Page 116 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

THE QUEST FOR THE EXOTIC:

ALBRECHT DURER IN THE NETHERLANDS

Jean Michel Massing

A, Jbrecht Diirer is the best-known artist/ kinds could be seen there. Exotic animals were 1515 (cat. 206). The animal that sultan Muzafan
traveler of the Renaissance. His two visits to kept in the Nederhof. Lions are first mentioned n, ruler of Gujarat, gave to Alfonso de
Italy, in 1494-1495 and 1505-1507, were es- in 1446, monkeys in 1462, and in 1507, it Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India,
sentially pilgrimages to the wellsprings of the included wild cows, camels, ostriches, and other who then sent it to King Manuel i, was the sub-
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Renaissance, study trips for an artist who was exotic animals brought from Spain. It was ject of intense interest, no rhinoceros having
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anxious to acquire a thorough grounding in probably in Brussels, but in the next year been seen in Europe since classical times. The
classical art theory and practice. His year-long (1521), that Diirer drew on one sheet six ani- Greek geographer Strabo seems to have been
journey to the Netherlands, undertaken in the mals and two landscape scenes (cat. 205): a Bar- the first to mention fights staged between rhi-
last decade of his life, was quite different. The bary lion, two depictions of a lioness, a lynx — noceroses and elephants, a tradition that was
principal purpose for the trip was to convince the only native animal —a young chamois, as briefly revived less than a month after the rhi-
Charles v, who was traveling to his coronation well as a baboon, the latter heightened with noceros' arrival in Lisbon, as we know from
in Aachen, to continue the pension that Diirer blue and pink washes. According to an inscrip- various testimonies: "The native keeper... led
had been awarded by Maximilian i. Diirer tion now partly lost through the sheet's subse- the rhinoceros by its chain to a place behind the
clearly saw the journey, however, as a chance to quent trimming, this was "an extraordinary tapestries covering the passageway, where it
mix business with pleasure, for he took along animal..., big, one and a half hundredweight." remained well hidden. Then the elephant, a
his wife and her maid and brought with him a Diirer does not seem to have seen — or in any young one with short tusks, was brought into
large supply of works of art to sell and barter. case to have sketched — real lions before his the arena. When the tapestries were pulled
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His personal diary of the trip has come down to travel to the Netherlands. For the lion in his aside revealing the rhinoceros, the elephant
us, yielding a vivid picture of the daily life of small panel of Saint Jerome in the Wilderness* took flight and sought refuge in the shelter
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this by-now celebrated artist. What is most painted c. 1497-1498, he used a study in water- where it was usually kept." The mutual antip-
striking from our perspective is Diirer's inex- color made during his first trip to Venice. athy of the two animals was duly recorded on
haustible curiosity for the unfamiliar animals, There, however, the animal was not drawn from Diirer's preparatory drawing:
plants, peoples, and products that he encoun- life, but rather based on the lion of Saint Mark In the year i5[i]3 [recte 1515] on i May was
tered in the Low Countries. The amazing as it appears in the coat-of-arms of Venice. 9 brought to our king of Portugal in Lisbon
variety of exotica he was able to examine From Diirer's diary of his trip to the Nether-
was a direct consequence of the voyages of lands, we also know that on 9 April 1521 he saw such a living animal from India called Rhi-
nocerate. Because it is such a marvel I con-
exploration. the lions kept in Ghent and drew one of them.
By 1520-1521, when Diirer visited the Neth- In fact he added the words Zw Gent (at Ghent) sidered that I must send this representation.
erlands, Antwerp had become one of the prin- on a silverpoint drawing of a crouching lion. It has the color of a tortoise and is covered all
over with
thick scales, and in size is as large
cipal centers for the spice trade; the other was He studied two further poses of the animal on as an elephant, but lower, and is the deadly
Lisbon, since Portugal now controlled the new another sheet and sketched its head on a third. 10 enemy of the elephant. It has on the front of
maritime sea routes, especially those to Africa In Diirer's time the Ghent lions were kept at the the nose a large sharp horn: and when this
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and Asia. For Diirer this development meant Leeuvenhof, descendants of the four animals animal comes near the elephant to fight it
direct contact with all sorts of exotic wares, recorded a hundred years before as in the charge always first whets its horn on the stones and
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including imports from America. In Brussels of a local butcher, Jacques de Melle. His job was
Diirer admired the Aztec treasures sent by taken over by Henri van den Vyvere, who runs at the elephant with its head between its
forelegs.
Then it rips the elephant where its
Cortes to Charles v and subsequently exhibited seems to have started the tradition of showing skin is thinnest, and then gores it. The ele-
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in the Coudenberg Palace. Diirer also noted in new-born cubs to the town councillors (eche-
for
Rhinocerate;
his diary that "I saw behind the King's house vins) for a small fee. The same was done by his phant is greatly afraid of the he meets an ele-
he always gores it whenever
... the fountains, labyrinths, and animal- successors, who also kept bears; in 1497 a fight phant. For he is well armed, very lively and
garden; anything more beautiful and pleasing was even organized between a bear and bulls, in alert. The animal is called rhinocero in Greek
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to me and more like a Paradise I have never the manner of classical Roman spectacles. It 16
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seen/' He made a sketch of the park, the may have been in Ghent rather than in Brussels and Latin but in Indian, Ganda.
famous Warande, which he identified, as he did that Diirer made the two splendid gouache stud- King Manuel i sent the rhinoceros to Pope Leo
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so often, with an inscription: "This is the ies on vellum of a lion and a lioness. 12 x. According to Paulo Giovio, it was meant to
animal park and the pleasure grounds behind, at Lions came from Asia and Africa but they repeat the combat with an elephant, in this case
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Brussels, seen from the palace/' The park was were known in Europe during the Middle Ages the famous elephant Hanno drawn by Raphael,
large, with special areas for wild boar and hares, and depicted in religious and even secular art. 13 which Manuel had sent to the Pope the year
shelters for deer, wild goats and ibexes, as well More remarkable was the rhinoceros, which before. The fight never took place, as the rhi-
as various aviaries; in 1517, some 150 deer of all Diirer had recorded in his famous woodcut of noceros drowned in a shipwreck off the Italian
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 115