- Museum number
- SL,5218.161
- Description
-
Rhinoceros in profile to left. 1515
Pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1515
- Dimensions
-
Height: 274 millimetres
-
Width: 420 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- This is Dürer’s preparatory study for his famous woodcut of a rhinoceros of 1515 (Meder 273) of which there is an impression of the first state in the collection (see 1895,0122.714). Dürer's image shows the first rhinoceros to reach Europe alive since the third century AD, and although much of its appearance is fanciful, it is thought to represent a species of Indian rhinoceros (see J.L. Koerner in 'Dürer and his Legacy', 2002, p.31 ). It must have been the subject of great interest when it arrived in Portugal. The rhinoceros had been presented by the ruler of Gujarat, Sultan Muzafar II to the governor of Portuguese India, Alfonso d’Albuquerque, who sent it on to King Manuel I in Lisbon, where it arrived on 20 May 1515. The king determined to put to the test Pliny the elder’s description of a natural animosity between the rhinoceros and the elephant, and arranged a fight to take place between the recent arrival and one of his elephants on 3 June 1515. The elephant fled. Later in the year, the king despatched the animal as a gift to Pope Leo X in Rome, but, after breaking the journey at Marseilles, where it was seen by King Francis I of France and his queen, it drowned when the ship sank. One account states that its carcase was retrieved and stuffed on arrival in Italy. Dürer never saw the animal himself, and it is likely that he based this drawing, and the lively inscription underneath giving details about the rhinoceros, on an account in a Portuguese newsletter which was sent to the Nuremberg community of merchants by Valentin Ferdinand, a Moravian printer and publisher of geographical works working in Lisbon (an Italian transcript of Ferdinand's report is in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, see Schoch 2002, p.424, n.3). The report would probably have been accompanied by some sketches of the animal, which have not survived.
Lit. from J. Rowlands, Drawings by German Artists and Artists from German- speaking regions of Europe in the Department of Prints and and Drawings at the British Museum: the Fifteenth Century, and the Sixteenth Century by Artists born before 1530, London, BM Press, 1993, no.195: Heller, p. 48; Hausmann, Naumann's Archiv, p. 33, no. 1; Hausmann, p. 106, no. 1; Thausing, ii, pp. 124f; Lippmann, part xxiii, p. 10, no. 257, repr.; Conway, p. 35, no. 643; Pauli, p. 26, no. 725; BM Guide, 1928, p. 24, no. 230; Flechsig, Dürer, ii, p. 328; Tietze, ii, p. 114, no. 639, repr.; Winkler, Dürer, iii, pp. 64f., no. 625, repr.; Panofsky, ii, p. 131, no. 1347; Rupprich, i, p. 208, no. 57; Winkler, Leben, p. 263; Rowlands, Dürer, p. 33, no. 211; T.H. Clarke, Connoisseur, clxxxiv, 1973, pp. 3ff., repr.; Strauss, iii, p. 1584, no. 1515/57, repr.; BM Animals in Art, pp. 127f.; Clarke, Rhinoceros, pp. 20, 181, no. 1, repr.; BM Dürer and Holbein, pp. 92f., no. 65, repr.
Further lit: D. Eichberger, 'Dürer's nature drawings and early collecting', in 'Dürer and his Culture', edited by D. Eichberger and C. Zika, Cambridge, 1998, pp.16f, fig.2.1, repr.; G.Bartrum, 'Dürer and his Legacy', London, British Museum, exhibition catalogue, 2002, no. 242; R.Schoch in 'Albrecht Dürer. Das druckgraphische Werk' Band II, 'Holzsnitte und Holzschnittfolgen, Munich, 2002, p.421, under no. 241.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1928 BM London, Guide Woodcuts, Drawings of A. Dürer, no. 230
1960 BM, Sloane Drawings, (no cat.)
1971 BM, Dürer, no.211
1978/9 Dec-Feb, BM, cat. no 173
1988 Jul-Oct, BM, Age of Dürer & Holbein, no.65
1990 Apr-Aug, BM, Treasures of P&D (no cat.)
2002/3 Dec-Mar, BM, Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy, no. 242
2006 1 Jul-Sep, BM, Masterpieces of the British Museum BBC series
2010 Sept - December, BM, History of the World
- Acquisition date
- 1753
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- SL,5218.161
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: C,07.161
