Dürer's Rhinoceros
Encyclopedia
Dürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut
executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer
in 1515. The image was based on a written description and brief sketch by an unknown artist of an Indian rhinoceros
that had arrived in Lisbon
earlier that year. Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros
, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times
. In late 1515, the King of Portugal, Manuel I
, sent the animal as a gift for Pope Leo X
, but it died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy in early 1516. A live rhinoceros was not seen again in Europe until a second specimen, named Abada
, arrived from India at the court of Sebastian of Portugal
in 1577, being later inherited by Philip II
of Spain around 1580.
Dürer's woodcut is not an entirely accurate representation of a rhinoceros. He depicts an animal with hard plates that cover its body like sheets of armour
, with a gorget
at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate
, and rivet
s along the seams; he also places a small twisted horn on its back, and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. None of these features is present in a real rhinoceros. Despite its anatomical inaccuracies, Dürer's woodcut became very popular in Europe and was copied many times in the following three centuries. It was regarded by Westerners as a true representation of a rhinoceros into the late 18th century. Eventually, it was supplanted by more realistic drawings and paintings, particularly those of Clara the rhinoceros, who toured Europe in the 1740s and 1750s. It has been said of Dürer's woodcut: "probably no animal picture has exerted such a profound influence on the arts".
On 20 May 1515, an Indian rhinoceros arrived in Lisbon from the Far East
. In early 1514, Afonso de Albuquerque
, governor of Portuguese India
, sent ambassadors to Sultan
Muzafar II, ruler of Cambay (modern Gujarat), to seek permission to build a fort on the island of Diu. The mission returned without an agreement, but diplomatic gifts were exchanged, including the rhinoceros. At that time, the rulers of different countries would occasionally send each other exotic animals to be kept in a menagerie
. The rhinoceros was already well accustomed to being kept in captivity. Albuquerque decided to forward the gift, known by its Gujarati
name of ganda, and its Indian keeper, named Ocem, to King Manuel I of Portugal
. It sailed on the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda, which left Goa
in January 1515. The ship, captained by Francisco Pereira Coutinho, and two companion vessels, all loaded with exotic spice
s, sailed across the Indian Ocean
, around the Cape of Good Hope
and north through the Atlantic
, stopping briefly in Mozambique
, Saint Helena
and the Azores
.
After a relatively fast voyage of 120 days, the rhinoceros was finally unloaded in Portugal
, near the site where the Manueline
Belém Tower
was under construction. The tower was later decorated with gargoyle
s shaped as rhinoceros heads under its corbel
s. A rhinoceros had not been seen in Europe since Roman
times: it had become something of a mythical beast, occasionally conflated in bestiaries
with the "monoceros" (unicorn
), so the arrival of a living example created a sensation. In the context of the Renaissance
, it was a piece of Classical Antiquity
which had been rediscovered, like a statue or an inscription.
The animal was examined by scholars and the curious, and letters describing the fantastic creature were sent to correspondents throughout Europe. The earliest known image of the animal illustrates a poemetto by Florentine
Giovanni Giacomo Penni
, published in Rome
on 13 July 1515, fewer than eight weeks after its arrival in Lisbon. The only known copy of the original published poem is held by the Institución Colombina
in Seville
.
The exotic animal was housed in King Manuel's menagerie at the Ribeira Palace in Lisbon, separate from his elephant
s and other large beasts at the Estãos Palace. On Trinity Sunday
, 3 June, Manuel arranged a fight between the rhinoceros and a young elephant from his collection, to test the account by Pliny the Elder
that the elephant and the rhinoceros are bitter enemies. The rhinoceros advanced slowly and deliberately towards its foe; the elephant, unaccustomed to the noisy crowd that turned out to witness the spectacle, fled the field in panic before a single blow was struck.
Manuel decided to give the rhinoceros as a gift to the Medici
Pope
, Leo X
. The King was keen to curry favour with the Pope, to maintain the papal grants of exclusive possession to the new lands that his naval forces had been exploring in the Far East
since Vasco da Gama
discovered the sea route to India around Africa
in 1498. The previous year, the Pope had been very pleased with Manuel's gift of a white elephant
, also from India, which the Pope had named Hanno
. Together with other precious gifts of silver plate and spices, the rhinoceros, with its new collar of green velvet
decorated with flowers, embarked in December 1515 for the voyage from the Tagus
to Rome
. The vessel passed near Marseille
in early 1516. King Francis I of France
was returning from Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume
in Provence
, and requested a viewing of the beast. The Portuguese vessel stopped briefly at an island off Marseilles, where the rhinoceros disembarked to be beheld by the King on 24 January.
