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The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium: An Essay in Natural History
One animal left India in 1515, caged in the hold of a Portuguese ship, and sailed around Africa to Lisbon―the first of its species to see Europe for more than a thousand years. The other crossed the Atlantic from South America to Madrid in 1789, its huge fossilized bones packed in crates, its species unknown. How did Europeans three centuries apart respond to these two mysterious beasts―a rhinoceros, known only from ancient texts, and a nameless monster? As Juan Pimentel explains, the reactions reflect deep intellectual changes but also the enduring power of image and imagination to shape our understanding of the natural world.
We know the rhinoceros today as “Dürer’s Rhinoceros,” after the German artist’s iconic woodcut. His portrait was inaccurate―Dürer never saw the beast and relied on conjecture, aided by a sketch from Lisbon. But the influence of his extraordinary work reflected a steady move away from ancient authority to the dissemination in print of new ideas and images. By the time the megatherium arrived in Spain, that movement had transformed science. When published drawings found their way to Paris, the great zoologist Georges Cuvier correctly deduced that the massive bones must have belonged to an extinct giant sloth. It was a pivotal moment in the discovery of the prehistoric world.
The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium offers a penetrating account of two remarkable episodes in the cultural history of science and is itself a vivid example of the scientific imagination at work.
We know the rhinoceros today as “Dürer’s Rhinoceros,” after the German artist’s iconic woodcut. His portrait was inaccurate―Dürer never saw the beast and relied on conjecture, aided by a sketch from Lisbon. But the influence of his extraordinary work reflected a steady move away from ancient authority to the dissemination in print of new ideas and images. By the time the megatherium arrived in Spain, that movement had transformed science. When published drawings found their way to Paris, the great zoologist Georges Cuvier correctly deduced that the massive bones must have belonged to an extinct giant sloth. It was a pivotal moment in the discovery of the prehistoric world.
The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium offers a penetrating account of two remarkable episodes in the cultural history of science and is itself a vivid example of the scientific imagination at work.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionScience
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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December 21, 2020
What do Durer's rhinoceros --that print of the the first captive rhinoceros to reach Europe in a thousand years and the first discovered set of fossil bones of the Megatherium-- a massive sloth-like beast that went extinct around 8,000 years ago-- have in common?
This is the topic of Pimentel's award-winning book.
This was the best book I read in 2020! Pimentel could probably make any story come to life--he is a gifted storyteller and teacher. His book lit my imagination on fire! I've always been a fan of Durer's print, which has become one of the most well-known animal images of all time, reprinted on towels and posters, in textbooks and t-shirts. Taking on a life of its own-- like Leonardo’s Lisa or Hokusai’s Great Wave— Dürer’s rhino has become imprinted on our human imagination for all time. One came up for sale in 2013 achieving $866,500, a new auction record for the artist. And for good reason, it is one of the greatest animal depictions ever created. Magic realism at its best. I was particularly interested in This is surely how Albrecht Dürer, one of the greatest artistic geniuses the world has ever known, came to create his iconic woodcut of an Indian rhinoceros-- without ever having seen one in person. Dürer’s rhinoceros would far outlive its subject, becoming the definition of the animal in Europe for hundreds of years to come. It is interesting to consider that up until the 1930s, school textbooks in Germany were illustrated with the Dürer rhino as a faithful image of the animal, despite the fact that it was fantastically inaccurate.
I first read the first part of the book and was so excited that I wrote an essay on the subject --forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine.
I didn't start the second half of the book till much later--never expecting it to be even more interesting than the fist part. I am so grateful to the author for not only writing this amazing book, but later for helping answer questions I had in writing a short story--my short story won a creative writing prize, judged by XXX. (I will add news when the prize is announced officially in early January)... but I cannot recommend this book enough--best read of the year!
This is the topic of Pimentel's award-winning book.
This was the best book I read in 2020! Pimentel could probably make any story come to life--he is a gifted storyteller and teacher. His book lit my imagination on fire! I've always been a fan of Durer's print, which has become one of the most well-known animal images of all time, reprinted on towels and posters, in textbooks and t-shirts. Taking on a life of its own-- like Leonardo’s Lisa or Hokusai’s Great Wave— Dürer’s rhino has become imprinted on our human imagination for all time. One came up for sale in 2013 achieving $866,500, a new auction record for the artist. And for good reason, it is one of the greatest animal depictions ever created. Magic realism at its best. I was particularly interested in This is surely how Albrecht Dürer, one of the greatest artistic geniuses the world has ever known, came to create his iconic woodcut of an Indian rhinoceros-- without ever having seen one in person. Dürer’s rhinoceros would far outlive its subject, becoming the definition of the animal in Europe for hundreds of years to come. It is interesting to consider that up until the 1930s, school textbooks in Germany were illustrated with the Dürer rhino as a faithful image of the animal, despite the fact that it was fantastically inaccurate.
I first read the first part of the book and was so excited that I wrote an essay on the subject --forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine.
I didn't start the second half of the book till much later--never expecting it to be even more interesting than the fist part. I am so grateful to the author for not only writing this amazing book, but later for helping answer questions I had in writing a short story--my short story won a creative writing prize, judged by XXX. (I will add news when the prize is announced officially in early January)... but I cannot recommend this book enough--best read of the year!
Displaying 1 of 1 review