Thylacoleo Gal
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Mar 28, 2014 3:15:27 GMT 10
Questers, Here's an intriguing ornithological curiosity --> University of Melbourne's press release --> Wikiedia's article about the picture --> And at the Louvre --> A hi res, 1.68mb image is here --> Now, examine closely the hi resolution image. To my untrained eye, the red-blue coloured parrot opposite to the "cockie", above and to the right of the Madonna and Child, appears to be a Crimson Rosella! How on Earth could an Italian artist in the 15th century know about these birds, especially a rosella? The Sulphur Crested Cockatoo occurs in NW Australia and New Guinea, so it's plausible specimens may have been available to traders in the Spice Islands --> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulphur_crested_cockatooHowever, the Crimson Rosella only occurs in eastern Australia. Mainly SE Australia --> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_RosellaSo, you see the difficulty? Questers' thoughts? |
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Post by vincent on Mar 28, 2014 4:25:41 GMT 10
This is clearly a case of time travel. Yeah. That's it. That's the ticket.   |
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Post by saggitarius on Mar 28, 2014 7:54:17 GMT 10
I think the red parrot at right is more likely a king parrot and as a breeder of princess parrots the middle bird with the back turned and the long tail could easily be one of them. Princesses are found only in the arid desert regions around Alice Springs and the Simpson Desert, so go figure.
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Post by molloch on Mar 28, 2014 9:14:02 GMT 10
The parrot on the right looks almost exactly like a female Eclectus parrot?
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Post by johannes on Mar 29, 2014 0:32:19 GMT 10
Our Lady of being in a first contact situation with Victor David Hanson's Western way of war, and getting out of it severely bruised, but not totally destroyed victory. Let's thank the holy virgin for our glorious capture of king Charles VIIIs private collection of porn ! |
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Mar 29, 2014 6:43:27 GMT 10
....Let's thank the holy virgin for our glorious capture of king Charles VIIIs private collection of porn ! < Errm> Now, of course, while I have little knowledge of "these matters",  I believe that the Vatican has its own collection of pornography, painted by Raphael no less! Refer to the " Stufetta del Bibbiena". Aside from pornography, I believe many of Cardinal Bibbiena's panels accurately depict African fauna. It would be interesting to see if perhaps some of them also depict animals from farther afield, eg Australasia? This seems a distinct possibility when one considers that native Americans began to be portrayed in Vatican art during the same decade that Mantegna's Madonna of Victory was commissioned |
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Mar 29, 2014 6:48:35 GMT 10
I think the red parrot at right is more likely a king parrot and as a breeder of princess parrots the middle bird with the back turned and the long tail could easily be one of them. Princesses are found only in the arid desert regions around Alice Springs and the Simpson Desert, so go figure. Well now, seems we have three candidate species, all from Australia!  Question is, how on Earth would such birds make it all the way from this region of the world to Italy in the 15th century? |
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Post by saggitarius on Mar 31, 2014 9:24:23 GMT 10
The parrot on the right looks almost exactly like a female Eclectus parrot? On a closer look I would have to agree on the electus. |
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Post by johannes on Mar 31, 2014 18:33:19 GMT 10
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Post by johannes on Apr 1, 2014 0:12:35 GMT 10
From Detlefsen, Elbmarschen I, 1536: translated into modern English: King Christian of Denmark, and the honourable council of the city of Wilsster and all the marksmen and guild-brothers of the town shoot parrots and allow, confirm and concede that those parrots should be shot with crossbows, bows, hanguns and arquebuses If the brothers of the parrot-guild are influential enough to socialize with kings, and indulge in a monstrously expensive form of conspicious consumption - using rare exotic birds as targets - they must be rich merchants, with far-ranging connections. Maybe the parrot trade was riding piggy-back on the spice trade? |
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Post by johannes on Apr 1, 2014 22:17:11 GMT 10
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Apr 2, 2014 11:02:37 GMT 10
Maybe, just maybe, it's there for a reason? |
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Apr 2, 2014 11:17:37 GMT 10
..... If the brothers of the parrot-guild are influential enough to socialize with kings, and indulge in a monstrously expensive form of conspicuous consumption - using rare exotic birds as targets - they must be rich merchants, with far-ranging connections. Maybe the parrot trade was riding piggy-back on the spice trade? By Crikey! I think you've got it, J! The overland route to the Spice Islands had been blocked by the Turks only 10 years before, circa 1450s? If not blocked completely, then at least they were screwing Europeans for all they could squeeze out of them re access to eastern spices. I think pepper was the mainstay? Whatever, we learned in school how the Turks incentivated Portugal to have a serious crack at finding a sea route to the Indies. Which they did when Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope and Vasco da Gama sailed all the way to India. Still, that was in the late 1490s. If these rich dudes in Italy were shooting Aussie parrots in their private arcades back in the 1460s, it shows the Turks were at least letting some stuff through. No doubt for an outrageous price. You're right: talk about conspicuous consumption as a way of underlining one's status. There's no technical reason why parrots could not have been shipped from what's now Indonesia to Europe in those days. They're long lived and amenable to being caged. |
