Painting by Albrecht Dürer "Rhinoceros"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

What caused the many factual errors in the depiction of Indian rhinos between the 16th and 18th centuries? The image, which for a long time was mistaken in Europe for the appearance of a rhinoceros, was first created by Albrecht Dürer, a German artist who, with his engraving called "Rhinoceros", made all of Europe see inaccurate images of these animals for several centuries in a row.

Biography

The great German artist Albrecht Dürer was born on May 21, 1471 in Nuremberg, Germany. His father was a jeweler, his mother's name was Barbara Holper. From the age of six, the future artist attended a Latin school. His father tried to teach him the art of jewelry, but Albrecht wanted to paint, and 9 years later his father sent his son to study with the famous Nuremberg artist Michael Wolgemut. Despite the direction he chose, Dürer also mastered the art of wood engraving. He graduated from the workshop in 1490 and went on trips to Germany and Switzerland, during which he continued to honehis skill, he created several of his famous creations. In 1494, he completed his wanderings and, upon arrival home, married Agnes Frey.

For the rest of his life, the great master traveled around Europe with his students, creating masterpieces, and in 1512, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Maximilian I became his patron. The artist spends the last seven years of his life in work, he creates his most important works, and April 6, 1528 dies of malaria in Nuremberg.

Creativity and Science

Dürer created a huge number of works of art, such as self-portraits, engravings, bookplates, stained-glass windows and drawings. His paintings were valued and bought throughout Europe. About 970 drawings, 457 engravings and 20 bookplates have been preserved. Albrecht Dürer devoted most of his life to art, but he was also a well-known theoretical scientist in the field of mathematics. However, he was inspired by the greatest falsification in the history of science, namely, Durer's engraving "Rhinoceros", created by him in 1515. Due to its fame, Indian rhinos have long been given images that are not real.

Dürer's Rhino

Let's take a closer look at the engraving. Durer's painting "Rhinoceros" was created by an artist who had never seen this animal in his life, according to the description of people who witnessed the appearance of a mammal in Lisbon. It was brought from India as a gift to King Manuel, who subsequently sent it to the Pope, but the ship sank on the way.

Since the artist has never seen a rhinoceros, the image on the engraving is different from the real one. Durer's rhinoceros is clad in strong armor, which looks like the folds of the skin of a real animal, and its sheets are as if fastened with rivets, he wears a small curved horn on his back, and his legs are covered with scales. Also, the whole body of the animal was covered with a pattern.

The engraving became very famous, and its images were placed as illustrations for science books. Such a rhinoceros appeared both on the emblem of Alessandro Medici, and on the column located in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and on one of the doors of the Pisa Cathedral. Animals became popular, and more and more of their images appeared in various works of art. Albrecht Dürer's rhinoceros was considered a reliable image until the middle of the 17th century, but then more and more animals were brought to Europe, more and more often they began to appear in the works of other artists, and the image inspired by the engraving was supplanted. However, until the 1930s, the animal from the engraving was on the pages of German school textbooks as a real image of a rhinoceros.