It was first sent as a gift numerous times and always was the special art that every receiver would admire (Feiman 22). The rhinoceros depicted by Durer had a fascinating history. The fact that Durer was interested in the animal and many people bought woodcut pictures of the rhino show how interested the public was in the gift from the East. These features are not present in a rhino. Durer’s Rhinoceros also has a small horn on the back, scaly legs, and saw-like rear quarters. Indeed, the audience can observe the shift in its meaning from an exact source of zoological information to a pictorial source of aesthetic pleasure throughout the construction of the history of the Rhinoceros (Feiman 22). The picture shows that a rhino is covered with plates of armor. The picture of the rhino created in 1515 was inaccurate. Even though Durer had never seen a live rhino and depicted it inaccurately, Durer’s Rhinoceros became one of the most popular pictures of the time. Durer was an extremely influential Italian, and he knew many other influential people of the time, including Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Bellini. It was found that Durer had never seen the beast himself and that created his work based on a drawing and written samples sent from Lisbon (Monson 51). He was a famous and well-known artist that made special artworks. It is said that the rhinoceros is fast, impetuous and cunning.It is crucial to start with several facts from the biography of Albrecht Durer. The rhinoceros is so well-armed that the elephant cannot harm it. The elephant is afraid of the rhinoceros, for, when they meet, the rhinoceros charges with its head between its front legs and rips open the elephant's stomach, against which the elephant is unable to defend itself. It has a strong pointed horn on the tip of its nose, which it sharpens on stones. It is the size of an elephant but has shorter legs and is almost invulnerable. It is the colour of a speckled tortoise, and is almost entirely covered with thick scales. On the first of May in the year 1513 AD, the powerful King of Portugal, Manuel of Lisbon, brought such a living animal from India, called the rhinoceros. The German inscription on the woodcut, drawing largely from Pliny's account, reads: This may be Dürer's attempt to reflect the rough and almost hairless hide of the Indian rhinoceros, which has wart-like bumps covering its upper legs and shoulders. Dürer also draws a scaly texture over the body of the animal, including the "armour". Dürer's "armour" may represent the heavy folds of thick skin of an Indian rhinoceros, or, as with the other inaccuracies, may simply be misunderstandings or creative additions by Dürer. None of these features is present in a real rhinoceros. 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. Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times.ĭürer's woodcut is not an accurate representation of a rhinoceros. 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. Dürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer in 1515.
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