On this side of the Atlantic, King George III will always be remembered as the English monarch who presided over the loss of the American colonies. But in smaller matters of state, George had a few successes. In 1762, 14 years before the Declaration of Independence, he acquired a large part of the Paper Museum—a stunning assortment of pictures, many about nature, assembled by the Italian scholar and arts patron Cassiano dal Pozzo. The art remains in England today, preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.
Cassiano’s collection, which includes some of the Renaissance’s finest visual studies of birds, is a crown jewel of Britain’s cultural holdings, although few can see it. Pasta for Nightingales, which draws on ornithological writings and pictures commissioned by Cassiano, is an attempt to give his legacy a wider audience.
