Tacuinum sanitatis

This book is a complete catalogue and commentary on a remarkable series of 130 colored drawings executed in North Italy, almost certainly Padua, in the 1450s by a group of artists in the circle of Andrea Mantegna. The drawings illustrate subjects from the Tacuinum Sanitatis or Table of Health. Subjects touched on include medicine, sport, farming, animal husbandry, natural history, shopping, cooking and manufacturing – constituting an extraordinary record of everyday life (and life style) in early Renaissance Italy. This manuscript is one of four known series of the kind, and the only one not published.