Tag Archives: snakes
Fontana on the Venom of the Viper
The work of Felix Fontana suggests complex connections among topics in Romantic natural history. In 1775, Fontana was appointed first director of the the Museum of Physics and Natural History, now known as the Zoological Museum (La Specola) in Florence. … Continue reading
Romantic Rhinos and Victorian Vipers: The Zoo as Nineteenth-Century Spectacle
by Ashton Nichols If you could have seen what it was like when I was a boy–half zoo and half museum, my father let us do anything we wanted. For a while we had a big tree in the … Continue reading