The exhibition displays around fifty engravings drawn by Jan van der Straet, known as Giovanni Stradano (Bruges 1523-Florence 1605) and engraved by Philip Galle in Antwerp between 1578 and 1596.
Inspired by the designs of the cartoons for the tapestries with the Hunts, executed by Giorgio Vasari at the wish of Cosimo I de' Medici to furnish twenty rooms in the Villa of Poggio a Caiano, the engravings are grouped by subject, broken down into three large categories: hunts of animals of land, air and water.
We should remember that the members of the Medici family, including Lorenzo il Magnifico and the Grand Duke Cosimo I, always had a passion for hunting.
The engravings show a taste for the variety of the views, the landscapes and the decorative motifs derived from Stradano’s Mannerist culture, intent on portraying the wonderful and the bizarre, with bodies depicted in twined and twisted and always sculptural positions. Stradano’s taste for the portrayal of landscapes and animals of the most bizarre forms, and the most astute or courageous modes of hunting, offers us amazing scenes in which man uses his intelligence to mould animals and even nature itself to his needs.