After resuming its journey, the ship was wrecked in a sudden storm as it passed through the narrows of Porto Venere, north of La Spezia
on the coast of Liguria
. The rhinoceros, chained and shackled to the deck to keep it under control, was unable to swim to safety and drowned. The carcass of the rhinoceros was recovered near Villefranche
and its hide was returned to Lisbon, where it was stuffed
. Some reports say that the mounted skin was sent to Rome, arriving in February 1516, to be exhibited impagliato (Italian for "stuffed with straw"), although such a feat would have challenged 16th-century methods of taxidermy. In any event, the rhinoceros did not cause a popular sensation in Rome as the living beast had in Lisbon, although a rhinoceros was depicted in contemporary paintings in Rome by Giovanni da Udine
and Raphael
.
If a stuffed rhinoceros arrived in Rome, its fate remains unknown: it might have been removed to Florence
by the Medici, or else destroyed in the sack of Rome
in 1527. Its story was the basis for Lawrence Norfolk
's 1996 novel The Pope's Rhinoceros.
Valentim Fernandes
, a Moravia
n merchant and printer
, saw the rhinoceros in Lisbon shortly after it arrived and wrote a letter describing it to a friend in Nuremberg
in June 1515. The original letter in German has not survived, but a copy in Italian is held in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. A second letter of unknown authorship was sent from Lisbon to Nuremberg at around the same time, enclosing a sketch by an unknown artist. Dürer - who was acquainted with the Portuguese community of the factory
at Antwerp - saw the second letter and sketch in Nuremberg. Without ever seeing the rhinoceros himself, Dürer made two pen and ink drawings, and then a woodcut
was carved from the second drawing, the process making the print a reversed reflection of the drawing.
The German
inscription on the woodcut, drawing largely from Pliny's account, reads:
Dürer's woodcut is not an accurate representation of a rhinoceros. He depicts an animal with hard plates that cover its body like sheets of armour
, with a gorget
at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate
, and rivet
s along the seams; he also places a small twisted horn on its back, and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. None of these features is present in a real rhinoceros. It is possible that a suit of armour was forged for the rhinoceros's fight against the elephant in Portugal, and that these features depicted by Dürer are parts of the armour. Alternatively, Dürer's "armour" may represent the heavy folds of thick skin of an Indian rhinoceros, or, as with the other inaccuracies, may simply be misunderstandings or creative additions by Dürer. Dürer also draws a scaly texture over the body of the animal, including the "armour". This may be Dürer's attempt to reflect the rough and almost hairless hide of the Indian rhinoceros, which has wart
-like bumps covering its upper legs and shoulders. On the other hand, his depiction of the texture may represent dermatitis
induced by the rhinoceros' close confinement during the four-month journey by ship from India to Portugal.
A second woodcut was executed by Hans Burgkmair
in Augsburg
around the same time as Dürer's in Nuremberg. Burgkmair corresponded with merchants in Lisbon and Nuremberg, but it is not clear whether he had access to a letter or sketch as Dürer did, perhaps even Dürer's sources, or saw the animal himself in Portugal. His image is truer to life, omitting Dürer's more fanciful additions and including the shackles and chain used to restrain the rhinoceros; however, Dürer's woodcut is more powerful and eclipsed Burgkmair's in popularity. Only one impression (example) of Burgkmair's image has survived, whereas Dürer's print survives in many impressions. Dürer produced a first edition of his woodcut in 1515, in the first state
, which is distinguished by only five lines of text in the heading, and many further printings followed after Dürer's death in 1528, including two printings in the 1540s, and a further two in the late 16th century. Later printings have six lines of descriptive text. A tone block was created around 1620 to create a chiaroscuro woodcut in two tones, (seen in the printing by Willem Janssen in Amsterdam
). The original woodblock continued to be used, even though later printings are marred by woodworm
holes and a crack through the rhino's legs.
