Item #b5890 R.to sacado del Dante, ó Gran Bestia que ha venido del Brasil, y al presente se halla en la Casa de las Fieras del Buen Retiro de esta Corte. Andrés de la Muela.
A Gran Bestia from Brazil
Arrives at Madrid’s New Enlightenment-Era Zoo
Engraving of the Casa de las Fieras Tapir
No U.S. Examples Traced
[Americana] / [Brazil] / [Zoology].

R.to sacado del Dante, ó Gran Bestia que ha venido del Brasil, y al presente se halla en la Casa de las Fieras del Buen Retiro de esta Corte.

Madrid, Se hallara en la Librería de Esparza Puerta del Sol, [c. 1776]. 4to [29.9 x 20.9 cm the sheet; 21.2 x 15.9 cm the platemark], (1) f. engraving. Unobtrusive folds, small loss at edge of left blank margin, contemporary annotation in lower margin, a fine strike of this very rare engraving.

Extremely rare first and only edition of this separately issued engraving depicting a “Dante, ò Gran Bestia” (a tapir) captured in Brazil and kept in Madrid at the Casa de las Fieras, the zoological garden built in 1774 at the Parque del Buen Retiro by King Carlos III (1716-88). The display of South American animals never before seen in Spain no doubt delighted the populace of Madrid, and publishers did not miss the opportunity to sell souvenir ‘portraits’ of these curiosities. The present engraving suggests that experienced naturalists also took note of the animal’s arrival: A contemporary manuscript annotation at the bottom margin of the print gives a reference to Jacques-Christophe Valmont de Bomare’s (1731-1807) six-volume Dictionnaire raisonné universel d’histoire naturelle (1764-1768), noting that the ‘Dante’ is there discussed under the entry ‘Tapir,’ the name by which this “Gran Bestia” is more commonly recognized today.

The print, which was available for sale at the Librería de Esparza at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, was designed and engraved by Andrés de la Muela, an artist whose name is associated with (mostly devotional) ephemeral prints. A tapir is portrayed in profile in the foreground, while two other tapirs graze in the middle ground at the left. The landscape is a sparsely vegetated promontory surrounded by the sea, and both a church set in the distance and a ship anchored offshore suggest far away America. Engraved text at the foot of the plate notes that the animal, having arrived from Brazil, is currently to be seen at the Casa de las Fieras, is about the size of a one-year-old mule, and that the species, which lives in watery areas, is noted for its thick pelt, fine meat, and for the medicinal properties attributed to its claws (when ingested or worn as an amulet). Known as a ‘Dante’ in Peru, the tapir was also long thought to be the largest animal in South America, a region that naturalists found curious for lacking the megafauna (elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, etc.) common to the Old World.

The Librería de Esparza is known also to have published an engraving of an anteater (“Osa Palmera”) kept at the Casa de las Fieras. The anteater engraving is similar to the present tapir print, but it has letterpress instead of engraved text. The anteater engraving is dated in the plate 1776, which is likely the date for this tapir image. The Madrid anteater gained a certain measure of fame for having been painted by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-79), perhaps with help from Francisco Goya (1746-1828; see Urríes). Casa de las Fieras was among the earliest and most important Enlightement-Era zoos, following closely such institutions as the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna (1752; opened to public in 1765), but at its menagerie neither anteater nor tapir lived long: A book on natural history specimens in Madrid published in 1786 notes that the these (stuffed) animals lived “algun tiempo” and that the tapirs, a male and a female, had come to the Casa de las Fieras via Portugal as a gift to the King (Bru de Ramon, p. 4).

 

OCLC and KVK locate only one worldwide copy of this tapir engraving (Museo de Huesca).

* J. J. de Urríes, “Un Goya exótico: La osa hormiguera de Su Majestad,” Goya, Revista de arte, no. 336 (2011), pp. 242-53; J. B. Bru de Ramon, Colección de láminas que representan los animales y monstruos del Real Gabinete de Historia Natural de Madrid, vol. 2 (1786).

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