Aldrovandi, first director of the botanical garden at Bologna, was a prolific writer. Some of his writings made their first appearance in print after his death. He designed them as a whole to form an enormous illustrated encyclopedia of natural history and biology.

Aldrovandi assembled a large collection of specimens and notes on monsters which were published posthumously by Ambrosini, who added a number of personally observed cases. Those included the first detailed description and illustration of bladder exstrophy. Valuable case descriptions are mingled with fictitious ones, including specimens of false chimeras apparently created to please Aldrovandi’s patrons. Some of these can still be seen in the Aldrovandi collection at the University of Bologna. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from the University of Bologna at this link.

As the title indicates, the Cospi collection incorporated the earlier museum of Ulisse Aldrovandi, and Legati's catalogue is sometimes regarded as forming a 14th or supplementary volume to Aldrovandi's encyclopedic Opera omnia (13 vols., 1599-1667). "When Maximilian Misson visited the Cospi collection in 1688 what struck him most were the 'hundred and eighty-seven volumes in folio, all written by Aldrovandus in his own hand, with more than two hundred bags full of loose papers' " (Grinke, From Wunderkammer to museum (2006) No. 25). Digital facsimile from the Getty Research Institute, Internet Archive, at this link.