Venationes ferarum, avium, piscium (Hunts of wild animals, birds and fish). Plate 85. Catching swallows from the rooftops using discs

This print is the work of three major Flemish figures of the late 16th century: the original artist Jan Van der Straet (a.k.a. Stradanus), the engraver Jan Collaert II; and the publisher Philips Galle. The success of Van der Straet's cartoons for a hunting series to decorate the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, near Florence (1566-77), led to the leading Flemish publishers Heronymus Cock, and subsequently Galle, to commission related engravings in the 1570s and 1580s. (Galle also engraved/published other works by Van der Straet, including his Crucifixion, in Te Papa's collection).

These proved so popular that in 1596 Galle published the ambitious, 105 plate volume Venationes, ferarum, arium, piscium (Hunts of wild animals, birds and fish), engaging several engravers including Collaert, all based on original drawings by the prolific Van der Straet.  Bird hunts form an important sub-theme. The volume was republished by Philips Galle's son, Johannes, in 1634.

This print, plate 82 from the 1596 edition, strikes the present-day observer as weird, almost surrealistic, and very much at odds with standard hunting scenes. Not only is it located in the city; but the quarry, swallows, surprise and appal Anglo-Saxon sensibilities. Till recently the hirundine family of birds was, however, a prized Mediterranean gourmet delicacy and widely hunted. Captured birds were destined for the market and the dining table. The boy hunters stand on the rooftops and balconies, and catch the swallows using discs suspended from long sticks which would trap any unfortunate birds flying through them. 

This is corrobarated by the Renaissance Latin inscription, just below the image, which has been kindly translated by Tim Smith (Victoria University of Wellington): 'Youths climb to the tops of houses and towers. Out in the open in the holy quarter of town, they cast out discs made of paper fluttering in the air. The incautious, swift swallow, flies by and gets trapped in the narrow hole'.

According to 19th century American writer Washington Irving, 'one of the favourite amusements of the ragged "sons of the Alhambra"' was catching 'swallows and martlets' from the tops of towers - as seen here (probably Italy, where Van der Straet lived.)  A number of figures gather in the town square, watching the hunt. The architecture, something of a fantasy assemblage of towered and domed buildings, emphasises the eeriness of the scene.

See: Chris Michaelides, http://blogs.bl.uk/european/2015/09/joannes-stradanus-and-his-hunting-scenes.html

Angela Turner, Swallow (London, 2015)

Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art                                             January 2017