Although yesterday was a Sunday, and Christmas, there were still trains, so we made the trip to Pisa for a look. Pisa was the same as usual - busy with international tourists there to enjoy the Campo dei Mirocoli with baptistery, duomo and the famous tower. As we arrived we overheard a voice say of the tower - “That is just so surreal” - and it is! Even after many sights, the Leaning Tower of Pisa still amazes.
We had intended to visit the interior of the cathedral to see its famous sculpted pulpit, and had obtained our free tickets for 1 o’clock. In the event, the doors never opened - too much Christmas cheer in the caretaker’s lodge? And so we were left contemplating the magnificent bronze doors, from the foundry of late renaissance sculptor Giambologna in 1595, decorated with religious scenes.
One panel, however, caught our attention - a representation of a rhinoceros, and looking very like the famous print by Albrecht Dürer. We had no idea why this subject was chosen for Pisa cathedral, but some internet digging gave a clue. Apparently the actual rhino arrived in Lisbon in 1515 - a gift from the sultan of Gujarat, the first rhino to be seen in Europe since Roman times. After a few months, the king of Portugal decided to gift the rhino to the Medici Pope Leo X, and so the poor beast left on another sea journey, this time to Rome.
It turns out that the ship was wrecked, and the rhino lost. However, a drawing by a Portuguese artist found its way to Dürer, who copied and embellished it to produce the famous woodcut. He never saw the original item!
As far as I can see, the Pisa connection may be the fact that the shipwreck occurred off the Ligurian coast, at Porto Venere (we visited it last year) not far up the coast from Pisa itself. The dead rhino was recovered and preserved as a specimen, and may thus have had some local notoriety, placing its likeness, via Dürer, on the door of the duomo. Whew! - end of lecture!
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| Baptistery, duomo and tower - all leaning a bit, thanks to Panasonic Cameras inc. |
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| The famous tower, queue and armoured vehicle with soldiers - an everyday tourist scene in Europe 2016 |
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| The immortal rhinoceros ... |
Somehow this story of shipping the rhino around as a gift and exhotic spectacle only to be drowned seems quite like an allegory of our own time given that the rhino like so many species is on a speeding trajectory to extinction. Earlier in December a new report was warning about the fate of giraffes and in yesterday's news, cheetahs. Unfortunately they are only the better known big beasties of a rapidly increasing list of going and gone. Not sure we are as better informed as you'd hope for five centuries later than your story. I cannot say whether or not habitats of such creatures are being destroyed to make or grow things we consume in Italy and Scotland or whether our governments are doing everything to give international support to local people trying to prevent their demise.
ReplyDeleteWell, I suppose we are indeed better informed, but still just as useless!
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