Giovanni Battista della Porta was an Italian polymath, working away during the Renaissance. We briefly looked at Battista this week in one of my lectures. It interrupted slides on Renaissance portraits and was such a welcome break in the well versed "ideals" of the artistic period.
Battista was concerned with classifying living persons and things. In these sketches he aims to prove that human characteristics derive from or are at least aligned with that of animals.
I love these sketches. It reminds me of sitting in a double bed in Shepherds Bush, drinking tea and smoking, and running through every person that we could possibly think of and asigning them an animal that they resembled. Good times. I by the way, am a rodent or some sort. Maybe a beaver.
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