Menageries

RESUMO 

Este texto pretende problematizar a presença e o significado de animais exóticos na corte portuguesa do século XVIII. Não obstante o reino receber animais de outros continentes desde o século XV, só em setecentos criou, no palácio de Belém, uma ménagerie, denominada Pátio dos Bichos, um espaço específico de lazer e ostentação para a casa real e para a corte. O funcionamento deste jardim zoológico privado conhece-se através de documentação relativa especialmente à entrada de animais e gastos com os mesmos, mas também pelos escritos de estrangeiros que visitaram os jardins do palácio e a quinta de Belém. 

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Animais, Corte portuguesa, Jardim zoológico, Lazer, Pátio dos Bichos. 


THE PATIO DOS BICHOS: A LEISURE AREA FOR THE PORTUGUESE COURT OF THE XVIII CENTURY

ABSTRACT

This text aims to problematize the presence and the meaning of exotic animals in the Portuguese court of the XVIII century. Although the kingdom received animals from other continents since the fifteenth century, it was only in the seventies that a ménagerie, called Pátio dos Bichos, was created in the palace of Belém, a specific space of leisure and ostentation for the royal house and the court. The management of this private zoo is known through documentation relating especially to the entrance of animals and expenses, but also by the writings of foreigners who visited the gardens of the palace and the farm of Belém.

KEY WORDS: Animals, Portuguese court, Zoological garden, Leisure, Pátio dos Bichos.

From Antiquity onwards, the demand for exotic animals has been met demonstrably on a large scale. Rulers especially regarded the possession of these animals as a means to demonstrate their influence on and superiority over third parties. As it were, gifting exotic animals was considered a diplomatic means. This intention continued through the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. However, was the selection of these rarities changed over time. Access to foreign goods increased especially with the discovery of new sea routes. As it were, the interest in owning such items increased at the same time.
Rulers built menageries and organised animal fights, scholars studied exotic animals and attempted to impose a systematic order on them. Private individuals came into the possession of apes or monkeys, parrots, parakeets or turtles and tortoises, and thereby increased their reputation. Agents acted as procurers, intermediaries and collectors,
and at the same time boosted demand through their supply. Countless exotic animals were brought to Europe, dead or alive. The journey by ship was unbearable for humans and animals alike, and ended in high mortality rates for the majority of animals.
Written sources provide a comprehensive insight into the need for exotic goods, they also allow concrete statements on procurement and placement. The transport of so-called exotica, however, has so far received little attention. Especially in archaeology, the subject of supply and demand of exotic animals seemingly leaves much to be
desired, something that will be addressed by the following contribution, with special consideration given to apes and monkeys.

Forthcoming, MIT Press, Leonardo Books, Winter 2019.
Virtual Menageries:
Animals as Mediators in Network Cultures
Jody Berland

From cat videos to corporate logos, digital screens and spaces are crowded with animal bodies. In Virtual Menageries, Jody Berland examines the role of animals in the spread of global communications. Her richly illustrated study links the contemporary  proliferation of animals on social media to the collection of exotic animals in the formative years of transcontinental exploration and expansion. By tracing previously unseen parallels across the history of exotic and digital menageries, Berland shows how and why animals came to bridge peoples, territories, and technologies in the expansion of colonial and capitalist cultures. 
Berland's genealogy of the virtual menagerie begins in 1414 when a ruler in Bengal sent a Kenyan giraffe to join a Chinese emperor's menagerie. It maps the beaver's role in the colonial conquest of Canada and examines the appearances of animals in early moving pictures. The menagerie is reinvented for the digital age when image and sound designers use parts or images of animals to ensure the affective promise and commercial spread of an emergent digital infrastructure. These animal images are emissaries that enliven and domesticate the ever-expanding field of mediation. Virtual Menageries offers a unique account of animals and animal images as mediators that encourage complicated emotional, economic and aesthetic investment in changing practices of connection.

