Mirabilia Siberica. Early Modern Animal Illustration as a Medium for Taming the Unknown

My project investigates the role of illustrations in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century publications on Siberian fauna, with a particular focus on how expanding exploration influenced the production and dissemination of zoological knowledge.

By tracing how Siberian animals were depicted in early printed books, maps, prints, and ephemera, the project identifies a shift in representational practices. Earlier depictions, shaped by myth and legend, persisted into seventeenth-century travel accounts and scholarly works, where illustrations of local fauna served mainly informative and decorative purposes rather than constituting systematic zoological inquiry. The project also examines how these images circulated beyond scholarly contexts, particularly within the expanding print culture that fostered early forms of mass visual consumption, asking whether they were reshaped through older practices of hybridization and imaginative embellishment, or whether they retained their scientific character, increasingly promoted in later publications, particularly those issued by scientific academies.