Durer never saw the rhinoceros himself. The Rhinoceros is a Northern Renaissance Wood Block Print Print created by Albrecht Dürer in 1515. Manfred Klein. Cet animal avait été offert par le roi du Portugal Manuel Ier au pape Leo X. Creator/Artist; Name: Dürer, Albrecht: Date of birth/death: 1471-05-21: 1528-04-06: Location of birth/death: Deutsch: Nürnberg. [25][26] and printed a reversed reflection of it.[20][27]. Credit Line: Gift of Junius Spencer Morgan, 1919. La imagen se basaba en … It has been said of Dürer's woodcut: "probably no animal picture has exerted such a profound influence on the arts".[7]. To the modern eye it does not appear to be a very realistic depiction of a rhinoceros. Curator Susan Dackerman reveals the story behind the creation of Albrecht Dürer's famous "Rhinoceros" woodcut. Durer’s text at the top of the woodcut confirms the impression that the image gives of a powerful fighting beast feared even by elephants. Albuquerque passed the gift on to Dom Manuel I, the king of Portugal. [1] 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. Rhinocéros dessiné par Albrecht Dürer en 1515. His form is here represented. 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. Albrecht Durer. Albrecht Durer. [42] A similar rhinoceros, in relief, decorates a panel in one of the bronze west doors of Pisa Cathedral. Dürer was born in Germany in 1471 and in his teenage years he became an apprentice to his father. Europe was witnessing a revolution in how the animal kingdom was perceived. Meder 1932 / Dürer Katalog (273.1) Bartsch / Le Peintre graveur (VII.147.136) Dodgson 1903, 1911 / Catalogue of Early German and Flemish Woodcuts in the BM, 2 vols (I.307.125) (first edition) Schoch 2001-04 / Albrecht Dürer, das druckgraphische Werk. [48], Until the late 1930s, Dürer's image appeared in school textbooks in Germany as a faithful image of the rhinoceros;[7] and it remains a powerful artistic influence. He places a small twisted horn on its back and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. It sailed on the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda,[9] which left Goa in January 1515. Good surviving impressions are rare, however. A duel between a rhinocerus and an elephant? British Museum London, United Kingdom. On Trinity Sunday, 3 June, 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. Dimensions: image: 8 3/8 x 11 5/8 in. © www.AlbrechtDurer.org 2019. After 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. Rhinocerus (Rhinoceros) by Albrecht Dürer. The excitement of Europe’s expanding horizons and ambitions as well as its increasing knowledge and understanding of the wider world and of nature. This famous sketch of a rhinoceros was created in 1515 by the influential German artist, Albrecht Dürer, reflecting the growing interest in foreign curiosities that had emerged in tangent with the overseas voyages of exploration, commerce and conquest by the Spanish and Portuguese. The rhinoceros’ horn is much larger and imposing than in nature and, indeed, Durer shows the animal as having a second, smaller, spiral horn on its back. It has the colour of a speckled tortoise and it is covered with thick scales. A fine example was sold at Christie's New York in 2013 for $866,500, setting a new auction record for the artist. If a stuffed rhinoceros did arrive in Rome, its fate remains unknown: it might have been removed to Florence by the Medici or destroyed in the 1527 sack of Rome. Accession Number: 19.73.159. Albrecht Dürer Rhinoceros. 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. Dürer’s depiction of the animal shaped the European image of an Indian rhinoceros right up to the mid 18th century, when another specimen arrived in Europe. It has a strong pointed horn on the tip of its nose, which it sharpens on stones. Find more prominent pieces of animal painting at Wikiart.org – best visual art database. On the other hand, his depiction of the texture may represent dermatitis induced by the rhinoceros' close confinement during the four-month journey by ship from India to Portugal. His decision to issue the image as a woodcut made it accessible to many more people eager to experience something of that excitement. Dürer’s Rhinoceros is a woodcut created by Albrecht Dürer in 1515 A.D. As an illustration of an animal at the center of a famous series of events, the woodcut was highly popular in the artist’s lifetime. [46] In 1790, James Bruce's travelogue Travels to discover the source of the Nile dismissed Dürer's work as "wonderfully ill-executed in all its parts" and "the origin of all the monstrous forms under which that animal has been painted, ever since". He also assures the viewer that “This is an accurate representation”. In particular, Oudry's painting was the inspiration for a plate in Buffon's encyclopedic Histoire naturelle, which was widely copied. ^ Some sources erroneously say 1513, copying a typographical error made by Dürer in one of his original drawings and perpetuated in his woodcut. He also notes that the skin of a rhinoceros is rougher than it visually appears and that such plates and scales portray this non-visual information to a degree. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Asian animals previously imported for circuses and gladitorial events became scarce or non-existent in Western Europe. [37][38] The resulting chiaroscuro woodcut, which entirely omitted the text, was published after 1620. But when Dürer’s rhinoceros arrived in Lisbon, things weren’t quite so straightforward. [13] The only known copy of the original published poem is held by the Institución Colombina in Seville. It is an emblem of the world of his time. Burgkmair corresponded with merchants in Lisbon and Nuremberg, but it is not clear whether he had access to a letter or sketch as Dürer did, perhaps even Dürer's sources, or saw the animal himself in Portugal. 