Though cherished as a painter, he preferred printmaking. Dürer's work was widely known and distributed. His acquaintances include major figures of the renaissance: Michelangelo, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and perhaps da Vinci. Now 44, the artist was at the peak of his powers, and he was one of the principle artists working for Emperor Maxmilian I. Dürer sketched the animal (below) and, with the help of his assistants, made a print. Shortly after its arrival in Lisbon, a drawing of the rhino (now lost) arrived in Nuremberg, the birthplace and home of Albrecht Dürer. Its carcass was soon recovered, stuffed, and delivered to the Pope. Crashing off the shores of Italy, the rhino, whose legs were chained to the deck, died along with the crew. It attracted crowds for several months before being shipped off to Rome in 1516 where it was intended as a gift to Pope Louis X (see Raphael's portrait on the left). That changed in 1515 when an Indian rhinoceros was brought to Lisbon and put on display. There had been none in Europe since Roman times. Dürer's celebrated beast can help us see a link between art and empire.ĭürer never saw a rhinoceros. At the same moment, a new notion of art was emerging, one that remains with us to this day. Artists were called on to glorify European imperial power and to present the untamed allure of foreign shores. Those efforts recruited the talents of artists. Dürer's rhinoceros reminds us that the renaissance was a time of upheaval and expansion: European powers were fomenting global aspirations. Battles were waging for control of Europe, Christianity was dividing, and new territories were being conquered across the globe. This was also an age of imperialism and discovery. It was created at the height of the high renaissance. Indeed, it was among the most successful prints of the time, and it fixed a conceptualization of the rhinoceros in the European imagination for the next few centuries. It began as a drawing (now in the British museum), and was then rendered a print and widely distributed. To kick off the new year, I want to examine Dürer's rhinoceros, which was created 500 years ago, in 1515.
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