Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain

C O N N E C T E D H I S T O R I E S I N T H E E A R LY M O D E R N W O R L D
John Beusterien
Transoceanic Animals as
Spectacle in Early Modern Spain
Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle
in Early Modern Spain
Connected Histories in the
Early Modern World
Connected Histories in the Early Modern World contributes to our growing
understanding of the connectedness of the world during a period in history
when an unprecedented number of people—Africans, Asians, Americans,
and Europeans—made transoceanic or other long distance journeys. Inspired
by Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s innovative approach to early modern historical
scholarship, it explores topics that highlight the cultural impact of the
movement of people, animals, and objects at a global scale. The series editors
welcome proposals for monographs and collections of essays in English from
literary critics, art historians, and cultural historians that address the changes
and cross-fertilizations of cultural practices of specific societies. General topics
may concern, among other possibilities: cultural confluences, objects in motion,
appropriations of material cultures, cross-cultural exoticization, transcultural
identities, religious practices, translations and mistranslations, cultural impacts
of trade, discourses of dislocation, globalism in literary/visual arts, and cultural
histories of lesser studied regions (such as the Philippines, Macau, African
societies).
Series editors
Christina Lee, Princeton University
Julia Schleck, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Advisory Board
Serge Gruzinski, CNRS, Paris
Michael Laffan, Princeton University
Ricardo Padron, University of Virginia
Elizabeth Rodini, American Academy in Rome Kaya Sahin, Indiana University,
Bloomington
Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle
in Early Modern Spain
John Beusterien
Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustrations: A lion looks back at a rhinoceros. Detail from section of gilded silver ewer
(1583) by Juan de Arfe (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).
Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden

Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout
isbn 978 94 6372 044 1

e-isbn 978 90 4855 225 2
doi 10.5117/9789463720441
nur 685
© J. Beusterien / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations
reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is
advised to contact the publisher.
For my mother, Jane
Gilded silver ewer (1583) by Juan de Arfe (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations 9
Prologue 13
Introduction: Armored Beasts and the Elephant in the Room 15
1. Hawa’i the Elephant and Abada the Rhinoceros 35
2. Fuleco the Armadillo 115
3. Jarama the Bull and Maghreb the Lion 173
Conclusion: Biogeography as a Teaching Tool 223
Appendix 1 237
Appendix 2 239
Index 241
List of Illustrations
Tables
1. The Lives of Five Animals in Spectacles in Early Modern Spain 19
2. The Lives of Three Animals for a Biogeography Class Project 226
Maps
1. Sixteenth-Century Journeys 20
2. Seventeenth-Century Journeys 20
Figures
1. Rhinoceros (1515) by Albrecht Dürer (National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C). 23
2. Philip II’s 1562 elephant (1563) by Jan Mollins I (British
Museum, London). 41
3. Abada (1586) by Philip Galle (private collection). 44
4. Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur hunting rhinos in Swati
(1589) (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland). 46
5. Prince Salim at a hunt (1600–4) (Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, Los Angeles). 48
6. Hobbled Ganda. Rhinoceros (1515) by Hans Burgkmair the
Elder (Albertina Museum, Vienna). Circle added by author. 51
7. Hobbled Ganda. Frontispiece for “Forma e natura e costume
de lo Rinocerote” (1515) by Giovanni Giacomo Penni (Bibliote-
ca Capitular Colombina, Seville, sign.: 6-3-29[29]) (© Cabildo
Catedral de Sevilla). Circle added by author. 52
8. Abada and Her Mahout on the High Seas (2018) by Yinting Fin
and Caleb Lightfoot. 54
9. Elephant with armor. “Tractado del elephante y sus calidades”
(1578) by Cristóbal Acosta (Biblioteca de la Universidad de
Sevilla).90
10. Juan de Arfe’s self-portrait. Frontispiece from De varia
commensuración para la esculptura y architectura (1585)
(Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla). 93
11. Gilded silver ewer (1583) by Juan de Arfe (Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York City). 93
12. A lion looks back at a rhinoceros. Detail from section of gilded
silver ewer (1583) by Juan de Arfe (Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York City). 98
13. Abada as Madrid (2018) by Yinting Fin and Caleb Lightfoot. 102
14. Abada and Her Mother with India as Teat (2018) by Yinting Fin
and Caleb Lightfoot. 103
15. Six-banded armadillo (1637–44) by Frans Post (Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam).121
16. Portrait of Gonzalo Argote. Libro de descripción de verdaderos
retratos ilustres, y memorables varones by Francisco Pacheco
(Sevilla: Litografía de Enrique de Utrera, 1870) (Biblioteca de
la Universidad de Sevilla). 125
17. Portrait of Nicolás Monardes at 57 years old (1569).
Frontispiece of Historia medicinal, de las cosas que se traen
de nuestras Indias Occidentales, as reprinted in Estudio
histórico de la vida y escritos del sabio médico, botanico, y
escritor del siglo XVI by Joaquín Olmedilla y Puig (Hijos de
M.G. Hernández: Madrid 1897) (Biblioteca de la Universidad
de Sevilla). 133
18. Printed image of Fuleco as specimen. Historia medicinal, de
las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales (1574) by
Nicolás Monardes, as reprinted in Estudio histórico de la vida
y escritos del sabio médico, botanico, y escritor del siglo XVI by
Joaquín Olmedilla y Puig (Hijos de M.G. Hernández: Madrid
1897) (Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla). 137
19. Two armadillos (ca. 1560). Artist unknown (Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam).139
20. America (ca. 1589). Designed by the Flemish artist Maarten de
Vos and engraved by Adriaen Collaert (Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York City). 141
21. Amerique (1644). King of clubs playing card from “Game of
Geography” by Stefano della Bella (Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York City). 143
22. Armadillo as America (Río de la Plata). Detail of Fountain with
Four Rivers (1651) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Photo by Jonathan
Rome).145
23. Philip II in Parade Armor (ca. 1570) by Alonso Sánchez Coello
(Glasgow Museum of Art). 149
24. Tournament Armor of Charles V. Armeria real, ou Collection des
principales pièces de la galerie d’armes anciennes de Madrid,
2 vols. and supplement (1839), by Achille Jubinal and Gaspard
Sensi (Paris: Bureau des Anciennes Tapisseries Historiées)
(Armería Real, Madrid, © Patrimonio Nacional). 151
25. The Monkey Painter (1660) by David Teniers the Younger
(© Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado).163
26. “About Lion Hunting” (1582) by Juan de Arfe. Argote de
Molina’s Libro de la Montería (Chapter 30, page 10r) (Biblioteca
de la Universidad de Sevilla). 187
27. “Hunting Bulls in the Arena” (1582) by Juan de Arfe. Argote de
Molina’s Libro de la Montería (Chapter 38, page 16v) (Bibli-
oteca de la Universidad de Sevilla). 201
28. “About Hunting Cimarrones in the West Indies” (1582) by Juan
de Arfe. Argote de Molina’s Libro de la Montería (Chapter 37,
page 14r) (Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla). 203
29. Chīmalli (early sixteenth century) (Weltmuseum, Vienna). 227
30. Philip II’s feather shield (ca. 1581) (Armería Real, Madrid,
© Patrimonio Nacional). 229
Prologue
The quotes from most of the non-English sources are found in the footnotes.
All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. When the title of a non-
English book first appears in a chapter, I provide the title in its original
language and then the English translation of the title in parenthesis. When
the same title appears again, I use the English translation. For instance, the
first time the title Anfiteatro del Felipe el Grande appears, it is Anfiteatro del
Felipe el Grande (Amphitheater of Philip the Great). Thereafter, the work
appears as Amphitheater of Philip the Great.
Thanks to the Texas Tech students and colleagues who helped at many
stages of this project. Thanks to Texas Tech University for supporting a
Faculty Development Leave, as well as to the Humanities Center Animal
Studies Group, and the Study Abroad Program at the TTU Center in Seville.
Thanks to the editors for allowing me to reproduce previously published
material in revised form from “The Armadillo: Spain Creates a Curious Horse
to Belittle America,” Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies I (2017) (Animals in
Visual Hispanism, edited by Jo Evans and Sarah Wright): 27–52.
Thanks to Cristina Viola Pliego for compiling the index and Jaime Llamas
Nerváez for designing the maps.
Special thanks to Erika Gaffney, Susan Larson, Helen Cowie, Francisco
Escobar, Noelia Cirnigliaro, Juan Pimentel, Abel Alves, Carlos Sambricio,
Shannon Pyle, Joe Snow, Pippin, Kevin Chua, Carmen Hsu, Elizabeth Wright,
Adrienne Martin, Belinda Kleinhans, Frederick de Armas, Lucas Wood,
Kees Rookmaaker, Joe Arredondo, Pamela Zinn, Martha Otis, Fernando
Ruiz, Christina Lee, Mark Minnes, Wolfram Koeppe, Annemarie Jordan
Gschwend, Juan Pablo Oslé, David Amelang, Cory Reed, Carla Rahn Phillips,
Javier Rubiera, Eduardo Olid, Ted Bergman, Ed George, Caroline Bishop,
Alice Kuzniar, Ross Forman, Jorge Zamora, Antonio Ladeira, Juan Montero,
and Zachary Brandner.
Thanks, lastly, to Kristen.
Introduction: Armored Beasts and the
Elephant in the Room
Abstract
Animal spectacles are important for a holistic understanding of early
modern Spanish culture. Influenced by Albrecht Dürer’s Rhinoceros,
early modern Spain celebrated itself as a planetary world power through
the spectacles of an exotic elephant, rhinoceros, armadillo, and lion.
Also, partially due its role as a foil to the positing of animals as exotic,
Spain created a spectacle of a homegrown bull. This chapter asserts the
importance of deploying the methodology of a biogeography for one of
each of these species, all of whom played a role as an animal protagonist in
a spectacle. The writing of biogeographies takes the extinction of species
in the Anthropocene into account and, in contrast to the negative impact
of each animal’s role as an object in a spectacle, places an emphasis on an
earth ethics that fosters healthy animal-human communities.
Keywords: animal spectacles, early modern Spain, biogeography, Anthro-