Jody Berland is Professor in the Department of Humanities and in Graduate Programs in Communication and Culture, Social and Political Thought, Science and Technology Studies, and Music, at York University, Toronto, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Human Animal Studies at Edge Hill University, UK. She is the author of North of Empire: Culture, Space, Technology.

one-liner: The close interdependency of animal emissaries and new media from early European colonial encounters with the exotic to today's proliferation of animals in digital networks.

Virtual Menageries
Mediologies of Animal Representation

From cat videos to corporate logos, digital screens and spaces are crowded with animal bodies. In Virtual Menageries, Jody Berland examines the role of animals in the spread of global communications. Her richly illustrated study links the contemporary  proliferation of animals on social media to the collection of exotic animals in the formative years of transcontinental exploration and expansion. By tracing previously unseen parallels across the history of exotic and digital menageries, Berland shows how and why animals came to bridge peoples, territories, and technologies in the expansion of colonial and capitalist cultures. 
Berland's genealogy of the virtual menagerie begins in 1414 when a ruler in Bengal sent a Kenyan giraffe to join a Chinese emperor's menagerie. It maps the beaver's role in the colonial conquest of Canada and examines the appearances of animals in early moving pictures. The menagerie is reinvented for the digital age when image and sound designers use parts or images of animals to ensure the affective promise and commercial spread of an emergent digital infrastructure. These animal images are emissaries that enliven and domesticate the ever-expanding field of mediation. Virtual Menageries offers a unique account of animals and animal images as mediators that encourage complicated emotional, economic and aesthetic investment in changing practices of connection.

Jody Berland is Professor in the Department of Humanities and in Graduate Programs in Communication and Culture, Social and Political Thought, Science and Technology Studies, and Music, at York University, Toronto, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Human Animal Studies at Edge Hill University, UK. She is the author of North of Empire: Culture, Space, Technology.

Loin des illusions entretenues autour de la fin précipitée des espèces animales, nos connaissances sur la nature se précisent, et rappellent qu’il devient nécessaire d’en rendre compte le plus exactement possible. La variété des Makis nous donne l’occasion d'évoquer une exposition faite sur le thème « Les Sciences Naturelles et l’Impératrice Joséphine ».

While scholars may know that the 'sultan of Babylon' sent Frederick II a 'white parrot', few are aware of the existence of four sketches, indicating it was a Sulphur or Yellow-crested Cockatoo. As these were made two and a half centuries before what was thought to be the earliest European image of the Australasian cockatoo - in Andrea Mantegna's 1496 Madonna della Vittoria - the authors consider the events and shared interests that led the sultan to give this bird to Frederick and how it would have arrived on the Apennine Peninsula in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Published with Jukka Salo, Pekka Niemelä and Simo Örmä.

Si l’iconographie de Daniel dans la fosse aux lions a suscité de nombreux travaux qui se sont intéressés aux représentations de ce thème dans l’Antiquité et le haut Moyen Âge, aucun d’entre eux n’a abordé le traitement de l’épisode vétérotestamentaire dans l’enluminure médiévale. Cette étude n’est pourtant pas sans intérêt puisque la tradition médiévale du manuscrit enluminé, et plus spécialement celle de la Bible enluminée – le motif de Daniel et des lions constitue le choix préféré des miniaturistes pour illustrer le Livre de Daniel –, a permis de conserver des siècles durant l’un des tout premiers motifs de l’art chrétien en le modifiant progressivement par l’ajout de détails réalistes. En particulier, les différentes interprétations de ce que pouvait être une ʻfosse aux lionsʼ ont donné naissance, tout au long du Moyen Âge, à des représentations plastiques qui vont du trou noir abstrait jusqu’à la ménagerie réaliste en passant par la tanière, le puits, ou encore le parc de chasse.

Namngivning tjänar som identitetsmärke och är en del av vår benägenhet att antropomorfiera enskilda djurindivider i syfte att inkludera dem i vår krets. Genom namnen preciserar vi våra relationer till dem. I djurparksmiljö fyller namn också en viktig funktion för djurvårdarna, då de sinsemellan kommunicerar om individerna. Elefanter är karismatiska djur som människan namngett när hon upprätthållit en relation till dem, exempelvis i djurparker, menagerier och cirkusar. Jumbo är ett av de mest kända elefantnamnen, men vem var den första och varifrån härstammar namnet. Även fiktiva elefanter har fått namn.

En 1914, durant 3 mois, à l'approche de l'hiver, la ménagerie allemande Hagenbeck, la plus grande du monde avec ses 300 animaux, est restée bloquée à La Chaux-de-Fonds (Suisse), ville située à 1000 m. d'altitude, en raison de l'éclatement de la Première guerre. Certains animaux, dont les éléphants, ont été mis à disposition des autorités de la ville et de l'armée pour divers travaux et transports.

Echt tierisch!: Die Menagerie des F € ursten. Sabine Haag, ed.
Exh. Cat. Innsbruck: Schloss Ambras. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, 2015

Beautifully illustrated and featuring painstaking new research, this exhibition catalogue is a very welcome addition to the scholarship on Habsburg collectors, and broadly impacts our understanding of the significant roles played by exotic and domestic animals in early modern court culture. Featuring six short essays and catalogue entries for the objects featured in the 2015 exhibition by the same name, the catalogue brings together a wealth of visual and textual information, some hitherto unpublished. Beyond its significance for art historians who seek to contextualize depictions of animals, there is much to recommend for those whose research interests include collecting and display, voyages of exploration, natural history enterprises, and aspects of politics and diplomacy in the early modern era. As is highlighted by the catalogue essays, collecting animals was a priority for many early modern rulers, not just the princes (F € ursten) indicated by the exhibition title. Kings, queens, and emperors including Manuel I, king of Portugal (1469–1521); Catherine of Austria, queen of Portugal (1507–58); Maximillian II, Holy Roman emperor (1527–76); and Rudolf II, Holy Roman emperor (1552–1612); and their collections are all discussed. Special emphasis is given to Ferdinand II, archduke of Austria (1529–95), which is entirely appropriate given that the venue for the exhibition, Schloss Ambras, was his former residence—Ferdinand's menageries for the exotic and farms for the domestic are the subject of three of the essays and the majority of the catalogue entries. Detailing the many motivations of Habsburg rulers for maintaining menageries and aviaries is no less complex than the Habsburg genealogy that supported such enterprises. Emergent themes include animals and birds (alive and dead) as trophies and signs of prestige, tributes from vassals, and diplomatic gifts; and how envoys, ambassadors and merchants, traveled from Lisbon, Vienna, Prague, and Innsbruck to distant Asian, African, and American locations in pursuit of creatures who often served as intermediaries between courts and cultures. This is an early instance of a global market and exchange, and as the Habsburgs gathered together exotica (especially rhinoceroses, elephants, monkeys, camels, and big cats) they equally asserted the significance of their political dynasty. When the whole animal could not be obtained, a part (such as a rhinoceros horn or an ostrich egg) or a depiction (in print or paint) acted as a surrogate. Domestic animals (dogs, birds, goats, pigs, horses) were vital for companionship and the sustenance of the court, while game (deer, boars, rabbits) filled the reserves near royal residences, giving enthusiastic Habsburg hunters convenient grounds for sport. The catalogue includes objects that would have featured prominently at court as highly desired collectors' items: vessels, cups and goblets made of animal parts (such as

Edited by Arthur MacGregor, University of Oxford
Interposed between the natural world in all its diversity and the edited form in which we encounter it in literature, imagery and the museum, lie the multiple practices of the naturalists in selecting, recording and preserving the specimens from which our world view is to be reconstituted. The factors that weigh at every stage are here dissected, analysed and set within a historical narrative that spans more than five centuries. During that era, every aspect evolved and changed, as engagement with nature moved from a speculative pursuit heavily influenced by classical scholarship to a systematic science, drawing on advanced theory and technology. Far from being neutrally objective, the process of representing nature is shown as fraught with constraint and compromise.