Despite its errors, the image remained very popular, and was taken to be an accurate representation of a rhinoceros until the late 18th century. Dürer may have anticipated this and deliberately chosen to create a woodcut, rather than a more refined and detailed engraving
, as this was cheaper to produce and more copies could be printed. Images derived from it were included in naturalist texts, including Sebastian Münster
's Cosmographiae (1544), Conrad Gessner
's Historiae Animalium
(1551), Edward Topsell
's Histoire of Foure-footed Beastes (1607) and many others. A rhinoceros that was clearly based on Dürer's woodcut was chosen by Alessandro de' Medici as his emblem in June 1536, with the motto "Non buelvo sin vencer" (old Spanish for "I shall not return without victory"). A sculpture of a rhinoceros based on Dürer's image was placed at the base of a 70-foot (21 m) high obelisk
designed by Jean Goujon
and erected in front of the Church of the Sepulchre in the rue Saint-Denis
in Paris in 1549 for the royal entry
welcoming the arrival of the new King of France, Henry II
. A similar rhinoceros, in relief
, decorates a panel in one of the bronze west doors of Pisa Cathedral. The rhinoceros was depicted in numerous other paintings and sculptures, and became a popular decoration for porcelain
. The popularity of the inaccurate Dürer image remained undiminished despite an Indian rhinoceros spending eight years in Madrid
, from 1580 to 1588 (although a few examples of a print of the Madrid rhinoceros sketched by Philippe Galle
in Antwerp in 1586, and derivative works, have survived), and the exhibition of a live rhinoceros in London a century later, from 1684–86, and of a second individual after 1739.
The pre-eminent position of Dürer's image and its derivatives declined from the mid-to-late-18th century, when more live rhinoceroses were transported to Europe, shown to the curious public, and depicted in more accurate representations. Jean-Baptiste Oudry
painted a life-size portrait of Clara the rhinoceros
in 1749, and George Stubbs
painted a large portrait of a rhinoceros in London around 1790. Both of these paintings were more accurate than Dürer's woodcut, and a more realistic conception of the rhinoceros gradually started to displace Dürer's image in the public imagination. In particular, Oudry's painting was the inspiration for a plate in Buffon
's encyclopedic Histoire naturelle, which was widely copied. In 1790, James Bruce
's travelogue Travels to discover the source of the Nile
dismissed Dürer's work as "wonderfully ill-executed in all its parts" and "the origin of all the monstrous forms under which that animal has been painted, ever since". Even so, Bruce's own illustration of the African white rhinoceros
, which is noticeably different in appearance to the Indian rhinoceros, still shares conspicuous inaccuracies with Dürer's work. Semiotician
Umberto Eco
argues that Dürer's "scales and imbricated plates" became a necessary element of depicting the animal, even to those who might know better, because "they knew that only these conventionalized graphic signs could denote «rhinoceros» to the person interpreting the iconic sign." He also notes that the skin of a rhinoceros is rougher than it visually appears and that such plates and scales portray this non-visual information to a degree.
Until the late 1930s, Dürer's image appeared in school textbooks in Germany
as a faithful image of the rhinoceros; in German
, the Indian rhinoceros is still called the Panzernashorn, or "armoured rhinoceros". It remains a powerful artistic influence, and was the inspiration for Salvador Dalí
's 1956 sculpture, Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (Rhinoceros dressed in lace
), which has been displayed at Puerto Banús
, in Marbella
, Spain
since 2004.
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
in 1515. The image was based on a written description and brief sketch by an unknown artist of an Indian rhinoceros
Indian Rhinoceros
The Indian Rhinoceros is also called Greater One-horned Rhinoceros and Asian One-horned Rhinoceros and belongs to the Rhinocerotidae family...
that had arrived in Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
earlier that year. Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros
Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....
, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. In late 1515, the King of Portugal, Manuel I
Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...
, sent the animal as a gift for Pope Leo X
Pope Leo X
Pope Leo X , born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses...
, but it died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy in early 1516. A live rhinoceros was not seen again in Europe until a second specimen, named Abada
Abada (rhinoceros)
Abada was the name given to a female Indian rhinoceros kept by the Portuguese kings Sebastian I and Henry I from 1577 to 1580 and by Philip II of Spain from about 1580 to 1588...
, arrived from India at the court of Sebastian of Portugal
Sebastian of Portugal
Sebastian "the Desired" was the 16th king of Portugal and the Algarves. He was the son of Prince John of Portugal and his wife, Joan of Spain...
in 1577, being later inherited by Philip II
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
of Spain around 1580.
Dürer's woodcut is not an entirely accurate representation of a rhinoceros. He depicts an animal with hard plates that cover its body like sheets of armour
Armour
Armour or armor is protective covering used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual or a vehicle through use of direct contact weapons or projectiles, usually during combat, or from damage caused by a potentially dangerous environment or action...