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Post by molloch on Apr 2, 2014 15:04:24 GMT 10
The "cockatoo" instantly reminded me of another bird - not sure what, and I can't find it online, will keep looking. If this is an Umbrella (or white) cockatoo (I see no yellow for a sulphur crest), then the range of this and the Eclectus parrot overlap pretty well and cover most of Indonesia.  |
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Post by johannes on Apr 4, 2014 23:51:07 GMT 10
The "Ottoman blockade" theory has its weaknesses - how could a largely Balkan and Anatolian empire blockade Egypt or the Levant? www.ugr.es/~fmunoz/html/trama/imperiotomano.gifHowever, it's clear that whoever controlled the spice trade, regardless of religion or ideology, squeezed out enormous profits, and everybody else was searching to open new routes and cut out middleman: The much-malignated Reynaud de Chatillon sent ships in the Indian Ocean in the late 12th century, using Akaba as a base. The fact that this was a potential economic threat for those who got rich from the spice trade - I am looking at you, Venice - and Chatillon was a middle-class upstart who dared to mess with kings and emperors might explain why both Christian and Islamic sources depict him as a monster, and his nemesis Saladin as a hero (so does Kingdom of Heaven, a monumentally stupid movie that shows a 12th century Ayyubid army without a single Slavic, Ugro-Finnic or Turco-Mongol soldier). The Vivaldi brothers tried to sail from Genua to India in 1291, although it is unknown wether they planned to circumnavigate Africa or planned to cross the Atlantic to reach India, like their Genoese conpratiot Columbus did 200 years later. Prince Henry the Navigator started to organize and finance naval expeditions in the 1420s, his motivation was probably to find a new occupation for the potentially troublesome knightly class after the collapse of Portugal's Anglo-Gascon allies in France meant that there would be no more Portuguese naval raids in the Bay of Biscay (remember he was a Lan nicaster from his mother's side). Ottoman/Mamluk/Venetian/Portuguese conflicts over the spice trade are complex, to say the least. The Portuguese refer to all enemy sailors and marines they met in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean as "Romans" i.e. Byzantines, that strongly suggests somebody with lots of Greek-speaking subjects - either the Ottomans or the Venetians - sent those guys as "advisors" to teach the Mamluks mediterranean naval warfare*. On the other hand, the Ottomans did opportunistically exploit the rise of the Portuguese empire in the Indian ocean, and the resulting decline of the Mamluks and the Venetians, to conquer Mamluk eastern Anatolia, Syria, the Levant and Egypt in the early 16th century. As for transporting exotic animals over sea, remember that Hadropithecus that was allegedly stolenreceived from an Indian merchant ship in the Red Sea, the only thing the crypto-Protestant** Pare and Katharina di Medici's chaplain Thevet ever agreed upon? *wich failed against Albuquerque's broadsides ** note that Pare's book of monsters lacks what must have been the most obvious explanation for a good Catholic: that monsters were the illegitimate offspring of priests |
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Apr 6, 2014 5:11:23 GMT 10
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Post by johannes on May 20, 2014 18:35:59 GMT 10
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on May 21, 2014 21:19:50 GMT 10
Hard face, beady eyes.  |
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Post by johannes on Feb 23, 2015 21:07:28 GMT 10
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Post by johannes on Jul 2, 2018 19:44:47 GMT 10
www.sci-news.com/archaeology/australasian-cockatoo-sicilian-manuscript-medieval-trade-routes-06140.htmlAlso a cockatoo, only a quarter of a millenium earlier. Obviously, people in the medieval mediterranean had trade networks reaching at least to New Guinea, if not Australia. Living at a place with strong Hugenot and Waldensian traditions, I have mixed feelings about Cathar-burning emperor Frederick II, but there is no doubt that he was an excellent ornithologist. Note also that the Ayyubids gave Jerusalem away by negotiation, without a fight. So much for the "third holiest city of Islam"... 
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Post by vincent on Jul 3, 2018 0:00:54 GMT 10
www.sci-news.com/archaeology/australasian-cockatoo-sicilian-manuscript-medieval-trade-routes-06140.htmlAlso a cockatoo, only a quarter of a millenium earlier. Obviously, people in the medieval mediterranean had trade networks reaching at least to New Guinea, if not Australia. Living at a place with strong Hugenot and Waldensian traditions, I have mixed feelings about Cathar-burning emperor Frederick II, but there is no doubt that he was an excellent ornithologist. Note also that the Ayyubids gave Jerusalem away by negotiation, without a fight. So much for the "third holiest city of Islam"... I believe that some ancient peoples had trade contacts with just about every other cluster of people. Ancient people got around. |
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Post by dennisw on Jul 3, 2018 16:11:33 GMT 10
If Australian birds were being shipped to Europe there is also the possibility that panthers or other big cats could have been brought to Australia; I personally think it unlikely - but it is possible.
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Post by vincent on Sept 4, 2018 3:16:24 GMT 10
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Post by dennisw on Sept 4, 2018 15:15:28 GMT 10
We know that Asian fishermen traded with Aborigines, they may have bought more than sea slugs. Once the animals or their drawings got to Asia they could then go through India and the Middle East and find their way to Europe. Traders can be very entrepreneurial when it come to making a profit.
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I believe that the Vatican has its own collection of pornography, painted by Raphael no less! Refer to the "Stufetta del Bibbiena". 
Question is, how on Earth would such birds make it all the way from this region of the world to Italy in the 15th century?
