Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1979. First edition. Publisher's hardback covered in black silk, gilt titles, color illustration glued to the cover. Illustrated slipcase with title on spine. Both book and slipcase are clean and tidy with no significant flaws. Aloys Zötl was an Austrian painter. He was relatively unknown until his work was "re-discovered" by surrealist André Breton who was taken by the surrealist aesthetic he saw present in the images - as he writes: "Lacking any biographical details about the artist, one can only indulge one's fantasies in imagining the reasons which might have induced this workman from Upper Austria, a dyer by profession, to undertake so zealously between 1832 and 1887 the elaboration of the most sumptuous bestiary ever seen." Public Review Domain 93 pages. 250 by 235mm (9¾ by 9¼ inches).