pocene, exotic animal, earth ethics, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
On May 18, 1969, Apollo 10 shot a picture that captured the entire Earth
from outer space. The astronaut reduced the Earth to the frame of a lens
with a finger click of the camera. The image—a blue orb mottled with
white clouds and some brown swatches delineating part of Mexico and
the Gulf of California—turned the Earth into humanity’s absolute other.
The absolute othering of the Earth in a photograph, however, also made the
Earth absolutely human. The wholly other, as psychoanalysis teaches, now
inhabited as the most familiar.1 The Earth took on a decidedly human form.
1 For a description of psychoanalysts such as Freud, who connected the uncanny with the
familiar, see Hillis Miller 2001.
Beusterien, J., Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain. Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2020
doi 10.5117/9789463720441_intro
16 Tr ansoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain
Earth anthropomorphosis, the transformation of the Earth into a human

being, is not a backwards premodern or animist vision, but places the Earth
at the forefront of new paradigms in different academic fields. Shaping
broad-ranged thinking in the field of science, the simultaneous distancing
of the Earth as object and its subsequent closeness as subject stimulated
the Gaia hypothesis. Following chemist James Lovelock (1919–) and then
microbiologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), philosophers of science coined
the Gaia hypothesis to propose an earth ethics in which all organisms and
their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated and form a
single and self-regulating complex system. Gaia, as science’s object, is also
the scientist’s subject; that is, Gaia is a human body—a complicated life
system—capable of suffering from disease and even capable of emotion.2
Aside from the field of science, the work of sustainability scholar Arturo
Escobar (2011) shows how the anthropomorphosis of the Earth impacts the
field of economics. Escobar does not use the name Gaia, the Greek earth god-
dess, but Pachamama, the world mother from Incan thought, to characterize
a form of earth ethics that has impacted his academic field. Closely linked
to the Gaia notion in which the Earth is a single and self-regulated system,
Pachamama, in the field of economics, takes on the meaning of a complicated
life system, signaling the biocentric turn away from anthropocentrism’s tenet
that a human life is the only life worth living. Escobar points to the notion
of buen vivir, a Quechua and Aymara concept that upholds a philosophy of
life that subordinates economic objects to ecological criteria, human and
animal dignity, and social justice.
How will people share the Earth with different animal species over the
next hundred years? The following book offers a version of an earth ethics
for the field of the humanities by studying five animal individuals used as
spectacles in early modern Spain. It studies a rhinoceros, elephant, armadillo,
bull, and lion in order to reflect upon the consequent ways that humans in
the early modern period set precedents for a future that undermined the
sustainability of the living planet. It is an example of how the humanities
can, like the sciences or economics, produce scholarly work that seeks an
earth ethics, which, in this case, looks to the damage to animal lives in the
Anthropocene, the geological moment in which humanity’s impact on past
and present tragically collide with respect to animal extinction.
2 For an overview of Gaia and the environment, see Crist and Rinker 2010. For the extension
of Gaia theory beyond science into cultural studies such as Latour’s systems theory, see Clarke
2017. For avoiding the simplifying reductionism of the term, see Clarke 2014. For the relationship
between Gaia and Pachamama to Spanish culture, see Beusterien 2016.
Animal biographies have been the focus of many recent publications.3

With the goal of underscoring the importance of animal conservation in
the Anthropocene, rather than animal “biographies,” the following study
offers five “biogeographies.” The study of biogeography has typically been
carried out by scientists. David Quammen writes in The Song of the Dodo:
Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions: “Biogeography is the study of
the facts and the patterns of species distribution” (1996, 17). E. O. Wilson
(1929–) and mathematician Robert MacArthur (1930–72) pioneered the
notion of biogeography, and their study of islands became the basis of the
field of conservation. Following their lead, studies in biogeography generally
focus on what influences the distribution of species across the planet.
Different scientists continue to debate exactly when and what have
been the most significant human factors that have impacted the planet
and patterns of species distribution. This book does not focus on scientific
questions relevant to the Anthropocene, such as what the most important
reason for the rise of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is
or what focus animal conservation should take. 4 In the spirit of a growing
body of studies that value science while carrying out humanities-based
scholarship, the following study presents the biogeography of five animal
individuals.5 Its goal is to provide an example of how the humanities can
study the broader question of the distribution of a specific species across
time and to underscore the age of extinction in the Anthropocene.6
In early modern Spain, the practice of giving animals as gifts on a global
scale among potentates affected the lives of rhinoceroses, elephants, and
lions. The rise of the humanist curio cabinet affected the lives of armadillos.
3 One can find innumerable popular books dedicated to the life stories of individual lions,
rhinos, monitor lizards, apes, and dogs. The genre of the animal biography has also found hold
in many academic publications. For instance, Susan Nance examines Jumbo in the context of
global consumerism in Animal Modernity: Jumbo the Elephant and the Human Dilemma (2015),
and André Kreeber and Mieke Roscher study the exceptional lives of unusual animals in Animal
Biographies: Re-framing Animal Lives (2018).
4 Impacted by conservation efforts, some scientists study animals in light of the Anthropocene.
For instance, the collaboration between Tigga Kingston, a bat biologist, and Christian Voight, a
senior research scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, produced Bats
in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World (2016).
5 One noteworthy incorporation of the notion of the biogeography for animals in the early
modern period can be found in the work of Natalie Lawrence (2014 and 2015), who studies the
commodification and exoticization of pangolins and birds of paradise.
6 The Reaktion Animal Series is an example of a combined effort to study animals in the
context of science and the humanities. The Reaktion Animal Series has over ninety monographs
dedicated to animals, from the albatross to the zebra, looking to collaborations between biology
and the cultural life of species.
The rise of the primacy of the bull in staged animal combat affected the lives
of bulls. In turn, each animal influenced the culture of future spectacles
and how humans impacted the distribution of each of these species. The
rhinoceros and the elephant are important for zoo history, the armadillo
for the history of natural history museums, and the bull and lion for staged
animal combats, especially the Spanish bullfight. The book, then, evokes the
Anthropocene in the sense that it examines the extraction of five animal
individuals from their habitats to show how institutions used them for a
theatrical, spectatorial purpose and how they, in turn, affected modern
institutions of animal spectacle.
Spain was formative in the emergence of the modern animal spectacle.
In the early modern period, the Spanish Habsburg monarchy claimed
dominion over the planet’s animals and the planet itself. Spain divided
Earth’s geopolitics into what it called the “four parts of the world,” as Serge
Gruzinski (2010) writes in his study of the history of globalization and
Spain. From 1580 to 1640, the Spanish Catholic monarchy was a significant
player in the global arena of material and ideological dissemination at all
levels because it brought “together territories, exchange routes, and areas
of influence dispersed among several continents: Europe, Africa, America,
and Asia” (Gruzinski 2015, 192).
The Spanish divided the world into four parts—a division of the Earth
that is crucial for understanding the significance of the animals studied in
this book. Hawa’i the elephant and Abada the rhinoceros were from Asia,
Fuleco the armadillo from America, Jarama the bull from Europe, and
Maghreb the lion from Africa. The chart below provides the year and place
of birth and death, as well as the place and date of each animal spectacle.
Each chapter begins by offering a brief introduction to the species of each
animal by explaining each one’s birth and the animal’s journey to Spain.
Jarama the bull was transported a relatively short distance—36 miles—from
the town of Aranjuez to Madrid. Ottoman authorities gifted Maghreb the
lion to Spain in an act of diplomacy. Maghreb was captured in the Atlas
Mountains, brought to Oran, and then transported by boat and over land to
Madrid. Fuleco the armadillo was born and died in Brazil and his carapace
was sent by ship across the Atlantic Ocean from Cartagena de Indias (in
present-day Colombia) to Seville. Hawa’i the elephant and Abada the rhi-
noceros experienced the most harrowing journeys of the five. Like Maghreb,
they were sent alive to Iberia as diplomatic gifts. The Mughal Emperor Akbar
(1542–1605; r. 1556–1605) sent both animals to Iberia. They both travelled on
ships from Goa, India, around the Cape of Good Hope, and were unloaded
in Lisbon. Abada was transported in a cage and Hawa’i walked across land
Name Animal Species Birth: Place, Death: Display: Place,

