![durer durer](https://artandtheeveryday.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/durers-rhino.jpg)
The rhinoceros is so well-armed that the elephant cannot harm it. The elephant is afraid of the rhinoceros, for, when they meet, the rhinoceros charges with its head between its front legs and rips open the elephant’s stomach, against which the elephant is unable to defend itself. It has a strong pointed horn on the tip of its nose, which it sharpens on stones. It is the size of an elephant but has shorter legs and is almost invulnerable. It is the colour of a speckled tortoise, and is almost entirely covered with thick scales. “On the first of May in the year 1513 AD, the powerful King of Portugal, Manuel of Lisbon, brought such a living animal from India, called the rhinoceros. The German inscription on the print is taken from Pliny’s description: Dürer had never seen a rhinoceros in person, and while his woodcut was not anatomically accurate, it was boldly imaginative, and became the defacto representation of the animal until the late 18th century.
![durer durer](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ntEg31MEUlg/VKgQ3GMkeBI/AAAAAAAAELg/g0m-WZFnsJI/s1600/indian%2Brhino%2Bcompared%2Bto%2BDürer.jpg)
These images have become a kind of memorial for the actual rhino, however inaccurate from a purely natural history perspective, and still speak to us a half a millennium later.Dürer based his wood block print of a Rhinoceros on a written account and drawing of an Indian rhinoceros that had been brought to Lisbon. Today we see versions of this artist’s vision of a fabulous animal in several museums.
![durer durer](https://draculafordoctors.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/durer-rhino-wellcome-ed.jpg)
The canonical surviving prints in museums only touch upon the “changing meanings, changing audiences and changing notions of authorship and authenticity” over the history of the image.
Durer's rhinoceros cracked#
The power of print-making depends on the ability of printmakers to repeat an image over and over, but Feiman challenges this notion by analyzing how Dürer’s image changed over time, especially as the original matrix, a wooden block, wore down and cracked with repeated use. Without obtaining examples, the new alliance between humanist investigation of words and naturalistic illustration broke down. But mass-produced images like the rhinoceros spread far and wide, especially in pirated copies. This was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation: the only book known to most people, the Bible, was tightly controlled by the clergy. Images could speak directly to many more people. There were few literate persons, after all. As Jesse Feiman notes, some have argued that printed images like Dürer’s “rivaled, or even superseded” the texts coming off the new printing presses. An edition of 4000-5000, as in this case, was revolutionary compared to the beginning of the 15th century. This was the era when mass-produced images really took off. Or perhaps Dürer was thinking of burly unicorns? He was a renowned animal and plant artist, but in this case, his imagination had to be called upon.ĭürer’s rhinoceros also has unexpected significance in the history of media. Rhinoceros unicornis has only a single horn the two species of African rhinos are double-horned, which may be where the confusion stemmed from.
Durer's rhinoceros skin#
Mass-produced images like the rhinoceros spread far and wide.ĭürer’s vision of the exotic animal is highly stylized, with plate-like skin and a second, smaller horn in the center of the shoulders above the head. In fact, for two centuries, his enormously successful print was what Europeans thought of when they imagined a rhinoceros, largely because it was continuously reproduced in natural histories. Many more people ended up seeing his print than saw the actual rhinoceros. He relied on a written description and sketch sent from Lisbon. Dürer, one of the most established and famous artists of the day, was like most people in Europe: he never actually saw the rhinoceros. Yet the unfortunate rhinoceros, so far from home, achieved a kind of immortality in art.įor this was the rhinoceros portrayed by Albrecht Dürer in his famous woodblock print of 1515. It was being re-gifted to Pope Leo X when the ship it was on foundered. The rhino caused a sensation upon being exhibited in Lisbon. The Indian rhinoceros had been a gift to King Manuel I of Portugal from one of his colonial governors, who had originally received it from Sultan Muzafar II of Gujarat. Five hundred years ago in 1516, the first rhinoceros seen in Europe since the days of the Roman Empire drowned off the coast of Italy in a shipwreck.