Gessner’s Giraffe. The Bible, the sources and the Iconography
Résumé
The paper will stress on three aspects of the chapter on the camelopardalis by Conrad Gesner (Historia animalium, De quadripedibus viviparis).
1) Gesner’s sources: Gesner’s account on the giraffe is the first quite complete compilation of Antique sources citing the camelopardalis; the use of medieval sources is rather scarce, in comparison to sixteenth Century authors. In addition to this, we will study the few emendations and new material added to the second editions of the first volume of the Historia animalium.
2) The giraffe in the Bible: Gesner was puzzled by the identification of the Hebrew zoonym zemer to the camelopardalis as it was translated in Greek and Latin versions of the Bible, and as it was mainly interpreted by medieval scholars. Gesner made his own philological enquiry, using Hebrew scholars, to finally admit that the zemer was probably a giraffe, criticizing Hebrew interpretations, and contradicting the new translations of the Old Testament, for example Luther’s one, which has translated the zemer into an elk (Alces alces). Gesner also studied this question in the chapter dedicated to the Alces.
3) Iconography: Gesner used two pictures to illustrate the giraffe. Urs B. Leu studied the story of the second picture of the second edition (from Melchior Lorichs). But the origin of the picture of the first edition (a spotted giraffe with big curved horns) is less known. It was probably inspired by an engraving by E. Reuwich illustrating the edition of the travels of Bernard Breydenbach. But Gesner mentioned as the source of the image an anonymous Italian travel account, probably (as we will demonstrate, comparing Gesner’s text to its source) the one written by Niccolo da Poggibonsi (14th C.), printed many times during the 15th Century, sometimes under the name of Noe Bianchi (or Bianco). But the illustrations of the editions of Poggibonsi or Bianchi are very different from the giraffe’s picture in Breydenbach edition, thus from the engravings used by Gesner. We will try to find an explanation to this confusion.
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