Vaults of the Unhinged: Fortunio Liceti’s Book of Monsters

In 1616, Italian physician and philosopher Fortunio Liceti published De monstrorum caussis, natura, et differentiis libri duo (On the Causes, Nature and Differences of Monsters, in Two Books). The first edition was largely text-based, but by the time the second edition appeared in Padua in 1634 (often dated 1633)—published by Paulus Frambottus—the work had transformed into something extraordinary: a quarto volume of over 260 pages, illustrated with a gallery of the grotesque.