Medici giraffe
The Medici Giraffe reached Florence in 1486 as a gift Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Kait-Bay , the Circassian Mamluk - Sultan of Egypt , of Lorenzo the Magnificent . As the first giraffe in Italy since ancient times , the animal caused a sensation when it arrived in Florence. It didn't last long. No other giraffe came to Europe in the next 300 years.
background
46 BC BC Julius Caesar celebrated his success in Egypt on his return to Rome with a gigantic animal show, the main attraction being the first giraffe that was brought to Europe. The Romans called the animal camelopard (camelopardalis) because it seemed to them that it combined features of the camel and the leopard .
It is not certain whether Lorenzo de 'Medici's giraffe came from Kait-Bay, as there are no reports of its origin. In the memoirs ( Ricordanzi ) of the Tribaldo de 'Rossi (published in Florence 1786) there is a note about the giraffe in Florence with the note that it was a gift from the "Sultan of Baghdad"; the Levant belonged to the Mamluk Empire in the 1480s . It is known that Sultan Kait-Bay kept giraffes in his menagerie ; he asked Lorenzo's help against the Ottomans just as the giraffe arrived in Florence, and Lorenzo interceded for him a short time later.
Life
The giraffe immediately became a sensation when it arrived in Florence. Although Cosimo de 'Medici , Lorenzo's grandfather, owned a large menagerie and had previously shown a giant model of a giraffe in the animal show he had set up to entertain the citizens, this was the first time a live specimen was on display in town was asked. There are reports that Friedrich III. of Sicily received a giraffe from the Sultan of Egypt in exchange for a white bear in 1261 and that the Duke of Calabria , Louis II , Duke Ercole I d'Este in Ferrara and Don Ferrante , King of Naples , owned giraffes; if these giraffes existed, they have not come close to the success that Lorenzo's giraffe enjoyed.
Lorenzo recognized the possibilities of influencing by passing on the animal and announced that the giraffe would be sent to Anna , the Queen of France . Although Anna wrote a letter reminding Lorenzo of his intention to send her the giraffe, she was disappointed. Lorenzo had built special stables for the animal, either at his family's villa in Poggio a Caiano or in Via della Scala in Florence, with heating to protect them from the damp winter in Florence. A short time after arriving in Florence, however, the giraffe broke its neck and died.
No other living giraffes made it to Europe until 1827. That year Muhammad Ali Pasha gave three European rulers a giraffe each as a present. One was given to the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , George IV , another to the rulers of the Habsburg hereditary lands , Francis II , and a third to the King of France and Navarre , Charles X. Each caused a stir in London , Vienna and Paris , but only the last one, Zarafa , survived more than two years.
reception
The giraffe Lorenzo de 'Medicis was pictured by artists and immortalized in poems. It appears, for example, in one of the frescoes that Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494) created between 1485 and 1490 for the Capella Tornabuoni in the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence; it accompanies the adoration of the kings . On the same subject, Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) had the giraffe appear in his frescoes, created between 1509 and 1514 in the church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Raffaello Botticini (1477- around 1520), Giorgio Vasari and Bacchiacca also depicted them in paintings.
The poet Antonio Costanzo described how the giraffe walked through the streets: I also saw her turn her head to the onlookers who were looking out the windows, since she was eleven feet tall, from a distance it looked as if they were marveling People have a tower and not an animal. The giraffe seemed to love the crowd, it was always peaceful and fearless, it seemed as if it was watching with pleasure the people who had come to look at it.
literature
- Marina Belozerskaya : The Medici Giraffe and Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power . Little, Brown and Co., New York 2006, ISBN 0-316-52565-0 .
- Erik Ringmar: Audience for a Giraffe: European Expansionism and the Quest for the Exotic. In: Journal of World History , Vol. 17, No. 4 2006; Pp. 375–397 (PDF, English)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tribaldo de 'Rossi: Ricordanzi. In: Delizie degli eruditi toscani. Florence 1786. After: Janet Ross: Florentine Palaces & their Stories. JM Dent & Co. et al., London et al. 1905, p. 343 .
- ↑ a b Lynn Sherr: Tall Blondes. A Book about Giraffes. Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City MO 1997, ISBN 0-8362-2769-7 , pp. 100-102 , (incomplete).