The appearance of a sulfur-crested
cockatoo in a 1496 religious painting has raised the possibility of Renaissance
budgie-smugglers.
Our feathered friend occupies a special place in the altarpiece
painting, Madonna della Vittoria, one of the jewels of Italian art by Andrea
Mantegna.
The mystical cocky is depicted in a sacred garden, perched on a
ledge above the Virgin, the Christ child and an assembly of saints.
Its prominent position above a representation of the cross has led
University of Melbourne academic Heather Dalton to identify it as a symbol of
the Holy Spirit.
“That’s what shocks most people,” Dr Dalton said of the painting
at the Louvre in Paris.
“To my knowledge, there is no other painting in which a parrot has
such a significant position, and here it is above the cross.”
The ornithological connection has been made previously: studies
indicate the bird may be a smaller Indonesian variety, the lesser
sulphur-crested cockatoo.
But the bird’s journey to Renaissance Italy from remote
Australasia - predating the earliest known European contact - raises intriguing
questions about 15th-century trade.
Dr Dalton, who studies merchant networks of the 15th and 16th
centuries, said the cockatoo might have been freighted overland along the Silk
Road, or via new trading routes through the Indian Ocean.
The cockatoo’s natural pose in the painting, with its crest erect,
suggests it was painted from life.
“One could have survived the sea journey back to Europe,
especially if it had started the trip as an egg or fledgling,” she
said.
Dr Dalton said the cockatoo may have found its way to Venice and
then to Mantua and the court of Francesco Gonzaga II, who commissioned
Mantegna’s painting to celebrate a victory over the French.
Unfortunately no receipts or shopping lists refer to the exotic
creature.
“The inclusion of a sulphur-crested cockatoo from beyond the edge of
the known world would have added to the overall mystique and magnificence of the
painting and thus the status of the Gonzagas,” Dr Dalton writes in the paper,
published in Renaissance Studies.
A
sulphur-crested cockatoo perched high above the Virgin Mary in this 1496
renaissance painting, Madonna della Vittoria. Source:
Supplied
With thanks to The
Australian and the ABC
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