Royal Collection Enterprises

This beautiful book compiles astonishing photographs by Herbert Ponting, who accompanied and inspired Scott on the Terra Nova expedition and Frank Hurley, official photographer on the Endurance expedition with Ernest Shackleton. The photographers endured some of the most hostile conditions on Earth to create these images of transcendent beauty and startling emotional force: amazing photos made using primitive negatives and wooden cameras, extraordinary record of Antarctic landscapes and the bravery and camaraderie of the expedition group, photos were presented to King George V and remain in the Royal Photographic Collection, commentary from modern-day explorer David Hempleman-Adams, essays from Sophie Gordon and Emma Stuart, maps charting the voyages of Scott and Shackleton and essential addition to the literature of polar exploration.

All artists have pondered and been inspired by the natural world. This book, which includes fresh, lucid, and thought-provoking texts by one of the natural worlds best-loved commentators, examines the relationship between five masters of the art of natural history and the worlds they chose to portray, from Leonardos studies of plants and animals to Cassiano dal Pozzos immense Paper Museum; and from the microcosm of an English garden to the new worlds of the Americas. The great voyages of discovery of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought European artists face-toface with new and exotic plants and animals, and created an intense interest in the way nature was investigated and recorded. In Amazing Rare Things, Sir David Attenborough explores the history of natural history. With expert curators from the Royal Library, he examines the contributions of four great artists and one pre-eminent collector to this era of extraordinary scientific advances. Beautifully illustrated with a selection of exquisite drawings and watercolours by Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby; and with works collected by Cassiano dal Pozzo, this book examines the engagement between art and nature, from Renaissance Italy to the New World of the Americas. This unique and fascinating book shines a light on the role of artists in our exploration of the natural world.

For both the young Queen and her Prince Consort, art was a personal matter about which they felt strongly. A celebration of the wide-ranging scope of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's collaboration as purchasers and patrons of art and an exploration of their personal tastes, this book, with its informal and readable introduction, thematic groupings, and beautiful full-page illustrations is the perfect starting-point for anyone with an interest in Victorian art.

Cassiano dal Pozzo, (1588-1657) now celebrated as one of the most important art patrons in Italy of the seven - teenth century, commissioned a number of exquisite studies of birds as part of his famous ‘Paper Museum’. In 1622 the lawyer and ornithologist Giovanni Pietro Olina used these drawings which are now kept in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, as the basis for the illustrations in his Uccelliera . Pasta for Nightingales combines Cassiano’s original artwork with selections from the first English translation of Olina’s text. It includes such enchanting insights as the idea that robins were epileptic, or suffered from dizziness, and that the hoopoe overindulged in grapes until it became ‘dazed and half-drunk.’ However it also includes much fascinating early natural history and ornithological observation - as well as the secret recipe for pasta to keep your nightingale happy and encourage it to sing. A unique celebration of the beginnings of ornithology, designed in sympathy with the character of the 17th- century original.