, with a gorget
Gorget
A gorget originally was a steel or leather collar designed to protect the throat. It was a feature of older types of armour and intended to protect against swords and other non-projectile weapons...
at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate
Breastplate
A breastplate is a device worn over the torso to protect it from injury, as an item of religious significance, or as an item of status. A breastplate is sometimes worn by mythological beings as a distinctive item of clothing.- Armour :...
, and rivet
Rivet
A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed a rivet consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite the head is called the buck-tail. On installation the rivet is placed in a punched or pre-drilled hole, and the tail is upset, or bucked A rivet...
s along the seams; he also places a small twisted horn on its back, and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. None of these features is present in a real rhinoceros. Despite its anatomical inaccuracies, Dürer's woodcut became very popular in Europe and was copied many times in the following three centuries. It was regarded by Westerners as a true representation of a rhinoceros into the late 18th century. Eventually, it was supplanted by more realistic drawings and paintings, particularly those of Clara the rhinoceros, who toured Europe in the 1740s and 1750s. It has been said of Dürer's woodcut: "probably no animal picture has exerted such a profound influence on the arts".
The rhinoceros
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
. In early 1514, Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque[p][n] was a Portuguese fidalgo, or nobleman, an admiral whose military and administrative activities as second governor of Portuguese India conquered and established the Portuguese colonial empire in the Indian Ocean...
, governor of Portuguese India
Portuguese India
The Portuguese Viceroyalty of India , later the Portuguese State of India , was the aggregate of Portugal's colonial holdings in India.The government started in 1505, six years after the discovery of a sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, with the nomination of the first Viceroy Francisco de...
, sent ambassadors to Sultan
Sultan
Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...
Muzafar II, ruler of Cambay (modern Gujarat), to seek permission to build a fort on the island of Diu. The mission returned without an agreement, but diplomatic gifts were exchanged, including the rhinoceros. At that time, the rulers of different countries would occasionally send each other exotic animals to be kept in a menagerie
Menagerie
A menagerie is/was a form of keeping common and exotic animals in captivity that preceded the modern zoological garden. The term was first used in seventeenth century France in reference to the management of household or domestic stock. Later, it came to be used primarily in reference to...
. The rhinoceros was already well accustomed to being kept in captivity. Albuquerque decided to forward the gift, known by its Gujarati
Gujarati language
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
name of ganda, and its Indian keeper, named Ocem, to King Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...
. It sailed on the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda, which left Goa
Goa
Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...
in January 1515. The ship, captained by Francisco Pereira Coutinho, and two companion vessels, all loaded with exotic spice
Spice
A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth. It may be used to flavour a dish or to hide other flavours...
s, sailed across the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
, around the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
and north through the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
, stopping briefly in Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
, Saint Helena
Saint Helena
Saint Helena , named after St Helena of Constantinople, is an island of volcanic origin in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha which also includes Ascension Island and the islands of Tristan da Cunha...
and the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
.
After a relatively fast voyage of 120 days, the rhinoceros was finally unloaded in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, near the site where the Manueline
Manueline
The Manueline, or Portuguese late Gothic, is the sumptuous, composite Portuguese style of architectural ornamentation of the first decades of the 16th century, incorporating maritime elements and representations of the discoveries brought from the voyages of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral...
Belém Tower
Belém Tower
Belém Tower or the Tower of St Vincent is a fortified tower located in the civil parish of Santa Maria de Belém in the municipality of Lisbon, Portugal...
was under construction. The tower was later decorated with gargoyle
Gargoyle
In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between...
s shaped as rhinoceros heads under its corbel
Corbel
In architecture a corbel is a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry any superincumbent weight. A piece of timber projecting in the same way was called a "tassel" or a "bragger". The technique of corbelling, where rows of corbels deeply keyed inside a wall support a projecting wall or...
s. A rhinoceros had not been seen in Europe since Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
times: it had become something of a mythical beast, occasionally conflated in bestiaries
Bestiary
A bestiary, or Bestiarum vocabulum is a compendium of beasts. Bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks. The natural history and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson...
with the "monoceros" (unicorn
Unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary animal from European folklore that resembles a white horse with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, and sometimes a goat's beard...
), so the arrival of a living example created a sensation. In the context of the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, it was a piece of Classical Antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
which had been rediscovered, like a statue or an inscription.