Date Place, Date Date
Hawa’i Elephant Asian elephant India, London, Antón Martín

(Elephas c.1580 1593 Hospital (Madrid),
maximus) 1583-1591
Abada Rhinoceros Indian rhinoc- India, 1573 Madrid, 1. General
eros or Greater 1591 Hospital (Madrid),
one-horned 1583-1591
rhinoceros 2. Taxidermy
(Rhinoceros specimen, Casa de
unicornis) Campo (Madrid),
1592-1598
Fuleco Armadillo Six-banded Brazil, Brazil, Carapace speci-
arma- c.1559 c.1569 men in collection
dillo (Euphractus of Gonzalo Argote
sexcinctus) de Molina (Se-
ville), 1570-1586
Jarama Bull Spanish Fighting Spain, c.1626 Madrid, Make-shift
Bull (Bos taurus 1631 theater, Campo
ibéricus) de Moro (Madrid),
1631
Maghreb Lion Barbary Lion Maghreb, Madrid, Make-shift
(Pantera leo leo) c.1621 1631 theater, Campo
de Moro (Madrid),
1631
Table 1. The Lives of Five Animals in Spectacles in Early Modern Spain.
to Madrid. Abada later died in Madrid. Hawa’i, in turn, left Spain for France
and died in England. The following maps show each animal’s sex and the
route each took in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, respectively.
One tenet of the following study is the critical need to examine spectacle
in light of animals’ acquired value as exotic. The biogeography of each animal
illuminates how spectacles were part of a historical structure that mobilized
animal bodies for the maintenance of a global Spanish Empire. In the early
modern Spanish context, the bodies of the rhinoceros, elephant, armadillo,
and lion were considered “exotic.” Each one’s body acquired the value of
being exotic because they crossed oceans and imperial frontiers. The body
of each acquired worth in the Spanish geo-cultural imaginary because of
a global system determined by a network of trade, travel, and translation.
As Jacques Lezra has written in Transnational Mobilities in Early Modern
Theater, critical practice “requires the focus on the interrupted circuit of
trade, travel, and translation on display” (2014, 216). Certain animals became
exotic when their bodies were deployed for learning and enjoyment in
Spain’s spectacle culture. Their symbolic and material value entered an
Sixteenth-Century Journeys.
Seventeenth-Century Journeys.
Escher-like circuit in which their physical transoceanic displacement had

to be translated from the foreign to the home, producing a cultural surplus
of value in both directions and in both contexts (Lezra 2014, 200).
The newly shaped notion of the exotic animal in the early modern period
influenced the formation of ways to visualize “home,” that is, the indigenous,
domestic, or homegrown animal, propagating forms of human sight based
on the emerging collective notions of Europe or Spain in contradistinction to
the early modern division of the world into Africa, Asia, and the Americas.7
Scholars who study the history of animals in spectacle note the emergence of
the notion of the exotic in the sixteenth century. Eric Baratay and Elisabeth
Hardoin-Fugier point out in Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West
that Rabelais used the term “exotic” in 1552 to describe new commodities
arriving to Europe. Rabelais invents a fictional island, Medamothi, and
describes the merchants from Asia and Africa who brought their wares to
the markets at the port of Medamothi, including “various paintings, various
tapestries, various animals, fish, bird and other exotic and well-travelled
merchandise” (qtd. Baratay and Hardoin-Fugier 2002, 29).
Early modern Spain was crucial for the emergence of the notion of the
exotic animal in the emerging global system of the early modern period.
Many studies, including those on animals in medieval Spain, ignore the
specific context governing the appearance of the notion of exotic in early
modern Europe and simply assume that humans universally construct
“exotic” animals.8 “Exotic” is the first word of Vernon N. Kisling’s history of
humankind, a collection of wild animals from ancient animal collections
to the modern zoological garden. His study begins: “exotic animals have
long been the ultimate collectibles” (2000, 1). Yi-Fu Tuan’s Dominance and
Affection: The Making of Pets also uses a generic definition of the exotic to
show how potentates throughout history dominated strange animals in a
show of pride and prestige. For instance, when the founder of the Qin dynasty
(221–207 BCE) created a capital city, it established a hunting preserve and
park with captured animals from newly incorporated lands that included
a rhinoceros from Huang and birds from Tiaozhi (Tuan 1984, 76).
Kisling and Tuan’s use of the word “exotic” ignores the historical specificity
of its emergence in early modernity. With respect to animal extraction and
exploitation for aesthetic purposes, the exotic was contingent on spectacles,
that is, human visual representations of animals, demonstrating that humans
are not hard-wired across time and cultures to visually perceive animals
in the same way. The term “exotic” as it exclusively applied to animals
appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century with the publication
of Exoticorum libri decem (Ten Books of Exotica, 1605) by the Dutch botanist
Charles de L’Écluse (Carolus Clusius, 1526–1609).9 L’Écluse constructed the
7 The experience of the Indies triggered a turn toward the discovery of indigenous European
nature. For instance, see Cooper 2007.
8 For usages of the term “exotic” to describe animals in the Spanish Middle Ages, see Adroer
i Tasis 1989 and Keller 1972.
9 For the connection between L’Écluse and Spanish humanists in Seville, see Gómez López
2005. For L’Écluse and botany, see Egmond 2009 and 2010.
definition of the exotic based upon how sixteenth-century Portuguese and

Spanish authorities united the planet’s geography into the “East” (Africa
and Asia) and “West” Indies (America).
This book looks to the development of the notion of the exotic animal
in the sixteenth-century Spanish context because it provides a foundation
for European identity and globalism, particularly the case of the Dutch as
informed by L’Écluse.10 The exotic animal appeared in the context of the
Spanish Habsburg monarchy with Philip II (1527–98). Philip II, following
a Renaissance model of outward-looking self-suff iciency, ideologically
unified the East and West Indies into Europe’s exotic space.11 In terms of
spectacle, one of most significant material signs of Philip II’s construction
of the space of home (as Europe) versus the outside (as the Indies) can be
found in how he employed armor. For Philip II, the most visually impressive
European monarch dressed himself in the most visually impressive suit
of armor.
The source for Philip II’s exaltation of armor was Emperor Maximilian I
(1459–1519). The Habsburg Maximilian I was the first significant king to use
armor as a regal symbol. To do so, he exploited full-body armor as the iconic
image of the king. He established the first royal armory in court at Innsbruck
in 1504, dressed in armor for his official royal portrait commissioned to
Bernhard Strigels (ca. 1460–1528), and wrote a pseudo-autobiographical
chivalric romance titled The White King in which he established the primacy
of armor as visual icon (Schroth 2004, 113; Stoichita 2016).
The artist Hans Burgkmair (1473–1531) created the standard designs for
Maximilian’s armor. Burgkmair’s competitor, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528),
also designed armor for Emperor Maximilian, including Three Stud-
ies of a Helmet (ca. 1514; Paris, Louvre); the Study of a Suit of Armor for
Maximilian I (ca. 1517; Vienna, Albertina); and sketches of a Visor for a
Jousting Helmet (ca. 1515; Albertina, Vienna) (Pimentel 2017; Clarke 1986;
Smith and Findlen 2002, 20n.2). Dürer continued designing armor after
Maximilian’s reign. He depicted Philip II’s father, Charles V, in armor. He
won a project from the Nuremberg city council for a portrait of Charles
10 For the meaning of “exotic” before the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, including how it
emerged in the Dutch context of globalism and in the sense of a European identity, see Schmidt
2015.
11 Spain’s outward-looking self-sufficiency contrasted with the perception of the exotic in terms
of the Confucian model of inward-looking self-sufficiency and the European Enlightenment’s
nineteenth-century outward-looking self-sufficiency. For an overview of the meaning of the
exotic animal (a giraffe in the Medici court in the sixteenth century) with regards to the notion
of outward-looking sufficiency, see Ringmar 2006.
Fig. 1. Rhinoceros (1515) by Albrecht Dürer (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C).
V in which he designed an image cast on a medallion that showed the

