Lucas Schan
Lucas Schan (or Lukas Tschan, etc, active 1526–1558) was a natural history artist and wildfowler, known for his illustrations of birds for Conrad Gessner's Historia animalium, published at Zurich in 1551–58 and 1587. Gessner acknowledges Schan in the book with the words: • Lucas Schan pictor Argentoratensis aves plurimas ad vivum nobis expressit, & quarundam historias quoque addidit, vir picturae simul et aucupii peritus (Lucas Schan of Argentoratum [Strasbourg] most vividly depicted birds, and in some places also added a description that captured the bird's behaviour). Schan is the only artist named by Gessner; he painted most of the bird illustrations for his bird volume, together by Gessner's account with some descriptive text.
Also recorded as Lukas Tschan · L. S. · Tschan von Bornaia · Lux von Barnaga
Lucas Schan
- Occupation
- illustrator
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Lucas Schan (or Lukas Tschan, etc, active 1526–1558) was a natural history artist and wildfowler, known for his illustrations of birds for Conrad Gessner's Historia animalium, published at Zurich in 1551–58 and 1587. Gessner acknowledges Schan in the book with the words: • Lucas Schan pictor Argentoratensis aves plurimas ad vivum nobis expressit, & quarundam historias quoque addidit, vir picturae simul et aucupii peritus (Lucas Schan of Argentoratum [Strasbourg] most vividly depicted birds, and in some places also added a description that captured the bird's behaviour). Schan is the only artist named by Gessner; he painted most of the bird illustrations for his bird volume, together by Gessner's account with some descriptive text.
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Biography
The illustrations (not all by Schan) were so much liked that they were brought out in a volume of their own in 1560, Icones Animalium. Authors such as Ilaria Mazzoleni state without evidence that Schan made most of the illustrations of animals throughout the Historia. Springer and Kinzelbach provide a slightly different quote from Gessner praising Schan: • Lukas Schan Argentoratensis pictor diligentissimus, & idem auceps.. (Lukas Schan, a most diligent painter of Argentoratum and the same as a wildfowler..) Little else is known about Schan. It is recorded that Lucas Schan of Bornaia testified in Strasbourg in 1526, 1539 and 1544. The Strasbourg City book records also that on 22 November 1526 "Lux [Lucas] of Baranga called Schen, son of Jerg Schanen the sheepshearer, has paid for the right to work in the town [Burgrecht] and serves at Stelzgen".
Lucas Schan is an illustrator.
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Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Springer, Katharina B. Das Vogelbuch von Conrad Gessner (1516-1565): Ein Archiv für avifaunistische Daten. Springer. 421. 2008. 978-3-540-85284-1.
- 2.Gessner, Conrad (1551–58 and 1587) Historia animalium. Zurich. The 1602 Frankfurt edition is online.
- 3.Kusukawa, S. The sources of Gessner's pictures for the Historia animalium. Annals of Science. 67. 3. 303–328. July 2010. 10.1080/00033790.2010.488899.
- 4.Gessner, Conrad. Historia animalium, I, g1v; cf. also III, 48898, cited in Kusukawa 2010.
- 5.Mazzoleni, Ilaria. Architecture Follows Nature-Biomimetic Principles for Innovative Design. CRC Press. 7. 2013. 978-1-4665-0609-1.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Illustration
5,224 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Loÿs DelteilIllustrator
- Luc Albert MoreauIllustrator
- Luc-Marie BayleIllustrator
- Luc-Olivier MersonIllustrator
- Luci van OrgIllustrator
- Luciano LozanoIllustrator
- Lucie AttingerIllustrator
- Lucie LukačovičováIllustrator
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