The animal was examined by scholars and the curious, and letters describing the fantastic creature were sent to correspondents throughout Europe. The earliest known image of the animal illustrates a poemetto by Florentine
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
Giovanni Giacomo Penni
Giovanni Giacomo Penni
Giovanni Giacomo Penni was an Italian physician, born in Florence.There is not much biographical information regarding the origin, life and work of Penni...
, published in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
on 13 July 1515, fewer than eight weeks after its arrival in Lisbon. The only known copy of the original published poem is held by the Institución Colombina
Institución Colombina
The Institución Colombina, situated in Seville, Spain, is the modern-day administrative branch that comprises the Biblioteca Capitular, the Biblioteca Colombina, the Cathedral Archives , Library of the Archbishopric and the General Archive of the Archbishopric...
in Seville
Seville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
.
The exotic animal was housed in King Manuel's menagerie at the Ribeira Palace in Lisbon, separate from his elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
s and other large beasts at the Estãos Palace. On Trinity Sunday
Trinity Sunday
Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar, and the Sunday of Pentecost in Eastern Christianity...
, 3 June, Manuel arranged a fight between the rhinoceros and a young elephant from his collection, to test the account by Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
that the elephant and the rhinoceros are bitter enemies. The rhinoceros advanced slowly and deliberately towards its foe; the elephant, unaccustomed to the noisy crowd that turned out to witness the spectacle, fled the field in panic before a single blow was struck.
Medici
The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...
Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
, Leo X
Pope Leo X
Pope Leo X , born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses...
. The King was keen to curry favour with the Pope, to maintain the papal grants of exclusive possession to the new lands that his naval forces had been exploring in the Far East
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
since Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...
discovered the sea route to India around Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
in 1498. The previous year, the Pope had been very pleased with Manuel's gift of a white elephant
White elephant (pachyderm)
A white elephant is a rare kind of elephant, but not a distinct species. Although often depicted as snow white, their skin is normally a soft reddish-brown, turning a light pink when wet. They have fair eyelashes and toenails....
, also from India, which the Pope had named Hanno
Hanno (elephant)
Hanno was the pet white elephant given by King Manuel I of Portugal to Pope Leo X at his coronation. Hanno, actually an Asian elephant, came to Rome in 1514 with the Portuguese ambassador Tristão da Cunha and quickly became the Pope's favorite animal...
. Together with other precious gifts of silver plate and spices, the rhinoceros, with its new collar of green velvet
Velvet
Velvet is a type of woven tufted fabric in which the cut threads are evenly distributed,with a short dense pile, giving it a distinctive feel.The word 'velvety' is used as an adjective to mean -"smooth like velvet".-Composition:...
decorated with flowers, embarked in December 1515 for the voyage from the Tagus
Tagus
The Tagus is the longest river on the Iberian Peninsula. It is long, in Spain, along the border between Portugal and Spain and in Portugal, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon. It drains an area of . The Tagus is highly utilized for most of its course...
to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. The vessel passed near Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
in early 1516. King Francis I of France
Francis I of France
Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...
was returning from Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume
Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume
Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.It lies east of Aix-en-Provence, in the westernmost point of Var département. It is located at the foot of the Sainte-Baume mountains: baume or bama is the Provençal...
in Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
, and requested a viewing of the beast. The Portuguese vessel stopped briefly at an island off Marseilles, where the rhinoceros disembarked to be beheld by the King on 24 January.
After resuming its journey, the ship was wrecked in a sudden storm as it passed through the narrows of Porto Venere, north of La Spezia
La Spezia
La Spezia , at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the Liguria region of northern Italy, is the capital city of the province of La Spezia. Located between Genoa and Pisa on the Ligurian Sea, it is one of the main Italian military and commercial harbours and hosts one of Italy's biggest military...
on the coast of Liguria
Liguria
Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions. Its capital is Genoa. It is a popular region with tourists for its beautiful beaches, picturesque little towns, and good food.-Geography:...
. The rhinoceros, chained and shackled to the deck to keep it under control, was unable to swim to safety and drowned. The carcass of the rhinoceros was recovered near Villefranche
Villefranche-sur-Mer
Villefranche-sur-Mer is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera.-Geography:...
and its hide was returned to Lisbon, where it was stuffed
Taxidermy
Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
. Some reports say that the mounted skin was sent to Rome, arriving in February 1516, to be exhibited impagliato (Italian for "stuffed with straw"), although such a feat would have challenged 16th-century methods of taxidermy. In any event, the rhinoceros did not cause a popular sensation in Rome as the living beast had in Lisbon, although a rhinoceros was depicted in contemporary paintings in Rome by Giovanni da Udine
Giovanni da Udine
Giovanni Nanni, also Giovanni de' Ricamatori, better known as Giovanni da Udine , was an Italian painter and architect born in Udine....
and Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
.