King wearing the characteristic Golden Fleece pendant and encased in
armor (Chipps Smith 1983, 235).
Burgkmair’s designs not only included armor for the human body, but also
for the horse. The armored man on an armored horse in pageantry culture
constituted an image of a composite living beast, a conjoined man on a
horse, the epoch’s most marvelous visual show of royalty. Just as dressing
up in armor signaled the Empire’s most revered human figure, so armor
in the sixteenth century also signaled the most visually impressive exotic
animal. Dürer single-handedly created the image of that armored animal
when he drew an image of a rhinoceros (fig. 1).
Dürer’s Rhinoceros achieved cultural currency across Europe by evoking
the cult of armor. In The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium: An Essay in
Natural History, Juan Pimentel, who also sees curiosity cabinets and private
collections as precursors of imperial museums, begins his study with Dürer’s
Rhinoceros. Pimentel calls Rhinoceros an “armored pachyderm” (2017, 3) and
states that it was “imagined without being seen” and “transformed by the
imagination into a picture that was reproduced and distributed around
the world” (2017, 3).
When Dürer made the broadsheet Rhinoceros, he created a hide on the

animal that bears resemblance to his armor designs for Emperor Maximilian
I from the same period. David Quammen writes that the Dürer rhino is a
fantastically embellished version of a rhino; it is an armor-clad war machine.
Quammen explains that the rhino is “complete with a gorget at the throat,
a breastplate around the midsection, pauldrons for the shoulders, faulds
skirting the thighs, and nicely aligned rivets along the plate edges” (2000,
205). Quammen concludes that Dürer emphasized the armor quality of
the animal when he “angled back the angle of the horn, making it more
dangerous as a weapon for hooking and ripping […] For good measure he
added a second horn, smaller, pointing forward from the back of the neck.
The lower legs he wrapped in chain mail” (2000, 205). Pimentel explains
the visual impact: “the chain-metal armor evokes both a dragon and a
reptile and, at the same time, the knight or samurai who has to combat it.
This is where Dürer situates and transmits all the force of the animal and
where he simultaneously displays his great debt to his experience designing
armor” (2017, 97).
Dürer encased armor on the body of Rhinoceros to signal its role as an
outsider, the Empire’s exotic animal other. With Rhinoceros, Dürer estab-
lished an important sixteenth-century truth with respect to the exotic
animal: The iconic animal from the Indies was naturally clad in armor. Just
as armor transformed the king and his horse into a visual symbol of the
Empire, so armor on the animal transformed it into a visual symbol of the
Empire’s exotic space. In contrast to the monarch whose armor represented
dominion, control, and protection over the imperial home environment,
the armor on the animal marked it as the exotic creature from the Indies
that the Empire needed to conquer and place into captivity.
Dürer had achieved a reputation as the century’s most accurate and
naturalistic painter of animals. The most important sixteenth-century
animal authorities, such as Conrad Gesner (1516–65), testified that Dürer’s
enhanced Rhinoceros was true-to-life and scientifically accurate (Leitch
2017). Horses were fitted with armor, which, because of its cost and value to
the elite, can be considered the most valued of all sixteenth-century artifices.
When Dürer put armor on Rhinoceros, he evoked the valued artifice of armor.
He also established a dichotomy between the armor produced as artifice in
Europe versus armor as a natural product from the Indies. For Dürer, armor
augmented Rhinoceros as a visual spectacle of wonder because it was not
manufactured—like horse armor—but the natural hide of the animal.
Dürer successfully mass marketed Rhinoceros, with its human eye staring
back. Printers circulated Rhinoceros relentlessly, figuratively providing a
familiar image of armor on the skin of Europe’s most important and iconic
exotic animal. Ironically, through the materiality of armor, the exotic animal,
the wholly other, also inhabited the most familiar space. Armor was shaped
and crafted in Nuremberg, the global center for armor production, the city
in which Dürer created Rhinoceros. “Exotic,” from the Greek, is literally that
which comes from the outside or that which is foreign, and Dürer designed
the century’s emblematic exotic animal icon with armor, the product forged
in his hometown of Nuremberg.
Dürer’s Rhinoceros sets one of the most important precedents for the
foundation of the notion of exotic in modern animal spectacles. After taking
the crown of the Spanish Empire, Philip II followed the precedent of the cult
of armor from Dürer and Maximillian I. Philip II dressed himself in armor
for his official portrait in self-promotion as planetary monarch. He built
an armory in Madrid, his new capital city. Philip II acquired Maximilian’s,
as well as his father Charles V’s, armor collection, and placed them in the
Spanish Royal Armory in Madrid. Philip also commissioned new armor
and bards. Early modern historians also celebrated Philip II as an armored
monarch. The proposed frontispiece of the first official history of Philip
II, Historia general del mundo (The General History of the World, 1599) by
Antonio Herrera y Tordesillas (1549–1625), shows Philip encased in armor.
Herrera y Tordesillas depicts Philip II as a new Hercules wearing armor,
which symbolizes the monarch as a warrior who combines ideal classical
and Christian virtues (Parker 2014).
Philip II rode horses in pageants—each encased in armor—and Philip’s
artificially augmented body transformed him into an awe-inspiring image
of the planet’s most powerful monarch. By Philip’s reign, Dürer’s Rhinoceros
had increased in popularity, contributing to the emblematic visual power of
armor. Because armor not only covered the monarch, but also the armored
beast that the monarch figuratively had to combat and conquer, Dürer’s
broadsheet Rhinoceros—only an artistic creation—helped disseminate
amazement about the natural world, particularly about animals from foreign
places. The spectacle as quest to see an armored animal, a keen desire in
Philip’s Spain, was influenced by Dürer’s armor-animal fiction that had
become accepted fact. People craved to see a living rhinoceros and other
animals supposedly naturally fitted with armor.
Armadillo carapaces were the most popular animal specimens in col-
lection cabinets. Nicolás Monardes (1493–1588), in fact, coined the name
“armadillo” based on the fact that the armadillo specimen owned by Gonzalo
Argote de Molina (1548–96) was supposedly a small version of a European
armored horse that had been endowed with armor by nature. Philip II also
made a spectacle of Abada, a living Indian rhino, and people perceived

Abada through the lens of Dürer’s Rhinoceros. The goldsmith Juan de Arfe
y Villafañe (1535–1603) went to Madrid to observe Abada and designed a
magnificent gilded ewer that celebrated Philip II as imperial monarch (a
detail of which is the cover image for this book). Arfe wrote, following Dürer,
that Abada had skin that was like armor.
***
I have organized each chapter of Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early
Modern Spain in a similar way. Each begins with a summary of the life and
death of each animal. Chapter 1 examines Hawa’i and Abada; Chapter 2
Fuleco; and Chapter 3 Jarama and Maghreb. Each chapter then focuses on
the human institutions of theatrical animal display that radically altered
the lives of each animal: Hawa’i and Abada as objects of spectacle in a
proto-zoo in Madrid; Fuleco as a specimen exhibit in a proto-museum; and
Jarama and Maghreb as performers in a staged animal combat. Finally, each
chapter provides a brief conclusion that shows how the study of early modern
Spanish culture can offer productive and creative aesthetic solutions for
future human-animal cohabitation.
I have coined a proper name for each of the five animals. Jane Goodall
(1934–) famously named her chimps to the chagrin of the science profession,
which insisted that the animals be given a number. Her naming, however,
opened up a controversy in the field and stimulated new approaches to
animal conservation. Although some animal individuals like certain
elephants and bulls were given proper names in history, the following
book anachronistically and intentionally provides names for five animals
that had never received them before now. With the goal of writing a study
grounded in the humanities in the spirit of animal conservation, I christened
these animals with a name, like Goodall, to recognize their individuality
and subjectivity; to stir academic controversy; and to encourage scholars,
teachers, and students to create new animal biogeographies.
Chapter 1 describes Philip II’s placement of Abada the rhinoceros and
Hawa’i the elephant in a hospital in Madrid. A fee was charged to see each.
Placed in hospitals in his newly created capital city, Philip II intimately tied
the animals to theater. Hospitals got much of their revenue from plays and,
in cities where stand-alone theaters were not built, innyards in hospitals
were used for commercial public spectacles. Philip II’s proto-zoo featured
Abada and Hawa’i and, like modern zoos, he used two captured exotic
animals to enhance the image of the metropole capital and to enhance
Spain’s imperial prowess.
Chapter 1 especially focuses on the emerging public sphere in early

