Date: 2021
Type: Article
Spot the giraffe : the material culture of animals found, lost and painted
Materialized Histories : Materielle Kultur und digitale Forschung (Hypotheses), 2021, OnlineOnly
RIELLO, Giorgio, Spot the giraffe : the material culture of animals found, lost and painted, Materialized Histories : Materielle Kultur und digitale Forschung (Hypotheses), 2021, OnlineOnly
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/73507
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
Recent scholarship has alerted us to the importance of gifts in diplomacy. Most commonly such gifts would have been precious artefacts, remarkable in their make and materials. This short contribution considers instead the gifting of living animal, a giraffe, that was given to Lorenzo de Medici in 1487. The giraffe was received in Florence with much fanfare but died only a few months after its arrival. The animal’s legacy was to be seen in paintings thus providing good example of the complex relationship between (an animate) object, its representation and memory over time.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/73507
External link: https://mhistories.hypotheses.org/1788
Publisher: Hypotheses Openedition
Files associated with this item
Files | Size | Format | View |
---|---|---|---|
There are no files associated with this item. |