If a stuffed rhinoceros arrived in Rome, its fate remains unknown: it might have been removed to Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
by the Medici, or else destroyed in the sack of Rome
Sack of Rome (1527)
The Sack of Rome on 6 May 1527 was a military event carried out by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, then part of the Papal States...
in 1527. Its story was the basis for Lawrence Norfolk
Lawrence Norfolk
Lawrence Norfolk is a British novelist known for historical works with complex plots and intricate detail. His novels also feature an unusually large vocabulary....
's 1996 novel The Pope's Rhinoceros.
Dürer's woodcut
Valentim Fernandes
Valentim Fernandes was a printer who lived in Portugal. An ethnic German originally from Moravia, he moved to Portugal in 1495. He produced prints on the orders of Leonor of Viseu and worked on the book Vita Christi.-References:...
, a Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
n merchant and printer
Printer (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...
, saw the rhinoceros in Lisbon shortly after it arrived and wrote a letter describing it to a friend in Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
in June 1515. The original letter in German has not survived, but a copy in Italian is held in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. A second letter of unknown authorship was sent from Lisbon to Nuremberg at around the same time, enclosing a sketch by an unknown artist. Dürer - who was acquainted with the Portuguese community of the factory
Factory (trading post)
Factory was the English term for the trading posts system originally established by Europeans in foreign territories, first within different states of medieval Europe, and later in their colonial possessions...
at Antwerp - saw the second letter and sketch in Nuremberg. Without ever seeing the rhinoceros himself, Dürer made two pen and ink drawings, and then a woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
was carved from the second drawing, the process making the print a reversed reflection of the drawing.
The German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
inscription on the woodcut, drawing largely from Pliny's account, reads:
Armour
Armour or armor is protective covering used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual or a vehicle through use of direct contact weapons or projectiles, usually during combat, or from damage caused by a potentially dangerous environment or action...
, with a gorget
Gorget
A gorget originally was a steel or leather collar designed to protect the throat. It was a feature of older types of armour and intended to protect against swords and other non-projectile weapons...
at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate
Breastplate
A breastplate is a device worn over the torso to protect it from injury, as an item of religious significance, or as an item of status. A breastplate is sometimes worn by mythological beings as a distinctive item of clothing.- Armour :...
, and rivet
Rivet
A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed a rivet consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite the head is called the buck-tail. On installation the rivet is placed in a punched or pre-drilled hole, and the tail is upset, or bucked A rivet...
s along the seams; he also places a small twisted horn on its back, and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. None of these features is present in a real rhinoceros. It is possible that a suit of armour was forged for the rhinoceros's fight against the elephant in Portugal, and that these features depicted by Dürer are parts of the armour. Alternatively, Dürer's "armour" may represent the heavy folds of thick skin of an Indian rhinoceros, or, as with the other inaccuracies, may simply be misunderstandings or creative additions by Dürer. Dürer also draws a scaly texture over the body of the animal, including the "armour". This may be Dürer's attempt to reflect the rough and almost hairless hide of the Indian rhinoceros, which has wart
Wart
A wart is generally a small, rough growth, typically on a human’s hands or feet but often other locations, that can resemble a cauliflower or a solid blister. They are caused by a viral infection, specifically by human papillomavirus 2 and 7. There are as many as 10 varieties of warts, the most...
-like bumps covering its upper legs and shoulders. On the other hand, his depiction of the texture may represent dermatitis
Dermatitis
-Etymology:Dermatitis derives from Greek derma "skin" + -itis "inflammation" and genetic disorder.-Terminology:There are several different types of dermatitis. The different kinds usually have in common an allergic reaction to specific allergens. The term may describe eczema, which is also called...
induced by the rhinoceros' close confinement during the four-month journey by ship from India to Portugal.
