Emperor Franz I became Grand Duke of the Tuscany in 1739; crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1745, he was very partial to the ascending
natural sciences. In 1748 he acquired the natural history collection of Johann von Baillou, which, with its approximately
30,000 samples, was the most important European collection of its type. The learned man Joannon de Saint Laurent described
it in a publication shortly before this (SAINT LAURENT, 1746).