With a Foreword by Sir David Attenborough

Contributors are: Marie Addyman, Peter Barnard, Paul D. Brinkman, Ian Convery, Peter Davis, Felix Driver, Florike Egmond, Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Geoff Hancock, Stephen Harris, Hanna Hodacs, Stuart Houston, Dominik Huenniger, Rob Huxley, Charlie Jarvis, Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Shepard Krech III, Mark Lawley, Arthur Lucas, Marco Masseti, Geoff Moore, Pat Morris, Charles Nelson, Robert Peck, Helen Scales, Han F. Vermeulen, and Glyn Williams.

Pre publication Attending the Giraffe., Humanimalia 9.1, Fall 2017.  No page numbers.
I compare the story of the 1414 tribute giraffe with the story of April, the famous pregnant giraffe of 2017. Both giraffes were conscripted to enact a complex social ritual that brought together and changed the people involved in the event. To play this role, the giraffes had first to be conveyed from natural habitats into confinement, from distance into quasi-intimacy with European and global observers, from matriarchal family structure into an individual with a face that could at least hypothetically look back at its human viewer.  Each step of being made visible relied on something else being made invisible. I will argue that this double act of foregrounding and disappearing has discursively shaped both our relations with animals and the visual aesthetics of modern culture.

The contribution deals with an unusual aspect of the symbolism of Frederick II's imperial power, closely related to the sacred and christological value of the image of the elephant and more widely of its imperial menagerie.
The presence of exotic animals in Frederick II's processions was meticulously programmed and corresponded to ​​the emperor's idea to influence the imaginary of the people with the show off of rare and curious beasts.
The aim of the study is to demonstrate how Frederick II, through sources, sumptuary artifacts and artistic works, exploited the religious image of some of these animals to convey a clear message of imperial power, not separated from the sacred and christian ones, but closely linked to these. Frederick II chose something that in the collective imaginary, from sovereigns of time to devout people, must have a similar religious meaning but worthy of an emperor as elephant iconography is. For a sovereign consistently described by papal propaganda as the antichrist, using it in his processions, giving it as a gift but also simply presenting the mastodontic animal, the symbol of the religiousness that was contested but at the same time the allegorical image of Christ and emperors, is a clear message of ideal legitimation. (Il contributo si occupa di un aspetto insolito della simbologia del potere imperiale federiciano strettamente connesso con la valenza sacra e cristologica dell’immagine dell’elefante e più diffusamente del suo serraglio imperiale.
La presenza degli animali esotici nei cortei federiciani era minuziosamente programmata e corrispondeva all’idea dell’imperatore di influenzare l’immaginario della gente cn lo sfoggio di bestie rare e curiose.
L’intento dello studio è quello di dimostrare come Federico II, attraverso fonti, manufatti suntuari e opere artistiche, sfruttò l’immagine religiosa di alcuni di questi animali per veicolare un chiaro messaggio di potenza imperiale, non disgiunta da quella sacra e cristiana, ma strettamente connessa a essa. Federico scelse qualcosa che nell’immaginario collettivo, dai potenti dell’epoca al popolo devoto, doveva avere un consimile significato religioso ma degno di un imperatore ovvero l’iconografia dell’elefante. Per un sovrano costantemente descritto dalla propaganda papale come l’anticristo, utilizzare nei suoi cortei, far dono, ma anche far semplicemente mostra del mastodontico animale, simbolo stesso della religiosità che gli veniva contestata ma al contempo immagine allegorica del Cristo e degli imperatori, aveva una chiaro messaggio di legittimazione ideale).