Two-headed Lamb

On 20 February 1720 a lamb was born with two heads on a farm of the priory of Sant'Angelo at Bibbiena, in the Casentino hills east of Florence. Cosimo III de' Medici had been grand duke for half a century by then, and his household kept track of whatever the Tuscan countryside produced out of the ordinary. The animal was painted, the canvas was framed on his order in 1721 and sent out to the Medici villa at the Ambrogiana, where inventories still list it in 1758.

Bimbi was the painter the court used for work of this kind. The inscription in the lower corner reads like a report, giving the date of the birth, the two heads and two necks, two lungs, two livers, two spleens, two hearts, and a single bladder. Most of his life went into canvases of Tuscan fruit painted at life size and labelled the same way, which agronomists now read to identify varieties that have since disappeared.