![]() Start with a small circle for the head, and then add a larger, oval-shaped body. The phrase may go "dead as a dodo," but it lives on in Wonderland.Begin by sketching the basic shape of the dodo bird using a pencil. Maybe the bird belongs to fiction after all. When we see the museum's composite dodo, are we looking at science, or art, or a combination of the two? Furthermore and despite all publicity to the contrary, new interpretations of body shape and plan are not widely recognised." They represent what was thought and known about the bird at the time. I asked Pender Hume whether, in a museum, a composite dodo is better than no dodo at all, and he replied, "Although much has changed about our perception of the dodo and its appearance, I think that for historical reasons alone, the inaccurate dodos should stay. Has the same thing happened to the dodo? Rhinoceroses exist today, however endangered, and few children could grow up without seeing a photograph or video of one at least once. The image endured, touring Europe and inspiring artists to create further renditions of the imagined creature, until it was accepted as the definitive depiction of what a rhinoceros actually looks like. The bird was last documented as alive in 1688, and drawn from life by Cornelis Saftleven in 1638.ĭürer's rhinoceros, the woodcut depiction of the animal as an exotic armoured beast with a horned back and scaly legs, was famously created without the artist ever having seen a rhinoceros in real life, based instead on sketches and written descriptions. A century and a half after they became extinct, naturalists began to claim that the dodo had never existed in the first place. ![]() The bird would be extinct by the time they left the island, in 1710.Ĭolonisation has a way of rewriting nature, introducing new fictions which become real while realities cease to exist. They found it tough and chewy, but other options were scarce. Then as the Dutch East India Company languished, its sailors turned to eating dodo meat. When non-native creatures were brought to Mauritius aboard ships and the ebony forest was decimated, the dodo population fell. Its wings shrank, redundant, while its body swelled. Over the years, in response to an environment without predators, the bird lost the need to fly. Native to Mauritius, the species is mentioned in ship's logs by spice traders and sailors. The dodo vanished far too quickly to be properly recorded and preserved. ![]() The Savery dodo is now considered to be a gross exaggeration of the dodo's true form." "One represents the Mauritius dodo, the other the white dodo of neighbouring Reunion Island. "The models were based on the large, fat dodo illustrated by Roelant Savery, the most prolific of all dodo artists," Hume said. It lives between fact and fiction, half biological science, half a product of the imagination.Īrt based upon art, this stylised image of the dodo was passed along like a cultural Chinese whisper. The result is quite literally a tapestry of influences, both visual and literary. "They are made from plaster and swan and goose feathers." "As far as I am aware, the taxidermy dodos (there are two designs) were made by Rowland Ward, one of the greatest Victorian taxidermists, and were first exhibited around the 1890s at the Natural History Museum," he said. I asked him over email about the origins of the faux dodo, and how accurate a depiction it might be. The National History Museum's resident dodo expert Julian Pender Hume is a palaeontologist, artist, and author of numerous papers on extinct birds, as well as co-author of the book Lost Land of the Dodo. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |