Carlo Ruini, Anatomia del cavallo, infermita, et suoi rimedii: opera nuoua…, Venice: Fioravante Prati, 1618, p. 237, leaf height 34 cm, T*.1.19(B).

Carlo Ruini (c. 1530-1598), a Bolognese aristocrat, senator and lawyer, had a keen interest in horses. The book discusses the anatomy, ailments and cures of horses, which Ruini regarded as a noble animal. Indeed the word ‘cavaliere’ (knight) denoting human valour and nobility derives from riding the horse. Illustrations equine anatomy in this book were based on figures from the Fabrica, and the discussion of equine diseases followed the views of Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. This figure of the horse’s veins is clearly indebted to Vesalius’s depiction of veins in the shape of the human figure.

This copy was once owned by Henry Lucas (bap. 1587-1663), the founder of the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge.