THE COLLECTOR: Salvador Dalí

30 March 2010 | By HUSVAR

Salvador Dalí
Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (Rhinoceros Dressed In Lace
) (1956)
Bronze cast

Sometimes, fiction really is stranger than truth.

The story goes something like this… It was the year 1515, and Pope Leo X had been sent a very unusual gift by Manuel I, then King of Portugal—a pet rhinoceros. Unfortunately, the ship carrying his present sank before it reached him in Florence, and so the rhino went down with it. But before it sank to the bottom of the ocean, the rhino had the honor of being the first ever seen on European soil, where it was sketched during a brief pit stop in Lisbon.

As it was a largely unknown creature, Europeans at the time had little information beyond their imaginations as to what a rhinoceros actually looked like. What they did know was what the ancient Roman Pliny had written about it—that it was a fierce creature and a mortal enemy of the elephant.

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