modern Spain. The viewing experience of the animals combined cogni-
tive and affective responses based on the public’s sense of collectivity and
individuality. The primary thread that united the public’s response, such as
the one shown on the ewer designed by Juan de Arfe, was Philip II’s use of
the spectacle of the captive animal as a show of power. Hawa’i and Abada
arrived to Europe as gifts from the Emperor Akbar, and Philip II flexed
geopolitical muscle by not gifting away each animal after they came into
his possession. The chapter concludes by pointing out that a history of the
zoo, a microcosm of the Anthropocene, inspires compassion for animal
sentience, especially for an animal’s sense of territory.
Chapter 2 tells the story of Fuleco the armadillo. Ursula Heise writes in
Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species (2016) that
comedy as a genre opens new cognitive and emotional attachments between
people and animals. Keeping Heise’s idea about comedy in mind, the chapter
proceeds in an entertaining way with the hopes that nonfiction scholarship,
like fiction, can adopt a comic tone for encouraging new modes of survival.
The story of Fuleco sheds light on three important human figures: Gonzalo
Argote de Molina, Nicolás Monardes, and King Philip II, each of whom
imagined Fuleco’s body as showing off his particular version of a theater of
the world. Gonzalo Argote de Molina used Fuleco to enhance his reputation
because he established his home as a proto-museum and included Fuleco
the armadillo, alongside paintings, books, armor, live purebred horses,
trophy animal heads from hunting, and animal specimens from the East
and West Indies. Nicolás Monardes used Fuleco to enhance his business
interests when he published Fuleco’s image in Primera y segunda y tercera
partes de la Historia medicinal, de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias
Occidentales (Medicinal History of the Things Brought from Our West Indies,
1574). Finally, King Philip II, who, like Monardes, visited Argote’s collection,
most likely felt that Fuleco’s presence in Argote’s museum symbolically
enhanced the value of the live horses and armor that he had collected in
the Royal Armory in Madrid.
Chapter 3 examines how Philip II’s grandson, Philip IV (1605–65), used a
lion from Africa in a fight against a bull for the purposes of public entertain-
ment as described in the collection of poems in Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande
(The Amphitheater of Philip the Great, 1632) by José Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar
(1602–79). Chapter 3 describes how the poets in The Amphitheater of Philip
the Great used the spectacle of a staged animal combat to forge emerging
collective identities of Europe and nation, as well as in terms of race. The
chapter uses a performance studies framework to show the degree to which
the staged animal combat formed part of the collective culture of spectacle.
Furthermore, the chapter ultimately, by way of contrast, argues on the
behalf of models of animal and human collaboration rather than human
observation and animal destruction in spectacle. The chapter concludes by
describing a performance model of human-animal collaboration through
a reading of a graphic novel based on El retablo de las maravillas (The
Marvelous Puppet Show), a play by Miguel de Cervantes.
Dürer made the Rhinoceros exotic and, paradoxically, familiar by encasing
it with armor from his hometown, just as The Amphitheater of Philip the Great
also made the fighting bull simultaneously exotic and familiar. Pellicer
and the poets that comprised Spain’s literary establishment depicted the
fighting bull as exotic in the sense that it was the only wild animal left in
the world to dominate. They describe the bull as a “lion from Spain,” evoking
the king of beasts from Africa, but also writing that most ferocious bull was
indigenous to Spain. According to The Amphitheater of Philip the Great, the
most othered animal, the uncontrollable all-powerful bull, inhabited the
most familiar space, bred on the grasses on the banks of the Jarama River
in central Spain bordering the capital Madrid.
Ultimately, the spectacle of animals in early modern Spain as told through
the method of the biogeography I employ here helps scholars and students in
the humanities to look beyond the superficial interpretation of images and
texts in order to better understand landscapes of exclusion. The conclusion
of Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain considers how
teachers can use biogeography for that purpose. Students can invent their
own names for animals in a class project that introduces them to the culture
of animal spectacles in early modern Spain. For instance, they can name
an anonymous quetzal bird from America. By way of example, I provide
the case study of a shield with quetzal feathers which Philip II placed in
the collection in the Royal Armory.
In 1668: The Year of the Animal in France, Peter Sahlins explains how
animals reveal the central dimensions of early French modernity in the
seventeenth century. Sahlins studies living animals and their symbolic
afterlives, noting that they are “agents in the making of early modern France,
even as their agency extended to their dead bodies and painted representa-
tions” (2017, 20). The following book looks to five agents that expose much
about the central dimensions of early modern Spanish culture. Hawa’i the
elephant was literally a living animal on display in a room in Madrid, and my
title for this introduction—the idiom “the elephant in the room”—refers to
the erasure of something big and the omnipresent awareness of that erasure,
namely, animals in spectacle culture in early modern Spain.
Animal spectacles are vital to a holistic appreciation of Spanish culture.

Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain examines animal
spectacles that had repercussions for the emergence of the modern institu-
tions like the zoo, natural history museum, and the bullfight. After providing
a history of a destructive moment in the life of human-animal communities,
particularly a description of a moment in early modern European history in
which animals were extracted from natural habitats for human spectacle,
the final goal of this book is to look toward an earth ethics. The goal of an
earth ethics, influenced by species extinction in the Anthropocene, is to
emphasize a history of destruction so as to inspire animal spectacles of
mutual compassion.
Just as f ields in the sciences need methods from the humanities for
understanding the ethical dimensions of their research, so the humanities
field needs methods from the sciences for full appreciation of its objects of
study. Recognizing and valuing animal sentience, for instance, underscores
mutual compassion by moving past human-centric definitions of spectacle.
One important example of science enriching the humanities is the notion
that animals come into sentience via territory. Art is born not solely through
human expression, but emerges out of an animal expressing a sense of
home through territory. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have written
that animals’ marking of territory is “art in its pure state” (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994, 183). Art begins with the animal or “at least with the animal
that carves out a territory and constructs a house” since this marking of
territory “implies the emergence of pure sensory qualities, of sensibilia that
cease to be merely functional and become expressive features” (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994, 183).
The story of the lives and afterlives of f ive sentient animals in early
modern Spain pushes toward new ways to imagine an earth ethics. With
respect to the study of animals in early modern England, Erica Fudge writes
that taking animals seriously highlights the
fact that the marginalization of animals in modern humanities research

itself serves an important philosophical and moral function. It obliterates
a way of thinking that raises questions about the nature of the animal and
the human; that offers us another inheritance, another way of conceptual-
izing both ourselves and the world around us. (2006, 4)
Of course, not all animals mark territory, and Luce Irigaray has suggested
a more expansive sensitivity to animal territory by describing how animal
territory is a grace gifted by animals that can lead toward altruism and
communion with the living. For Irigaray, animals do not belong to the
human nor in the human space, but in a space appropriate to their lives
(Štuva 2013). In the context of human-bound animal extinctions and resur-
rections, Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain hopes for
a future where humans and animals—and the Earth—establish interspecies
relationships that demand lives of mutual caring.12
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1. Hawa’i the Elephant and Abada the
Rhinoceros
Abstract
Chapter 1 provides a biogeography of Hawa’i the elephant and Abada the
rhinoceros, beginning with their births in India. When Philip II came
into the possession of both animals, he took advantage of the financial
and structural relationship between hospitals and theaters and placed
each animal in a hospital in Madrid, where the public was charged a fee to
see them. The spectacle of Abada and Hawa’i functioned like a proto-zoo,
reflecting the emerging public sphere and Philip II’s desire to enhance
the image of the capital city. Chapter 1 also examines a silver-gilt ewer
(1583) designed by Juan de Arfe that uses an image of Abada and Hawa’i
to show off Philip II’s planetary power.
Keywords: zoo history, public sphere, Philip II of Spain (1527–98), Hawa’i

the elephant (ca. 1580–ca. 1593), Abada the rhinoceros (1573–91), Juan de
Arfe y Villafañe (1535–1603)
The zoo is a microcosm of the Anthropocene because it is a space where

