Historia naturale di Ferrante Imperato napolitano. Nella quale ordinatamente si tratta della diuersa condition di minere, pietre pretiose, & altre curiosità. Con varie historie di piante, & animali, sin'hora non date in luce, Venezia, 1672
The museum of the apothecary Ferrante Imperato gathered a large number of objects belonging to the three realms, animal, plant and mineral (stuffed animals, wonders, fossils, stones and gems, soils, juices, essences, perfumes, oils, inks, plants and dried herbs, seeds, etc.), and a certain amount of artificialia, connected to the natural world, plus his scientific correspondence and finally a gallery of portraits of distinguished scientists. We know from some sources that Imperato "collected" even live animals (at least one ichneumon and a turtle). A partial representation of the set-up with in which his collections were displayed is to be found in the only one of his work that had gone to press, Dell'Historia Naturale (1599) and it appears as well in this second edition of 1672 displayed here.
In the elegant woodcut by an unknown author, the layout of the museum, which responded to the typical aesthetic standards of the late Renaissance museums, saw shelves and cabinets along the walls and large stuffed animals on the ceiling. An integral part of the collections was also a copious and famous dry herbarium, which the woodcut in the Historia shows placed on a shelf on the left of the exhibition area.