Count Hercules Turati or Ercole Turati (1829 –1881,

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

o) was a wealthy Milanese banker and naturalist. He purchased natural history specimens and built up a very large private collection of more than 20,000 bird specimens, mostly mounted, which include the now extinct

Great Auk The great auk (''Pinguinus impennis'') is a species of flightless alcid that became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus ''Pinguinus''. It is not closely related to the birds now known as penguins, wh ...

. The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano was constructed to house the specimens that his heirs donated to the city after his death. A large number of specimens were however destroyed during an air raid in 1943. File:Aquila_Turati.jpg, Illustration of ''Aquila nipalensis'' and ''A. heliaca'' by Vittorio Turati printed using the Sincromio process File:Ercole Turati 1883.jpg, Portrait of Turati by Sebastiano De Albertis (1828–1897) Along with his brother Ernesto, he also made collections of the nests and eggs of the birds of Lombardy. Along with

Tommaso Salvadori Count Adelardo Tommaso Salvadori Paleotti (30 September 1835 – 9 October 1923) was an Italian zoologist and ornithologist. Biography Salvadori was born in Porto San Giorgio, son of Count Luigi Salvadori and Ethelyn Welby, who was English. His ...

, he described ''Pharomachrus xanthogaster'' in 1874 as the yellow-billed quetzal from Bogota which was considered later as a colour variant of ''

Pharomachrus auriceps The golden-headed quetzal or corequenque (''Pharomachrus auriceps'') is a strikingly coloured bird in the genus ''Pharomachrus''; it is also referred to as ''Trogon auriceps''. It is found in moist mid-elevation forests from eastern Panama to nor ...

'' but may represent a hybrid. After his death, his collection was transferred to the

Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano (Milan Natural History Museum) is a museum in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1838 when naturalist Giuseppe de Cristoforis donated his collections to the city. Its first director was Giorgio Jan. ...

which was constructed to house it. This collection was curated by

Giacinto Martorelli Giacinto Martorelli (1 October 1855 – 11 December 1917) was an Italian ornithologist and bird artist best known for the book ''Gli uccelli d'Italia '' (1905–06). He took a special interest in bird hybridization. Martorelli was born in Turin t ...

and

Edgardo Moltoni Edgardo Moltoni (5 June 1896 — 12 January 1980) was an Italian ornithologist who worked in the Natural History Museum at Milan. He worked at the museum collections for nearly fifty eight years and was the author of a four volume treatise on the ...

. Several species of birds are named after him including ''Picoides pubescens turati'' and '' Laniarius turatii''. A brother, Vittorio Turati was a pioneer photographer who developed a process of printing varying tints called Sincromia or Synchromie. Some prints made using this process were included in Martorelli's catalogue of Turati's raptor collections. His son Emilio Turati (1858 - 1938) was an entomological collector.

References

Italian ornithologists {{ornithologist-stub