engraved title with zoological border, 102 numbered engraved plates by Ioan. Collaert, Adrian Collaert, Carol de Mallery, Cornelis Galle and Theodorus Galle after Stradanus, all hand-coloured, each with a legend of between two and four lines in Latin verse, all printed on Whatman paper dated 1819, 19th century half green morocco, [cf. Schwerdt II, p. 226; Thiebaud 858], [c.1820]; bound with Vermis sericus, 6 hand-coloured engraved plates (including title), [c.1820], oblong folio, [Antwerp], Nicolaes Vischer . A fine hand-colored copy of this extremely rare work on the chase . Born in Bruges, Jan van der Straat or, as he became known, Stradanus worked principally in Italy as a designer of tapestries. From 1553-1571 he was employed by Cosimo de Medici, who commissioned him to make a series of lavish representations of hunting, fowling and fishing for the adornment of twenty rooms in the Palace of Peggio-a-Cajano. These are the designs so magnificently commemorated in the Venationes , blending well-tried renaissance hunting methods with fabulous subject matter drawn from Persia, India and the East, and here finely hand-coloured.