humans determine animal reproduction and choose who belongs. Madrid
constructed a zoo in the Casa de Campo in 1972 and, before that, in the
eighteenth century, the public went to see lions in cages in the Buen Retiro
Park. Even before the creation of the Casa de Campo zoo and Buen Retiro
Park, people had already visited a proto-zoo, where they paid a fee to see
an elephant and a rhinoceros in Madrid.1
The following chapter follows the material conditions of the lives of the
elephant Hawa’i and the rhinoceros Abada, especially focusing on their
1 For more on zoo history, see McDonald and Vandersommers 2019; Bruce 2017; Rothfels
2002; Malamud 1998 and 2017; Miller 2013; Anderson 1998; and Grigson 2016. For early modern
Habsburg menagerie collections, see Jordan Gschwend 2010 and 2016, and Pérez de Tudela and
Jordan Gschwend 2001 and 2007.
doi 10.5117/9789463720441_ch01
use as public spectacle in two hospitals in Madrid from 1583 to 1591. The
chapter explains the nature of spectatorship for the sixteenth-century
viewing public. People that saw Hawa’i and Abada saw different things.
Like seeing a play, experiencing Hawa’i and Abada constituted complex
social thinking and affective reactions based on the audience’s sense of
collectivity and individuality.2
In general, the display of Hawa’i and Abada set destructive precedents
for the lives of animals more generally because it perpetuated the elite
gifting of live animals in a global economy, fomented an emerging ori-
entalism, made the rhino body a symbol of a panacea, and used animals
to create a sense of the world in which they were captive enemies of a
universal monarchy. The chapter ends by focusing on the ewer designed
by Juan de Arfe that transformed Philip II’s pachyderm spectacle into a
spectacle of imperial triumph that is one of the most troubling features
of the modern zoo—showing off one’s power with captive animals from
a distant land.
Humans need to develop deeper compassion for animal sentience
with regard to space, especially because we do not fully understand the
cognitive spatial sense in animals. The human language system shares
characteristics with animal mapping systems in evolutionary terms because
animals developed a sense of mapping in the same place in the brain where
humans developed language (Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch 2002). The chapter
concludes with two images that show how Hawa’i and Abada can offer new
ways to creatively reimagine ways of mapping that include the animal.
Philip II’s use of Hawa’i and Abada overlooks animal space sentience: He
strengthens a sense of worldliness, transforming Hawa’i and Abada’s bodies
into an image of his planetary control that converges within the contours
of Madrid. Despite providing safety for animals from the peril of a besieged
wilderness, zoos as institutions ultimately promote the anthropocentric
and anti-ecological fantasy that we are entitled to see everything and,
as Randy Malamud writes, are “somehow above the ecosystems in which
we live” (2017, 399). The goal, then, of the chapter is to show destructive
mappings onto the bodies of each animal; in doing so, the chapter will clear
the ground for looking at new ecosystems that heighten empathy toward
animals and their sense of place.
2 For the Habermasian notion of the public in early modern theater, see Mullaney 2013. For
the role of the activation of the human senses in the making of the public sphere, see Eberhart
2013. For the public sphere in the context of early modern Spanish theater, see Greer 2013. Also
see Amelang 2018.
Hawa’i the Elephant and Abada the Rhinoceros 37
Hawa’i (ca. 1580–ca. 1593)
Only twenty or so elephants arrived alive to Europe during the course of the
sixteenth century. All were from India. The nameless elephant that Philip II
put in the hospital in Madrid in 1583 was most likely born in captivity in the
menagerie of Akbar, the great ruler of the Mughal Empire. I am adopting the
name of Akbar’s most famous elephant—“Hawa’i”—for Philip II’s elephant
to signal that Hawa’i was most likely born in captivity in Mughal Agra under
the supervision of Akbar.
The number of live elephants held in captivity was a sign of power among
the Ottoman Turks and the Mughals. Akbar’s father, for instance, impressed
the Ottoman admiral Seydi Ali Reis (1498–1563), by showing off some 400
imperial elephants at his palace court (Groom 2019, 7). At his court in Agra,
Akbar had 101 stables for elephants. Five men tended each elephant, feeding
them rice, sugar, milk, and ghee. A superintendent reported the condition
of each elephant to Akbar (Grewal 2007, 60).
In the 1570s, geopolitical tensions between two world superpowers—the
Ottoman Turks and Mughal India—radically transformed the lives of Hawa’i
and Abada. On unhealthy terms with the Ottomans, Akbar sought out
an alliance with Iberia. In early 1582, Akbar established direct contact by
sending an envoy with a letter and gifts to Philip II. The letter ostensibly
describes his interest in Iberia’s Christianizing mission and asks Philip for
missionaries and religious books in Persian so that he could learn about
Christian doctrine. Akbar, however, primarily sought out an alliance with
Philip—a powerful European counterpart to the west of the Ottoman
Empire—to secure his own territory to the east (Thomas and Chesworth
2017).
Akbar planned to send the envoy of ambassadors, along with the letter
and gifts, to Goa and then on to Lisbon. The envoy consisted of the Mughal
emissaries Sayyid Muzaffar and Abdullah Khan, as well as the Jesuit mis-
sionary António Monserrate (1536–1600). I suspect that Hawa’i was the
primary gift that Akbar sent with the envoy to the Portuguese. Historical
data is incomplete because the ambassadorial mission fell apart. Muzaffar
abandoned the mission—he opposed Akbar’s religious heterodoxy and fled.
Khan did not abandon the mission and only arrived to Goa with Akbar’s
letter and Hawa’i. Khan, however, did not continue on to Lisbon because,
as Montserrate writes, “the project of the embassy was entirely abandoned”
(qtd. in Thomas and Chesworth 2017, 105).
A letter written by Philip II to his children in 1582 provides one key reason
why the ambassadorial mission to Goa fell apart: The viceroy in Goa had
died. In the letter, Philip II writes that the viceroy that he appointed to
Goa, Fernão Teles de Menezes (1530–1605), had just replaced the previous
one who had died in March 1581. Philip states to his daughters that Fernão
Teles de Menezes arrived just in time to be able to secure him an elephant
gift that may have cheered the spirits of their brother:
I only know that the ship carried an elephant, which has been sent to
your brother by the viceroy whom I sent to the Indies […] who has already
arrived there, and he arrived at a good time too because the one who was
there already—I mean the viceroy who was there already—was dead.
Tell your brother about the elephant […] God keep you as I desire: your
loving father. (qtd. in Woodward 2013, 99)3
Philip II was living in Lisbon at this time (from 1581 to 1583) and away from
his family. Philip shows no concern for the rest of the cargo that arrived to
port except for the elephant because he hoped that a new elephant would
improve the health of his son Diego, who he calls in the letter “convalescent
and weak.”
Philip’s enthusiasm over Hawai’i’s arrival is bittersweet. Over thirty years
earlier, Philip II had hoped that elephants would please his deceased son
Don Carlos (1545–68), the sole hope at that time for the continuation of
the dynasty. When Carlos was five years old, he received a nine-year-old
elephant bull from his father and Catherine of Austria (1507–78). Catherine
was mother to Maria Manuela of Portugal (1527–45), Philip II’s first wife,
who was deceased by the time of this gifting. Catherine wanted to indulge
Carlos, Philip’s son and her grandson, now growing up motherless in the
Spanish court. 4 Deeming the elephant’s custody to be too costly, Philip
regifted the elephant two years later. Despite having given away this
first elephant, nine years later, in 1562, Philip II chose to give the gift of
another elephant to his sixteen-year-old son Prince Carlos. The Venetian
ambassador in Spain describes Carlos’s reaction to the second elephant
from his teen years, writing that Carlos “cherishes it so and frequently
3 “solo he sabido que viene esta nao un elefante que envía a vuestro hermano el virrey que
envié a la India […] que era ya allá y llegó a buen tiempo porque era muerto el que alla estaba,
digo el virrey que allá estaba. Decid a vuestro hermano esto del elefante […] Y dios os guarde
como deseo, vuestro buen padre” (qtd. in Bouza 1998, 191).
4 Prince Carlos’s elephant was originally a gift from Bhuvaneku Bahu, King of Kōṭṭe (r. 1521–51)
to the Portuguese Queen Catherine of Austria (1507–78). Popularly known as Suleyman, this
elephant was raised in Ceylon in Bahu’s royal stables and, at two years old, was taken to Queen
Catherine in Lisbon (Jordan Gschwend 2010).
orders it to be brought to his room where he delights in seeing such a novel

and strange animal” (qtd. in Jordan Gschwend 2010, 35). When Philip saw
Hawa’i arrive in Lisbon in July of 1582, the experience of the previous two
elephants as gifts for a sickly son pervaded his sentiment in the letter to
his daughters.
Hawa’i, nonetheless, never saw the new heir alive—Prince Diego, Philip’s
fourth son, died at seven years old from smallpox a few months after Hawa’i
arrived on the Portuguese galleon. Not long after the death of his son, Philip
II decided to move court from Lisbon. The following year, Philip left for
Madrid, mourning the loss of his son but with Portugal and its territories
under his monarchic wing. When he returned to Madrid, he transported
Hawa’i and Abada as part of the royal move (Staudinger and Irblich 1996,
265; Jordan Gschwend 2017, 333).
Philip first placed Hawa’i in a stable near the Alcázar Palace in Madrid.
Indicating that Hawa’i was unhappy with the living situation and lacked
space, a royal payment was made to Catalina Santaclara on August 1, 1583
for damages done by Hawa’i to her house next to the Alcázar (Pérez de
Tudela and Jordan Gschwend 2007, 443 n.87). Shortly after damaging the
dwelling near the Madrid palace, Philip ordered Hawa’i to be brought to
the Escorial. Philip II’s historian describes:
On October 9, 1583, the king ordered that an elephant be brought from

