The Medici Giraffe by Marina Belozerskaya

Author:Marina Belozerskaya [BELOZERSKAYA, MARINA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316076425
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

The Emperour hath two inclosures walled about, which they call Gardaines, one of which is called Stella, because the trees are planted in the figure of starres, and a little faire house therein is likewise built, with six corners in forme of a starre. And in this place he kept 12 Cammels, and Indian Oxe, yellow, all over rugged, and hairy upon the throate, like a Lyon; and an Indian Calfe, and two Leopards [actually cheetahs * ], which were said to be tame, if such wild beasts may be tamed. They were of a yellow colour spotted with blacke, the head partly like a Lyon, partly like a Cat, the tayle like a Cat, the body like a Greyhound, and when the hunts-man went abroad, at call they leaped up behind him, sitting upon the horse like a dog on the hinder parts; being so swift in running, as they would easily kill a Hart.

Prized and exotic in a different way were Rudolf’s albinos. In 1603 Pierre Bergeron, upon visiting Prague, noted, “Then there was a menagerie with lions, leopards and civets, as well as a crow as white as snow.” Like Montezuma, Rudolf saw albino animals as miraculous beings (though, happily, he kept only animal pets, not humans). He had a live albino raven, magpie, and stag, which aroused wonder in visitors. Other Kunstkammer specimens that reflected nature’s variety included the foot of a sparrow hawk with twelve claws, the skin of a fawn with two heads, a quail with three legs, a worm whose tail blossomed into a branch, and other marvels. When he could not obtain actual prodigies, live or preserved, Rudolf got drawings of them to make his collection as complete as possible. Among the most remarkable of these representations was the portrait of Pedro Gonzales and his children.

Gonzales, born in 1544 on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, was afflicted with hirsutism, the congenital occurrence of abnormal hair growth over one’s entire body. Deemed “a miraculous work of nature,” he was shipped as a baby to France, to the court of King Henry II. Educated by the king and “rejecting the customs of his native land” (his barbaric ways, presumably), Gonzales studied fine arts and Latin and became a man of letters. After his royal patron died, Gonzales moved to the Netherlands, where around 1563 he married a perfectly normal woman—a rather attractive Dutch girl. The couple had four children; three of them inherited their father’s hirsutism.

Because of their marvelous appearance, the Gonzales family became international celebrities and were painted by several artists for princely collectors. In these portraits Pedro and his hairy children were depicted as nobility—dressed in opulent aristocratic garments—but with furry, animal-like faces. The little girl in particular looked like a pretty cat decked out in human clothing. The strangeness of these people—the wondrous way in which they combined a cultured European spirit with animal-like bodies—was heightened by the inclusion in some of the portraits of their mother, a pleasant smooth-skinned woman in simpler attire.

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