Seriously similar skulls
Mar 8th, 2013 by adharris
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.
Could it be true that similar animal forms share the same habits? José Joaquim da Gama Machado certainly thought so, and produced the text and drawings to back it up. Machado was a 19th-century scientist who studied homeopathy, phrenology, as well as physiognomy before he took up natural history in his fifties. An extremely eccentric Portuguese man he spent his life surrounded by birds and was known to stroll about Paris, usually accompanied by his favorite parrot on his shoulder. The idea presented in Théorie des ressemblances is that animals that share the same form, color, and outward appearance also share the same habits and customs. Théorie des ressemblances illustrates Machado’s theory with beautifully colored lithographic plates modeled on Machado’s own drawings along with French text detailing the comparisons.
Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager, for contributing this post.