Madrid so that the monks could observe it. The elephant arrived to the
gardens at 2 p.m. A noble black man [caballero] rode on its neck and
guided it. Before His Majesty, the elephant showed off to all its ability
to pay tribute and bow, lie on the ground, and take fruit with its trunk.
Later they put it in the cloister of the monastery and it entered in the
monk’s quarters, and from there they brought it to the college through
the cloister. It was quite tame. The same elephant also came a few days
later and walked up the main staircase to the cloister on the upper level
some 30 feet above ground. It entered in the cell of the Vicar and there it
did all that the black man commanded.5
5 “En 9 días del mes de octubre de 1583 años por mandado de S.M. trajeron de Madrid un
elefante para que le viesen los padres desta casa. Entró en el jardín a las dos horas después de
mediodía. Venía un negro caballero en el pescuezo que le guiaba. Hizo delante de S.M. todas sus
habilidades de hacer reverencia, y echarse en el suelo y tomar frutas con la trompa. Y luego le
metieron por los claustros de la casa, y entró en la celda de nuestros padres, y de allí le llevaron
al colegio por los claustros, muy doméstico. Y otro día después le tornaron a traer y subió por la
escalera principal a los claustros altos de los treinta pies, y entró en la cella del padre vicario, y
hizo allí lo que el negro mandaba” (Salvá y Sainz de Baranda 1845, 368–9).
As all the sources that make reference to Hawa’i, the Escorial chronicler
does not provide a proper name for the elephant.
It should be noted, though, that some elephants did receive proper names
in early modern Spain. Often, they were given the title of “don,” like Don
Quixote. Louise Rice (2017) has studied Don Diego, the elephant who served
as model for the painter Nicholas Poisson (1594–1665). Don Diego was sent
from Portugal to Spain and Philip IV placed him in the Casa de Campo in
1621, the year he ascended the throne. I suspect that Philip IV’s elephant
may have been christened Diego after his grandfather Philip II’s son Diego,
who died a few months before Hawa’i arrived in Madrid. As I note below,
another Spanish elephant was christened Don Pedro. Philip II sent Don
Pedro as a gift to the Japanese. Could Don Pedro’s name also derive from
the name of one of King Philip II’s sons, that is, his illegitimate son Pedro
from his relationship with Isabel de Osorio?
Aside from providing no name for the elephant, the Escorial chronicler
also does not provide a proper name for the mahout. He simply calls him
“a noble black man.” More study is also needed on the history of mahouts
in sixteenth-century Europe. In 1517, one of the two mahouts that traveled
with Hanno the white elephant from Asia to Portugal, and then to Rome, was
Mahmet (Jordan Gschwend 2010, 6). A mahout named Oçem accompanied
the first rhinoceros to arrive in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Another document from the same period in Lisbon lists Dharma
and Drama as mahouts for elephants (Jordan Gschwend 2010, 6). The
mahout Gaspar came from Goa to Lisbon and served the elephants and
the Portuguese King John III, who granted Gaspar freedom in 1559 (Jordan
Gschwend 2017, 332).
The mahout that accompanied Hawa’i had most likely bonded with
Hawa’i when he was born at Akbar’s court. Upon arriving in Europe with
their elephant or rhino, Philip II would have provided Hawa’i’s mahout with
lavish European clothing, following the previous treatment of mahouts by
Iberian kings. In 1517, King Manuel supplied Dharma and Drama, “servants of
the elephants,” a wardrobe of clothing (Jordan Gschwend 2010). For Philip’s
1562 elephant, the tailor Gabriel Várez completed an order that describes
the unnamed mahout as the “elephant’s Indian” (yndio del elefante) (Jordan
Gschwend 2010, 35). Várez’s clothing order includes: yellow pants and a top,
along with a red tabard cloak (Jordan Gschwend 2010, 35).
One Antwerp artist, Jans Mollihns I, created a colorful broadsheet that
represents Philip’s 1562 elephant (see f ig. 2). The mahout in Mollihns’s
broadsheet wears yellow leggings and a yellow shirt with a red tabard cloak,
demonstrating that he was still wearing the clothes that he received from
Fig. 2. Philip II’s 1562 elephant (1563) by Jan Mollins I (British Museum, London).
Philip II when he was traveling in northern Europe. The mahout in Mollihn’s

image carries a long baton, riding on the shoulders of an elephant that wears
a yellow and red checkered cover over its back (Jordan Gschwend 2010,
38). Aside from the image of the unnamed mahout, Mollihns’s broadsheet
shows some men that pull the elephant’s tail, another appears to push and
prod the elephant, another measures its head, and another appears to bow
as the animal passes by. Two elderly women watch from a window; one of
them points at the animal.
The description in the Escorial of the mahout who took care of Hawa’i
describes the man as a “noble caballero.” The association between the mahout
and aristocracy was a commonplace, just as the association between the
elephant and aristocracy. The practice of giving an elephant the noble
moniker of “don” was the object of humor in one seventeenth-century
novel. In El diablo cojuelo (The Limping Devil, 1641) by Luis Vélez de Guevara
(1579–1644), a character sits atop a tower and watches the goings-on in
Madrid. He offers a scathing critique of everyday life in Madrid. The narrator
points out a mahout bringing an elephant to the Puerta del Sol and lambasts
the relative ease in which people christen themselves into the nobility by
appropriating the label “Don”:
Other elephants are usually called don Pedros, don Juanes and don
Alonsos. I just don’t know how the mahout, or nair as they call them in
India, can make such a mistake. Such an animal is nothing more than
a commoner and the label “don” is falsely put upon it. By god, I will get
rid of that label because a “don” on an elephant for me takes away the
sacredness and privilege of the title.6
The Spanish and Portuguese typically referred to mahouts as “nairs” in the

early modern period, a word that, in the Indian context, refers to the Nair
(or Nayar) people, a group of Hindu castes that lived and live in the Indian
state today known as Kerala. In the sixteenth century, the Nair peoples lived
in various kingdoms, most notably, from the point of view of the Iberians,
Calicut and Cochin, the kingdoms known for pepper production.7
After the Escorial, Philip decided to make Hawa’i a spectacle for the
public for nine years in the Antón Martín Hospital in Madrid. Afterwards,
in 1591, Philip II dispatched Hawa’i as a gift to the new Bourbon King of
France, Henry IV (1553–1610, r. 1589–1610). After a year, Henry IV grew tired
of Hawa’i’s upkeep and unloaded him as a gift to Queen Elizabeth of England
(1533–1603, r. 1558–1603) in 1592 (Rice 2017; Lach 1970, II: 155). One study of
Asian elephants found that males continue to gain weight throughout their
lives (Chapman and Mumby 2015). Elizabeth was not happy with Hawa’i
and complained that he kept growing. As English historian Anne Somerset
6 “Los más suelen llamarse […] don Pedros, don Juanes y don Alonsos. No sé cómo ha tenido
tanto descuido su ayo o naire, como lo llaman los de la India Oriental; plebeyo debía de ser
este animal, pues ha llegado tan tarde al don. Vive Dios que me le he de quitar yo, porque me
desbautizan y desdonan los que veo” (Vélez de Guevara 2019, 23).
7 The role of non-European keepers, and their status within society more widely, merits
further attention. For nineteenth-century African lion-tamers in Britain, see Cowie 2014.
writes: “Her Majesty was not content with the sending of the elephant”
(qtd. Somerset 2010, 486). Elizabeth, no doubt, like Henry IV in England
and Philip II in Spain, did not wish to concern herself with the welfare of
the animal. Captive elephants usually die by forty years of age and it seems
that Hawa’i, who survived journeys from Mughal India to Spain to France,
probably died in England of neglect at around thirteen years old.
Abada (1573–ca. 1591)
Abada arrived in Lisbon five years before Hawa’i. About nine Indian rhinos
arrived in Europe before 1800. Only two, possibly three, rhinos survived
transport to Europe in the sixteenth century. All the rhinos, like Hawa’i and
the other nineteen or so elephants, were from India. Many scholars have
studied Ganda, the first rhino to arrive alive to Europe in the early modern
period, but none has examined Abada, the only rhinoceros to have lived
long term in captivity in Europe in the sixteenth century.8
Abada was a single-horned Indian rhino, the largest of the five rhino
species and the most difficult to train. As opposed to the popularity of the
broadsheet Rhinoceros, by Dürer, that shows Ganda’s altered image, only
one printed image of Abada was made in the sixteenth century. Philip Galle
(1537–1612), a printer and publisher in Antwerp, took a now-lost sketch of
Abada and, like Dürer, made Abada, a copper engraving, and printed a
broadsheet (fig. 3).9 Galle did not alter the rhino’s body with armor like
8 For a history of captive rhinos, see Rookmaaker 1973, and Rookmaaker, et al. 1998. One of the
best sources for the history of the rhinoceros in Spain is an unpublished manuscript by Martín
Sarmiento (1695–1771). Sarmiento begins “Noticias de un cuerno del rinoceronte” (“News about
a Rhinoceros Horn”, ca. 1762) by stating that he was inspired by a horn bought from a dealer
in Madrid—“the horn I have now on my desk” (“el cuerno que tengo sobre la mesa” [357]). He
then writes nearly 350 pages devoted to sources that describe the rhinoceros from antiquity to
the present. He provides invaluable sources on Abada, especially in the section titled “Testigos
oculares de Rhinozeronte” (“Rhino Eyewitnesses,” 383 ff.).
9 One of Galle’s printed broadsheets of Abada is found in Museo de Historia de Madrid. A
list of other extant Galle broadsheets is found in Faust 2003, 5. Lazarus Roeting (or Rotingus)
(1549–1614) engraved and copied Galle’s print. Roeting’s nephew Michael Rotenbeck (1568–1623)
included Roeting’s copy in Theatrum Naturae (The Theater of Nature, 1615). The inscription or
legend of Roeting’s copy of the Galle rhinoceros is a four-line handwritten textual abbreviation
of the text found in Galle’s block print inscription. Another copy Galle’s Rhinoceros was made
by Galle’s nephew, Collaert. One collection of Collaert’s prints includes nineteen hand-colored
plate engravings with a title page that depicts Orpheus charming and taming the birds and
beasts of the forest. The colored plate with Galle’s rhino (now in a private collection) includes
two elephants at its side.
Fig. 3. Abada (1586) by Philip Galle (private collection).
Dürer, who added rivets and an extra horn. Galle did, however, alter one
feature from the original sketch. As other painted images and sketches
of Abada from the period indicate, she had been dehorned. Galle, who
received an image of the rhinoceros without a horn, felt obliged to add a
horn. “Rhinoceros,” after all, means “nose horn” and even basic, standard
references like Officinae epitome (or Officina) by the French humanist Jean
Tixier de Ravisi (ca. 1480–1524) note, under the section “Diverse Animals,”
that “The rhinoceros has a horn on its nose.”10 Because he felt the need to
include its most basic feature, Galle added a horn. The thin version of the
horn in Abada, however, does not at all resemble the much thicker horn of
the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis).
The Flemish engraver Galle included seven lines of block print to Abada
and, thanks to that, I have been able to determine that Abada was born
in 1573. The text on the Galle broadsheet depiction states that she was
thirteen years old in 1586. Abada, like Hawa’i, has no recorded name in
the historical record. I am calling her Abada because that was the popular
word for rhinoceros in late sixteenth-century Europe. The word abada (and
its variation, bada) arrived into Portuguese, Spanish, and other European
10 “Rhinoceros unum habet in nare cornu” (Tixier de Ravisi 1559, 201).

