In 1515, much of the natural world was still foreign to most. People did not have the nature channel or a natural history museum to place all the wonders of the world at their disposal. Those who did learn about the world outside their community did so either by traveling to far off and exotic places or through the records of those who did. This greatly limited the number of people with any exposure to what lay beyond the bounds of where their horse or their feet could take them. With the advent of the printed image came a greater education of the public about many topics, including the natural world, but just because printing made images of things never seen before much more readily available, did not necessarily mean that these images were accurate. Even images presented to kings, noblemen, and natural scientists were inaccurate. Those with wealth or great knowledge were not guaranteed to have access to images that were any more accurate than those available to the rest of the world. An excellent example of this is Dürer's print of the rhinoceros. Dürer's print, done without ever seeing the beast, was not true to the beast's form, yet people had no reason to believe the image an inaccurate representation. Years later, what started as a simple drawing, erroneous as it was, even ended up as the illustration in a textbook.

Albrecht Dürer, considered by many scholars to be the greatest German artist of all time,1 held a great curiosity for all things new and unfamiliar. It was this inquisitiveness that in 1515 brought him to draw the rhinoceros, an animal never before seen in Europe. That year a rhinoceros had arrived in Lisbon as a gift to King Manuel I. He then passed the animal on as a gift to Pope Leo X, but the great beast never reached the Pope alive. Dürer himself never saw the animal and based his drawing solely on a sketch and a written description, most likely sent to Nuremberg by a printer from Germany.2 Based on the inscription that accompanies the image, it appears that Dürer intended it to be for a friend. Alongside the original drawing is written, "Because it is such a wondrous thing, I had to send you a portrayal made after it."3 Soon thereafter Dürer translated the sketch into his famous woodcut.

Dürer's image, although it resembles a rhinoceros in its general form, is actually quite inaccurate. His depiction of the rhinoceros is very true to the proper proportions of the animal, but added to it are certain features that do not exist. In a description of the beast printed in his book, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes published in 1607, Edward Topsell writes,

With descriptions as uncertain and self-contradicting as these still being printed almost a hundred years after Dürer created his image, it is a wonder that his portrayal was as accurate as it was. It is when you move away from examining the stature of the beast that Dürer's print loses its accuracy. When considering the animal's armor-like appearance, someone with today's general knowledge can hardly help but be amused. Dürer's rhinoceros is drawn as a fortified beast with segmented armor covering its body. According to Erwin Panofsky, "Dürer stylized the creature, bizarre in itself, into a combination of scales, laminae and shells suggesting a fantastically shaped and patterned suit of armor,"⁵ with each section of its body resembling a separate shield. Dürer's rhinoceros also includes a second horn that protrudes from its back. A real rhinoceros has no such armor plating and no horn in its back. It has a tough dark hide that is covered with fine hair. The decorative style used in the image is carried over from many other works done by Dürer at the same time. At this period of his life, Dürer was primarily employed by the Emperor Maximilian I. Most of his works done between 1512 and 1519, even ones such as the Rhinoceros not done for the emperor, possess the ornate decorations that Maximilian desired in each of the works he commissioned. This is why it is not surprising that Dürer embellished upon the image of the great beast.

Even with its inaccuracies, Dürer's portrayal was long believed to be a true representation of a rhinoceros. Before this time, animals had been depicted primarily as almost cartoon-like background figures. With a shift toward more careful depiction of animals, which was going on at this time, the images being printed were much closer to true representations of the actual animal. When Dürer made his print there were no other likenesses of rhinoceri being widely circulated. The only thing observers of the print would have to compare it to would be prints of elephants, another exotic animal from a foreign land. When compared to an elephant, a rhinoceros looks no less believable. Dürer's Rhinoceros was considered believable enough that without ever seeing the animal; he had created the image that would be associated with the beast for many years.⁶ This is made evident in Topsell's book in which he uses Dürer's representation as the illustration to accompany the text about the rhinoceros. In the preface to his section on the rhinoceros, Topsell writes,

Topsell could not have written this preface and printed Dürer's image of the rhinoceros together had he not believed Dürer's representation to be accurate. In the early seventeenth century when Topsell published his book there was a real interest in nature quickly developing. There were many private scholars and upper-class citizens ready to pay the large amounts required for the production of elaborate volumes like Topsell's. On the title page of his book, Topsell writes, "Necessary for all Divines and Students."⁸ Topsell believed he was printing the most current and accurate information, but according to Charles Raven, Topsell "was not a man of high distinction, intellectual or practical."⁹ He was a man who lacked originality and reproduced what his authorities passed on to him. Many of the prints in his book appear inaccurate, but Raven also says that, "students of his sources will know that he must not be blamed too severely for credulity."¹⁰ Many of the sources from which Topsell drew were published in a day when fable and fantasy still shaped many of the beliefs about animals, and he was not alone in his use of biased sources. Natural scientists of the day did not necessarily take part in extensive study of the form or habits of animals, practices that scientists of today consider commonplace. The print Topsell uses of a porcupine makes the animal seem like a large beast with enormous teeth and huge claws; his wild field mouse looks to be the size of a raccoon. Yet despite some gross inaccuracies, Topsell was very concerned with accuracy. Topsell could not have known any better when he published Dürer's Rhinoceros because he goes on to say,

Despite its flaws, Dürer's image was convincingly drawn. This along with Dürer's reputation gave the print enough credibility to stand for many years as the true portrayal of the rhinoceros. In fact, when the faults of the print were discovered, it had been held in such high esteem that many people did not want to forgo the print for the truth. Dürer's woodcut "had such a powerful effect on successive generations of artists, that even when in the eighteenth century people became aware of Dürer's inaccuracies they were reluctant to abandon his imaginative view of the animal for a fully accurate observation if it."¹²

When people viewed Dürer's Rhinoceros, they believed what they saw. It was a reasonable image for a strange and exotic beast that no one had seen before. It even showed resemblance to the prints of other animals from the same distant region. When it appeared in textbooks, the image was given even more authority. Even though the image was inaccurate, no one had any other prints of the animal to compare it to. Dürer's print brought before people a new element of the natural world that was completely foreign to them. Simply because an image ended up in print, did not mean that it was accurate. It simply meant that it was available for more people to interpret.

Bibliography

Panofsky, Erwin. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955.

Parshall, Peter W. "Imago Contrafacta: Images and Fact in the Northern Renaissance." Art History, vol. 16, December 1993, 554-79.

Raven, Charles. English Naturalists from Neckam to Ray. London: Cambridge University Press, 1947.

Rowlands, John. The Age of Dürer and Holbein: German Drawings 1400-1550. London: British Museum Publications Ltd., 1988.

Strieder, Peter. "Albrecht Dürer." The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, New York: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1996, 427-444.

Topsell, Edward. The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes. London: Printed by W. Jaggard, 1607.

Weislogel, Andrew C., ed. Prints that Bite: Animal Imagery in Old Master Prints and Books. Exh Cat. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, N.Y., 1997.