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In the early modern period as now, there was a fascination with exotic animals. The Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London was founded as early as the reign of King John (1199-1216), but was opened to the public in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and improved and extended by James I (1603-25). By 1704 it included six lions, two leopards or tigers, three eagles, two Swedish owls ‘of great bigness’, two ‘Cats of the Mountains’ and a jackal.
Nevertheless, few artists had the opportunity to study exotic beasts in the flesh, and so when representing them had to rely on imagination as well as working from depictions and descriptions by others. Scenes such as the Flight into Egypt were opportunities for detailed depiction of the flora and fauna of far-away lands. These were evidently relished by north European artists such as Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer, inspiring them to produce images rich in visual pleasures. In his Virgin with a Monkey Dürer even playfully brings a monkey into a north European landscape to create a striking scene.
Herbals
were a means of cataloguing plants and their functions, while illustrated books
of natural history also enabled information to be collected, ordered, and
offered for consultation. Word and image worked together in such volumes to
create authoritative compilations of human knowledge of the natural world.
Anonymous (Dutch, late 17th Century),Lion in a Landscape, late 17th century Red chalk on paper
The opportunity to study lions from life in 17th-century Northern Europe was rare. Lions were kept at the Doge’s Palace in Venice and appear in Jacopo Bellini’s (1400–70/1) sketchbooks, but most Northern artists had to depend upon the accounts of other eye-witnesses. Sculpture or prints provided the source material for most depictions of wild animals, and a variety of animals appeared within printed drawing books.
UCL Art Museum EDC 4766
Martin Schongauer (German, c.1430-91), The Flight into Egypt, c.1470-4 Engraving on paper
This engraving represents the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt in order to escape the massacre of the Hebrew male infants by Herod. Schongauer evokes a Middle-Eastern landscape in his detailed depiction of exotic flora and fauna. Angels pluck the fruit of a date palm, whilst parrots are seen amongst the branches of a rare dragon tree, and lizards scale its trunk.
Little is known of Martin Schongauer’s education or artistic training other than the fact that he enrolled at Leipzig University in 1465. There is evidence that he may have trained with a Netherlandish or Burgundian master, and it is likely he travelled to the Netherlands during his early years as an artist. Schongauer was a great influence on the younger German artist Albrecht Dürer who travelled to visit him in 1492, only to discover that he had died the previous year. This engraving is meant to have influenced Dürer’s woodcut of the same subject in his Life of the Virgin series (c.1503-5), in which he also depicts a date palm, dragon tree, deer and lizards.
UCL Art Museum EPC 1959
Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471 – 1528), The Virgin with a Monkey, c.1498 Engraving on paper
One of Dürer’s most popular prints, this engraving shows the Virgin and Child seated on a grass bench with a fisherman’s house in the far distance and monkey in the foreground. Its success has been attributed to the way Dürer has combined familiar northern landscape elements with the unique appeal of the exotic monkey.
UCL Art Museum EPC 458