Dürer’s Rhinoceros and the Monster of Ravenna — Conrad Lycosthenes, 1557

A rare original leaf with three woodcuts in later hand colouring, depicting a rhinoceros and the Monster of Ravenna.

On the front is David Kandel’s version of Albrecht Dürer’s celebrated rhinoceros. Kandel cut the block for this edition and signed it with his initials, DK. Dürer’s image was based on the rhinoceros brought from India to King Manuel I of Portugal in 1515.

The reverse shows two versions of the Monster of Ravenna.

The leaf comes from Conrad Lycosthenes’s Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, printed by Heinrich Petri in Basel in 1557. Lycosthenes drew on classical and medieval sources and accounts from his own time to assemble this illustrated chronicle of wonders.

The work reflects the Renaissance fascination with unusual births, celestial omens, strange creatures and other marvels. Its illustrations show how observations of the natural world were recorded and interpreted alongside beliefs about astrology and portents.

The two sides make an especially telling pairing. Kandel reworked an already famous printed image of an animal that had reached Europe, while the figures on the reverse belonged to accounts of a reported wonder. In the chronicle, both received the close attention of the woodcutter and were given a place in the same printed record.

The sheet measures 26.5 × 19 cm. Condition is good. A small tear in the lower blank margin has been repaired.