Media Release
Ancient Elephants on Show at State Library of Victoria
10 March 2008
Priceless illuminated manuscripts from Cambridge University are bound for Melbourne and bring with them two wonderful and ancient Elephants. Two manuscript bestiaries (books of animals) from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries dramatically demonstrate what was known of this majestic animal in the times they were created.
In the twelfth century no elephant had visited England since Claudius’ war Elephant during the Roman invasion and so artists relied on the classical writings of Pliny the Elder (from the first century AD) to inform their drawings. They got it a little bit wrong.
The twelfth century bestiary from Cambridge University’s Corpus Christi College Parker Library shows images of elephants white in colour, as large as a mountain, capable of carrying castles on their great backs but with one fatal flaw - they could not bend their knees and therefore if they fell, could not get back up again. Illustrations in the bestiary show just such an unfortunate scenario.
It was not until Louis IX of France presented Henry III of England with an African elephant in 1255 that the record was set right. The elephant was observed in the Tower of London by Matthew Paris, the famous historian and artist monk of St Albans, for his Chronica Majora. In it he describes the elephant’s true colour as grey, provides more accurate measurements of its size (smaller than the mountain sized variety), and, importantly, notes that the impressive beast could indeed bend its knees allowing it to lie down and stand up at will.
Paris dismissed the earlier accounts saying that ‘a white elephant is as impossible as a white crow or a black swan’.
Four centuries later in 1697 on the western coast of New Holland, at the other side of the world, the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh recorded the first European sighting of a Black Swan. He named the Swan River after the bird and proved that just as an elephant could bend its knees a swan could indeed be black.
And what of King Henry’s elephant? The Tower of London was surely not the ideal environment for an African elephant but it was confusion over its food that led to the animal’s untimely demise. A steady diet of meat and red wine (not dissimilar to the royal diet of the day) saw the elephant perish two years after its arrival in England. It was buried in the tower until it was exhumed for its valuable ivory. It would be more than 200 years before another elephant would arrive in England again.
This is just one of hundreds of stories from over 1,000 years of history contained in the extraordinary exhibition The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand.
The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand
28 March–15 June 2008
State Library of Victoria, 328 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Open 10am–5pm daily (to 9pm Thursdays)
Free entry
More on medieval elephants
Elephants were mysterious animals with spiritual significance in the medieval England. In the art of the time they often represented Jesus.
A twelfth century copy of Boethius de Musica and Guido of Arezzo, Micrologus (1130-60), on loan from the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, contains an illustration of an elephant which appears as something between a pig and a horse. The elephant forms part of some early music notation in the text with intertwining hoops of red, blue, ochre and green showing the musical intervals - where to play and where to pause. It is an interesting juxtaposition of a mysterious animal with the equally mysterious science of music – both wonderful examples of the medieval imagination.
This book will be on exhibition in The Medieval Imagination and open to the page displaying its elephant.
Exhibition sponsors
The Medieval Imagination is presented by:
The State Library of Victoria Foundation and the State Government of Victoria
Major sponsors
Qantas, Palace Cinemas, Yarra Trams
Sponsors and supporters
City of Melbourne, J.C. Decaux, AAMI, K.W. Doggett Fine Paper, Click, Victorian Managed Insurance Authority, Herald Sun, 3AW, The Sebel Melbourne, Citigate Melbourne, Reader’s Feast Bookstore, Swisse Vitamins, Metlink, Macmillian Publishers, V/Line, Avant Card, J.T. Reid Charitable Trust, Limelight Magazine
Media inquiries and image requests
Matthew van Hasselt
Media relations coordinator
State Library of Victoria
Ph: 03 8664 7263
Email: mvanhasselt@slv.vic.gov.au
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