Manetti's Ornithologia Methodice Digesta was a monumental ornithological work containing 600
etchings in five folio volumes. The work began in 1767 in Florence and was
completed ten years later. S. Peter Dance says of the work:
The attitudes of the birds themselves give this book its unique character.
Strutting, parading, posturing and occasionally flying over its 600 hand colored
plates are birds whose real ljfe counterparts would surely disown them, and not
without reason, for Manetti seems in these pictures to be depicting the human
comedy, the habits and mannerisms of contemporary Italian society.
The engraved text at the bottom of the plates inscribe the images to the illustrious
Dottore Grazio Traversari, possibly a patron of the work.
