About this work
English artist Francis Barlow specialised in paintings of animals, birds and hunting scenes. In c. 1650–55 he published Multae et diversae avium species, a series of fifteen etchings of birds that were once attributed to Hollar but are now believed to have been etched by Francis Place. Hollar, however, was involved in a second series of bird etchings based on Barlow’s drawings, Diversæ avium species. Barlow himself also made etchings including an extensively illustrated edition of Aesop’s Fables, in the preface of which he seemed to disparage Hollar in his claim that his own etchings did not aspire to a ‘Curious Neatness’.