![]() ![]() I had thought Mantegna’s cockatoo was the earliest European image of a cockatoo until I was contacted by Pekka Niemelä, an emeritus professor of biodiversity and environmental science at the University of Turku in Finland, in February 2015. As this Sulphur-crested Cockatoo or Yellow-crested Cockatoo (also known as a Lesser-crested Cockatoo) appeared to have been painted from a live model, which would have travelled to Mantua primarily overland, I saw this as evidence of the complexity and range of Southeast Asian trading networks prior to direct European contact. In 2014 I published an article on an Australasian cockatoo in an altarpiece painted in Italy in 1496 by Andrea Mantegna. This was previously thought to be the earliest depiction of a cockatoo in Europe. ![]() Andrea Mantegna’s Madonna della Vittoria, painted in 1496, features a cockatoo above the Madonna’s head (above the cross). The discovery of these images, which are published in the journal Parergon, highlight the fact that during the medieval period, merchants plying the waters just to the north of Australia were part of a flourishing trade network that reached west to the Middle East and beyond. Picture: De Arte Venandi cum Avibus / Alamyįour of these images depict a white cockatoo, described in the text as a crested, talking parrot - a gift from ‘the Sultan of Babylon’. The Holy Roman Emperor King Frederick II of Sicily’s falconry book, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds) features 900 pictures of birds in its margins. In its margins are nine hundred drawings of falcons, falconers and other animals kept by the emperor at his palaces. Among the hand-written documents, books, and ancient artefacts in the Vatican Library is a 13th century manuscript on falconry written in Latin by or for the Holy Roman Emperor - King Frederick II of Sicily.įrederick’s De Arte Venandi cum Avibus ( The Art of Hunting with Birds) dates from between 12.
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