Hans Burgkmair
Hans Burgkmair the elder was a German painter and printmaker in woodcut.Burgkmair was born in Augsburg, the son of painter Thomas Burgkmair and his son, Hans the Younger, became one too. From 1488 he was a pupil of Martin Schongauer in Colmar, who died during his two years there, before Burgkmair...
in Augsburg
Augsburg
Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
around the same time as Dürer's in Nuremberg. Burgkmair corresponded with merchants in Lisbon and Nuremberg, but it is not clear whether he had access to a letter or sketch as Dürer did, perhaps even Dürer's sources, or saw the animal himself in Portugal. His image is truer to life, omitting Dürer's more fanciful additions and including the shackles and chain used to restrain the rhinoceros; however, Dürer's woodcut is more powerful and eclipsed Burgkmair's in popularity. Only one impression (example) of Burgkmair's image has survived, whereas Dürer's print survives in many impressions. Dürer produced a first edition of his woodcut in 1515, in the first state
State (printmaking)
A state, in printmaking, is a different form of a print, caused by a deliberate and permanent change to a matrix such as a copper plate or woodblock ....
, which is distinguished by only five lines of text in the heading, and many further printings followed after Dürer's death in 1528, including two printings in the 1540s, and a further two in the late 16th century. Later printings have six lines of descriptive text. A tone block was created around 1620 to create a chiaroscuro woodcut in two tones, (seen in the printing by Willem Janssen in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
). The original woodblock continued to be used, even though later printings are marred by woodworm
Woodworm
A woodworm is not a specific species. It is the larval stage of certain woodboring beetles including:*Ambrosia beetles *Bark borer beetle / Waney edge borer *Common furniture beetle...
holes and a crack through the rhino's legs.
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
, as this was cheaper to produce and more copies could be printed. Images derived from it were included in naturalist texts, including Sebastian Münster
Sebastian Münster
Sebastian Münster , was a German cartographer, cosmographer, and a Hebrew scholar.- Life :Münster was born at Ingelheim near Mainz, the son of Andreas Munster. He completed his studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 1518. His graduate adviser was Johannes Stöffler.He was appointed to...
's Cosmographiae (1544), Conrad Gessner
Conrad Gessner
Conrad Gessner was a Swiss naturalist and bibliographer. His five-volume Historiae animalium is considered the beginning of modern zoology, and the flowering plant genus Gesneria is named after him...
's Historiae Animalium
Historiae animalium (Gesner)
Historiae animalium published at Zurich in 1551-58 and 1587, is an encyclopedic work of "an inventory of renaissance zoology" by Conrad Gesner, a doctor and professor at the Carolinum, the precursor of the University of Zurich...
(1551), Edward Topsell
Edward Topsell
Edward Topsell was an English cleric and author best remembered for his bestiary.Topsell attended Christ's College, Cambridge, earned his B.A. and probably an M.A. as well, before beginning a career in the Church of England. He served as the first rector of East Hoathly, and subsequently became...
's Histoire of Foure-footed Beastes (1607) and many others. A rhinoceros that was clearly based on Dürer's woodcut was chosen by Alessandro de' Medici as his emblem in June 1536, with the motto "Non buelvo sin vencer" (old Spanish for "I shall not return without victory"). A sculpture of a rhinoceros based on Dürer's image was placed at the base of a 70-foot (21 m) high obelisk
Obelisk
An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...
designed by Jean Goujon
Jean Goujon
Jean Goujon was a French Renaissance sculptor and architect.-Biography:His early life is little known; he was likely born in Normandy and may have traveled in Italy...
and erected in front of the Church of the Sepulchre in the rue Saint-Denis
Rue Saint-Denis (Paris)
Rue Saint-Denis is one of the oldest streets in Paris. Its route was first laid out in the 1st century by the Romans, and then extended to the north in the Middle Ages. From the Middle Ages to the present day, the street has become notorious as a place of prostitution...
in Paris in 1549 for the royal entry
Royal Entry
The Royal Entry, also known by various other names, including Triumphal Entry and Joyous Entry, embraced the ceremonial and festivities accompanying a formal entry by a ruler or his representative into a city in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period in Europe...
welcoming the arrival of the new King of France, Henry II
Henry II of France
Henry II was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559.-Early years:Henry was born in the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, the son of Francis I and Claude, Duchess of Brittany .His father was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 by his sworn enemy,...
. A similar rhinoceros, in relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
, decorates a panel in one of the bronze west doors of Pisa Cathedral. The rhinoceros was depicted in numerous other paintings and sculptures, and became a popular decoration for porcelain
Porcelain
Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...
