The vessel passed near Marseille in early 1516. 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 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. 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. Manuel decided to give the rhinoceros as a gift to the Medici Pope Leo X. A rhinoceros appears to the right of the tree, with an elephant to the left. "Creation of the animals" by Raphael, 1518–1519, a fresco on the second floor of the Palazzi Pontifici in the Vatican. Manuel arranged a fight with a young elephant from his collection, to test the account by Pliny the Elder that the elephant and the rhinoceros are bitter enemies, but the elephant fled the field in panic before a single blow was struck. It was housed in King Manuel's menagerie at the Ribeira Palace in Lisbon, separate from his elephants and other large beasts at the Estaus Palace. 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.
A rhinoceros had not been seen in Europe since Roman times: and was examined by scholars and the curious, and letters describing the fantastic creature were sent to correspondents throughout Europe. The tower was later decorated with gargoyles shaped as rhinoceros heads under its corbels. Īfter 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 ship and its two companion vessels were loaded with exotic spices, 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. It sailed on the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda, which left Goa in January 1515. Albuquerque decided to forward the gift, known by its Gujarati name of genda, and its Indian keeper, named Ocem, to King Manuel I of Portugal. The rhinoceros was already well accustomed to being kept in captivity. At that time, the rulers of different countries would occasionally send each other exotic animals to be kept in a menagerie. The mission returned without an agreement, but diplomatic gifts were exchanged, including the rhinoceros. In early 1514, Afonso de Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India, sent ambassadors to Sultan Muzaffar Shah II, ruler of Cambay (modern Gujarat), to seek permission to build a fort on the island of Diu. On, an Indian rhinoceros named Ulysses arrived in Lisbon from the Far East. The first known print of the rhinoceros is a rather primitive woodcut which illustrates a poem by Giovanni Giacomo Penni published in Rome in July 1515.
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 was regarded as a true representation of a rhinoceros into the late 18th century, and it has been said of Dürer's woodcut that "probably no animal picture has exerted such a profound influence on the arts".
#PICTURE OF RHINOCEROS SKIN#
None of these features are present in a real rhinoceros, although the Indian rhinoceros does have deep folds in its skin that can look like armor from a distance.ĭürer's woodcut became very popular in Europe and was copied many times in the following three centuries. He places a small twisted horn on its back and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. He depicts an animal with hard plates that cover its body like sheets of armor, with a gorget at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate, and what appear to be rivets along the seams. ĭürer's woodcut is not an accurate representation. Another live rhinoceros was not seen again until Abada arrived from India to the court of Sebastian of Portugal in 1577. Later that year, 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. Instead the image is based on an anonymous written description and brief sketch of an Indian rhinoceros brought to Lisbon in 1515. Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times. This impression, National Gallery of Art, Washingtonĭürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German artist Albrecht Dürer in 1515.
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