interest in botany and zoology
resulted in fanatical collecting of strange, never-before-seen plants and animals. here is a preview of one of the
books on show -'poissons, ecrevisses et crabes de divers couleurs et figures extraordinaires', published by louis
renard in amsterdam in 1718.


'fishes, crayfishes, and crabs, of diverse colours and extraordinary form', that are
found around the islands of the moluccas and on the  coasts of the southern
lands... although he wasn't a naturalist, and never left holland, the dutch huguenot
publisher louis renard succeeded in turning a motley collection of drawings from
the east indies into one of the rarest and most fantastic evocations of exotic
aquatic life ever published. the drawings were done by samuel fallours, an artist in
the service of the dutch east india company.


the colours attributed to various sea creatures were almost completely arbitrary, despite the
authors’ assurances of their authenticity. many of the descriptions that accompany them are
equally artistic – for example a spiny lobster that lives in the mountains and climbs trees.
renard’s book is the closest approximation we have to an eighteenth-century scuba diver’s
underwater photographs.


the final plate's depiction of a mermaid, however, is a good example of the artistic license
found in several of the drawings. according to the accompanying caption, this mermaid was
caught on the coast of borné in the province of ambon; it was 59 inches long and of eel-like
proportions. It lived on shore in a tank of water for four days and seven hours and
occasionally made small cries like a mouse. it would not eat although it was offered small
fishes, molluscs, and crabs. after its dying of hunger, fallours is said to have lifted her fins in
the front and back and found her to be like any other woman. the prefatory testimonials in the
book cite several other examples of similar 'monsters' being sighted and states that the
existence of the mermaid is 'quite definitely affirmed'.


some brilliantly coloured but rather bizarre tropical fish. many of them bear no
similarity to any living creatures. inaccuracies are found in the  addition of small
human faces, suns, moons and stars to the flanks of fishes and the carapaces
of crabs.


as both science and art, renard’s 'poissons' remains one of the rarest natural
history books ever published.


the herzog august bibliothek in wolfenbüttel, germany is a library which looks back on a
tradition reaching back to the 16th century. it became one of europe’s biggest libraries under
the scholarly-minded and bibliophile duke august, who acquired approximately 135,000 works
up to 1666 from a wide variety of fields, ranging from astronomy to rhetoric, and history to
physics. it was even said to be the eighth wonder of the world. the library was managed in the
17th and 18th centuries by none other than gottfried wilhelm leibniz (from 1690 to 1716) and
gotthold ephraim lessing (from 1770 to 1781). from 1990 onwards, the library has held the
national collection of 17th century german imprints and has purchased more than 12,000
original imprints and portraits to date. in addition, nearly 12,000 valuable medieval
manuscripts are stored in the museum complex’s eight buildings, along with bequests,
hand-written manuscripts and approximately 5,000 incunabula.


the library not only attempts to achieve superlatives, but also to arouse the interest of young
people in old books. therefore it offers an extensive and attractive cultural programs:
exhibitions, concerts, readings and lectures. today, the herzog august library is a modern
place of research, whose printed treasures dating back to the early modern period attract
researchers and scholarship-holders from around the world. the digital library presents in
digital facsimile selected items from its collections which are rare, outstanding, frequently
used, or currently most relevant for research.