23.8 cm 29.9 cm. The rhinoceros’ horn is much larger and imposing than in nature and, indeed, Durer shows the animal as having a second, smaller, spiral horn on its back. So he began to a prepare a pen sketch relying on the written description and the sketch made by an unknown artist. He made his own drawing of the animal and soon produced the woodcut that proved to be one of the most commercially successful of its time. ), This page was last edited on 28 December 2020, at 23:58. Title: The Rhinoceros. . It is the size of an elephant but has shorter legs and is almost invulnerable. Even so, Bruce's own illustration of the African white rhinoceros, which is noticeably different in appearance to the Indian rhinoceros, still shares conspicuous inaccuracies with Dürer's work. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), « Le Rhinocerus de Lisbonne », 1515, xylographie sur papier, 21,4×29,8. Albrecht Dürer The Rhinoceros (B. It is thought to have sold as many as 5,000 copies in Durer’s lifetime and was to become the iconic image that Europeans turned to describe the rhinoceros until well into the eighteenth century. [44], The pre-eminent position of Dürer's image and its derivatives declined from the mid-to-late-18th century when more live rhinoceroses were transported to Europe, shown to the curious public, and depicted in more accurate representations. [36] Images derived from it were included in naturalist texts, including Sebastian Münster's Cosmographiae (1544), Conrad Gessner's Historiae Animalium (1551), Edward Topsell's Histoire of Foure-footed Beastes (1607) and many others. When Durer was young he le arned how to be a goldsmith like his father. Whereas, in the past, the study of zoology had been guided by classical authorities, there was a growing sense that firsthand observation was also of vital importance. [31] Dürer also draws a scaly texture over the body of the animal, including the "armour". He made a pen and ink drawing ‎Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) who achieved fame throughout Europe for the power of his images. [2] 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's "Rhinoceros" was part of the exhibition "Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe," which was on view September 6–December 10, 2011 at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. Medium: Woodcut. Le Rhinocéros de Dürer est une gravure sur bois d’Albrecht Dürer datée de 1515.L’image est fondée sur une description écrite et un bref croquis par un artiste inconnu d’un rhinocéros indien (Rhinoceros unicornis) débarqué à Lisbonne plus tôt dans l’année. [5][6] It is possible that a suit of armour was forged for the rhinoceros's fight against the elephant in Portugal, and that these features depicted by Dürer are parts of the armour. In the context of the Renaissance, it was a piece of classical antiquity which had been rediscovered, like a statue or an inscription. It is a world in which the nations of Europe were competing not just in Europe itself but across the globe in Asia as well as the Americas. Developments in printing technology meant that his “Rhinoceros” could be reproduced in much greater quantities than previously and priced to be within the reach of the less wealthy. See Clarke, p.19, for a photograph of a gargoyle. Brought from India to the great and powerful King Emanuel of Portugal at Lisbon a live animal called a rhinoceros. 2-nov-2016 - and various related Dürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer in 1515. [3][4], Dürer's woodcut is not an entirely accurate representation of a rhinoceros. Its arrival caused a sensation and attracted crowds of visitors for several months eager to see for themselves an exotic creature from antiquity that had been newly rediscovered. [37] This was the seventh of the eight editions in all of the print. Original upload log (suppr) (actu) 17 juin 2005 à 22:56 . The woodcut was, per Quammen, p.204, cut on the block by a specialist craftsman known as a, Rough translation of the German original. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) who achieved fame throughout Europe for the power of his images. [11], The block passed into the hands of the Amsterdam printer and cartographer Willem Janssen (also called Willem Blaeu amongst other names). (Bedini, p.121.). Consequently, the historical impact of the woodcut was enormous. The animal was examined by scholars and the curious, and letters describing the fantastic creature were sent to correspondents throughout Europe. [38][40], Despite its errors, the image remained very popular,[6] and was taken to be an accurate representation of a rhinoceros until the late 18th century. Durer was a master of the woodcut and had brought greater artistic vision and intellectual depth to the medium. A blackletter. The geometrical overlays reminiscent of Duerer are another recurrent theme in Manfred Klein's work. [36] Janssen decided to re-issue the block with the addition of a new tone block printed in a variety of colours, olive-green and dark green, as well as blue-grey. Dimensions: Height: 212 millimeters (woodcut) and Width: 296 millimeters (woodcut) The work I have chosen from the Northern Renaissance is Rhinocerus (Rhinoceros) by Albrecht Dürer.