. The popularity of the inaccurate Dürer image remained undiminished despite an Indian rhinoceros spending eight years in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, from 1580 to 1588 (although a few examples of a print of the Madrid rhinoceros sketched by Philippe Galle
Philippe Galle
Philip Galle is best known as a publisher of old master prints, which he also produced as designer and engraver. He is especially known for his reproductive engravings of paintings.-Biography:...
in Antwerp in 1586, and derivative works, have survived), and the exhibition of a live rhinoceros in London a century later, from 1684–86, and of a second individual after 1739.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a French Rococo painter, engraver, and tapestry designer. He is particularly well known for his naturalistic pictures of animals and his hunt pieces depicting game.-Biography:...
painted a life-size portrait of Clara the rhinoceros
Clara the rhinoceros
Clara the rhinoceros was a female Indian Rhinoceros who became famous during 17 years of touring Europe in the mid-18th century. She arrived in Europe in Rotterdam in 1741, becoming the fifth living rhinoceros to be seen in Europe in modern times since Dürer's Rhinoceros in 1515...
in 1749, and George Stubbs
George Stubbs
George Stubbs was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses.-Biography:Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier and leather merchant. Information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the...
painted a large portrait of a rhinoceros in London around 1790. Both of these paintings were more accurate than Dürer's woodcut, and a more realistic conception of the rhinoceros gradually started to displace Dürer's image in the public imagination. In particular, Oudry's painting was the inspiration for a plate in Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author.His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier...
's encyclopedic Histoire naturelle, which was widely copied. In 1790, James Bruce
James Bruce
James Bruce was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethiopia, where he traced the origins of the Blue Nile.-Youth:...
's travelogue Travels to discover the source of the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
dismissed Dürer's work as "wonderfully ill-executed in all its parts" and "the origin of all the monstrous forms under which that animal has been painted, ever since". Even so, Bruce's own illustration of the African white rhinoceros
White Rhinoceros
The White Rhinoceros or Square-lipped rhinoceros is one of the five species of rhinoceros that still exist. It has a wide mouth used for grazing and is the most social of all rhino species...
, which is noticeably different in appearance to the Indian rhinoceros, still shares conspicuous inaccuracies with Dürer's work. Semiotician
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
argues that Dürer's "scales and imbricated plates" became a necessary element of depicting the animal, even to those who might know better, because "they knew that only these conventionalized graphic signs could denote «rhinoceros» to the person interpreting the iconic sign." He also notes that the skin of a rhinoceros is rougher than it visually appears and that such plates and scales portray this non-visual information to a degree.
Until the late 1930s, Dürer's image appeared in school textbooks in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
as a faithful image of the rhinoceros; in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, the Indian rhinoceros is still called the Panzernashorn, or "armoured rhinoceros". It remains a powerful artistic influence, and was the inspiration for Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
's 1956 sculpture, Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (Rhinoceros dressed in lace
Lace
Lace is an openwork fabric, patterned with open holes in the work, made by machine or by hand. The holes can be formed via removal of threads or cloth from a previously woven fabric, but more often open spaces are created as part of the lace fabric. Lace-making is an ancient craft. True lace was...
), which has been displayed at Puerto Banús
Puerto Banús
Puerto José Banús, more commonly known as Puerto Banús is a marina located in the area of Nueva Andalucía, to the southwest of Marbella, Spain on the Costa del Sol. It was built in May 1970 by José Banús, a local property developer, as a luxury marina and shopping complex for the rich and famous...
, in Marbella
Marbella
Marbella is a town in Andalusia, Spain. It is situated on the Mediterranean Sea, in the province of Málaga, beneath the La Concha mountain. In 2000 the city had 98,823 inhabitants, in 2004, 116,234, in 2010 approximately 135,000....
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
since 2004.
External links
- BBC audio file A History of the World in 100 ObjectsA History of the World in 100 ObjectsA History of the World in 100 Objects was a joint project of BBC Radio 4 and the British Museum, comprising a 100-part radio series written and presented by British Museum director Neil MacGregor...
- Rhino Images by Albert Dürer
- Albert Dürer, by T. Sturge Moore, from Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
- Graphic Adaption of Dürer's Rhinoceros in AdobeAdobe SystemsAdobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
FormatFile formatA file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
by LAFKON (under a creative commonsCreative CommonsCreative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
license) - Rhinocerus (Rhinoceros) in the collection of the British MuseumBritish MuseumThe British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, Registration number: 1895,0122.714. - The rhinoceros by Albrecht DürerAlbrecht DürerAlbrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
, in the collection of the National Gallery of VictoriaNational Gallery of VictoriaThe National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
.