The Paper Museum

Long before Denis Diderot's Encyclopedie and longer still before the Encyclopedia Britannica, Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) set out to catalogue the world at the time of the Renaissance in drawings, watercolors, and prints commissioned from artists of every ability. When Cassiano died, his brother Carlo Antonio carded on what the brothers called their Museo Cartaceo (Paper Museum) until Carlo Antonio's death in 1689.

Some sixty-five hundred of these pictures have ...