In the expansion of zoological knowledge in the sixteenth century, ichthyology played an avant-garde role. While the study of fishes had up until then received relatively little attention, scholars now sought to fill this gap in their collective knowledge. A mass of new aquatic species was catalogued in quick succession, inspiring new approaches to the organisation and presentation of information.

The Swiss scholar Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) aimed to collect all information known since antiquity, including also contemporary scholarly discussion. He described species based on his own observation and on local knowledge, listing more species than anyone before him, illustrated with even more depictions. In order to present this information in an accessible manner, he experimented with novel methods of description and with classification through cross-referencing similar species. His Historia piscium (1558) thus provides us with a bird’s-eye view of the state of knowledge at its time of publication. In addition, it illustrates developments in classification and the presentation of information through text and images that were taking place at the time.