Martinet's engravings in Buffon (1770–83): variation in their hand-colouring and its implications for defining Echo Parakeet Psittacula eques (Boddaert, 1783)

Abstract

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The ‘Meidum geese’ revisited: Early historical art is not a suitable basis for taxonomic speculation

“…Although there was just one original artistic representation of the unique but now lost specimen from Réunion (Cheke & Hume 2008, Cheke & Jansen 2016, by François-Nicolas Martinet, each copy of the work in which his drawing appeared (Daubenton 1770-83) had to be coloured separately. Jansen & Cheke (2020) determined, via analysis of five different copies of Buffon's work, that the presumably different colourists responsible, none of whom presumably had access to the specimen, introduced differences in the colour of the irides, bill and peri-ocular ring, the colour and pattern of the underparts, the shape and colour of the neck-ring, and the precise colour of the wings. None of the plates examined by Jansen & Cheke (2020) precisely matched the detailed description that Brisson (1760) made of the same specimen which served as Martinet's basis for the original illustration.…”