![]() For he is well armed, very lively and alert. Therefore, the elephant fears the rhinoceros for he always gores him whenever he meets an elephant. Then it rips the elephant open where the skin is thinnest and then gores him. It has on the front of the nose a strong sharp horn: and when the animal comes near the elephant to fight, it always first whets its horn on the stones and runs at the elephant pushing its head between his forelegs. It has the color of a toad and is covered and well protected with thick scales, and in size it is as large as an elephant, but lower, and is the deadly enemy of the elephant. Because it is such a marvel, I had to send it to you in this representation made after it. In the year 1515 on 1 May was brought to our King of Portugal to Lisbon such a living animal from India called a rhinoceros. Dürer transcribed the inscription that accompanied the sketch onto a drawing he made of the rhinoceros. ![]() The sketch was sent to Dürer from Valentin Ferdinand, a German printer who lived in Portugal. Dürer never saw this specimen he based his celebrated woodcut on an account and an anonymous sketch of a rhinoceros that travelled to Lisbon from India in 1515. ![]() This rendition of a rhinoceros is the most famous in the history of art. Vienna’s Albertina Museum is presenting over 200 examples of Dürer’s drawings, printed graphics, and paintings.Author of journal: Giovanni Penni, 1515. ![]() Visual artist Daan Paans (1985) explores these blind spots in our visual historiography: with the inquisitive mind of a scientist, he aims to undo the distorting mechanisms of imaging by producing ‘counter-images’ in response to images from the past, present and future with which he implicitly discloses the contradictory nature in which the original images present themselves. When Albrecht Dürer produced this woodcut 500 years ago he could never have imagined that it would be cause for the lively debate about the odds at which fact and fiction are now related. It was regarded by Westerners as a true representation of a rhinoceros into the late 18th century. Despite its anatomical inaccuracies, Dürer's woodcut became very popular in Europe and was copied many times in the following three centuries. 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. 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 armour, with a gorget at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate, and rivets along the seams. 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.ĭürer's woodcut is not an accurate representation of a rhinoceros. 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. Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times. The image is based on a written description and brief sketch by an unknown artist of an Indian rhinoceros that had arrived in Lisbon in 1515. ![]() Albrecht Dürer's (1471 - 1528) Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer in 1515. ![]()
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