On Trinity Sunday, 3 June, Manuel arranged a fight with young elephant from his collection, to test the account by Pliny the Elder that the elephant and the rhinoceros are bitter enemies. It was housed in King Manuel's menagerie at the Ribeira Palace in Lisbon, separate from his elephants and other large beasts at the Estaus Palace. The only known copy of the original published poem is held by the Institución Colombina in Seville. 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. The animal was examined by scholars and the curious, and letters describing the fantastic creature were sent to correspondents throughout Europe. In the context of the Renaissance, it was a piece of classical antiquity which had been rediscovered, like a statue or an inscription. A rhinoceros had not been seen in Europe since Roman times: it had become something of a mythical beast, occasionally conflated in bestiaries with the "monoceros" (unicorn), so the arrival of a living example created a sensation. The tower was later decorated with gargoyles shaped as rhinoceros heads under its corbels. The ship, captained by Francisco Pereira Coutinho, and two companion vessels, all loaded with exotic spices, sailed across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and north through the Atlantic, stopping briefly in Mozambique, Saint Helena and the Azores.Īfter 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. It sailed on the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda, which left Goa in January 1515. Albuquerque decided to forward the gift, known by its Gujarati name of ganda, and its Indian keeper, named Ocem, to King Manuel I of Portugal. The rhinoceros was already well accustomed to being kept in captivity. At that time, the rulers of different countries would occasionally send each other exotic animals to be kept in a menagerie. The mission returned without an agreement, but diplomatic gifts were exchanged, including the rhinoceros. In early 1514, Afonso de Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India, sent ambassadors to Sultan Muzafar II, ruler of Cambay (modern Gujarat), to seek permission to build a fort on the island of Diu. On, an Indian rhinoceros arrived in Lisbon from the Far East. It has been said of Dürer's woodcut: "probably no animal picture has exerted such a profound influence on the arts". Eventually, it was supplanted by more realistic drawings and paintings, particularly those of Clara the rhinoceros, who toured Europe in the 1740s and 1750s. It was regarded by Westerners as a true representation of a rhinoceros into the late 18th century. Despite its anatomical inaccuracies, Dürer's woodcut became very popular in Europe and was copied many times in the following three centuries. None of these features are present in a real rhinoceros, although the Indian rhinoceros does have deep folds in its skin that can look like armor from a distance. 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's woodcut is not an entirely accurate representation of a rhinoceros.
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