languages derived from the Malay “badak” or “badoh,” pronounced “bada”

in certain dialects of Malay (Boxer 1953, 77–78). In Malaysia, badak referred
to a different and, today, much rarer species, the Javan or lesser one-horned
rhino (Rhinoceros sondicus). After the Portuguese established an important
trading post in Malaysia after the conquest of the Malacca Sultanate in 1511,
Portuguese descriptions of the region used abada and bada to describe
rhinos. When the same sailors travelled back to Portugal from Malacca,
they stopped in the port of Goa and also used abada or bada. Even though
badak referred to the rhinoceros from Java, at the time, sixteenth-century
Europeans used the word to describe rhinos in general and, most especially,
Abada, who was a Rhinoceros unicornis from India not Java, and who they
observed in Lisbon in 1578 and then in Madrid from 1583 to 1591.
While I suspect that Hawa’i was born in captivity in Akbar’s menagerie,
Abada was not. Even though Akbar might have had some captive rhinos, it
is most likely that Abada was taken by Akbar from her mother after she was
killed in a hunt, probably near the Yamuna river. Abada had depended on
her mother for suckling in the wild for two years. When she was orphaned
around three, Akbar took her and assigned her a mahout. Abada imprinted
herself on the mahout, her new mother, especially in her early years because
rhinos have a prolonged dependency on their mothers.
One miniature from a page from a manuscript from the late sixteenth
century provides a visual scenario for the hunt in which Abada was captured
(fig. 4). The miniature is from a lavish, fully illustrated edition of the Ba-
burnama (the Book of Babur, 1589) that Akbar commissioned to honor his
grandfather, Babur (1483–1530).11 The miniature shows how Babur’s retinue
hunted (using fire); which animals were used in the hunt (horses, a falcon,
and dogs); how the animal was processed on the spot (its head is saved and
various men butcher the rest of the animal); and how some rhinos escaped.
Two rhinos leave the scene in the foreground and six rhinos huddle in the
background behind the flames set by Babur’s retinue.
In the sixteenth century, rhinos were still hunted in northwestern India.
The artist drew Babur hunting rhinos from his imagination, some seven
decades after Babur entered India and founded the Mughal dynasty at the
beginning of the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, Indian rhinos were still
11 The miniature is taken from folio 21v from Baburnama by Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan.
Baburnama was a Farsi translation of Babur’s memoirs, originally written in Chagati Turki, and
Akbar’s courtier Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan assembled Baburnama. The original Baburnama
does not survive—the pages have been dispersed. For a list of museums where Baburnama’s
pages can be found and where later copies exist, as well as more Mughal rhino illustrations, see
Divyabhanusinh, Das, and Bose 2018, and Ettinghausen 1950.
Fig. 4. Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur hunting rhinos in Swati (1589) (Walters Art Museum,
Baltimore, Maryland).
hunted in the sixteenth century. The Baburnama notes live rhino sightings
when Babur entered Hindustan near the Swat river, the image depicted in the
illustration. The Baburnama also records hunts for live rhinos near Bigam,
Peshawar, Hashnagar, the Siyahab river, the Indus river, Bhera in Punjab,
and the Sangu river in the Kumaun region (Divyabhanusinh, Das, and Bose
2018). The westernmost limit of the sixteenth-century rhino habitat was
the eastern bank of the Yamuna, the place where Abada was likely born.
Prince Salim or Akbar’s son Jahangir (r. 1605–27), the 4th Mughal emperor,
boasts in his memoir about having killed sixty-five rhinos (Divyabhanusinh,
Das, and Bose 2018, 78). A watercolor drawing, Prince Salim at a Hunt (1600–4)
shows an alternative scenario in which Abada could have been taken captive
(fig. 5). The image shows the Mughal prince Jahangir killing a rhino with
a musket, while another young rhino’s life is spared. The image depicts
an expressive interchange between Jahangir, who shows the palm of his
hand—possibly wishing to kill the rhino—and the men on the ground, one
of whom guides the rhino with a stick, and who appear to point and plead
Jahangir to spare the young rhino’s life.
After her mother was killed, Abada would have been taken to Agra and
then sent off as a diplomatic gift in 1578. Hawa’i the elephant was a diplomatic
gift and part of a failed diplomatic mission between Akbar and Philip II
in 1582. In contrast, in 1578, Akbar also sent a diplomatic mission to the
Jesuits that was successful. As part of the 1578 ambassadorial mission, Akbar
sent Abada as a gift to the Portuguese viceroy Diogo de Menezes in Goa (r.
1576–8) along with other gifts and an accompanying letter by the Portuguese
Jesuit Pero Tavares. The letter that Akbar sent with Tavares shows off his
power by describing his control over a large number of massive animals.
The letter states:
Akbar is so powerful that there are 70 tributaries under him, with 300,000
horsemen and 20,000 elephants, besides 16,000 horses in the stable. He
has 14,000 deer out of which 4000 are brought up in the house and 700
domesticated panthers and 10,000 oxen to draw carts, and 500,000 birds.
Each day 1500 birds are slaughtered for food for the others. He has a postal
system, 20,000 men on horse to guard him, and 500 brave elephants to
guard the palace at night. (qtd. in Malekandathi 2013, 19)
Akbar’s letter requested a meeting with the Viceroy Menezes at the Mughal
court in Agra. Even though Akbar was vastly more economically and
politically powerful than the Portuguese (he conquered Gujarat in 1575),
he—just as in the later 1582 envoy to Philip II—wished to establish contact
Fig. 5. Prince Salim at a hunt (1600–4) (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles).
with the Portuguese in the hopes of an alliance against the Ottoman Turks
(Malekandathi 2013).
Akbar followed a significant precedent from earlier in the century when
he gifted the young, newly weaned Abada and her mahout. Muzaffar Shah
II (r. 1511–26) from Cambay in the Gujarat Sultanate in Northwest India sent
two sets of envoys of ambassadors to Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515),
first governor and founder of the Portuguese empire in India, under King
Manuel I (1469–1521; r. 1495–1521) (Yule and Burnell 1886, 363–4). In 1514,
Muzaffar’s envoy included Hanno the white elephant and, in 1517, a rhino,
the only other one to have survived the trip to sixteenth-century Europe and
who was also nameless, but affectionately called Ganda by many scholars.
“Ganda,” from the Sanskrit for rhinoceros, was used by many Portuguese
historians to describe the first rhinoceros brought to Portugal in the early
sixteenth century.
Akbar followed Muzaffar’s earlier model of gift-giving. He sent Abada to
Goa. The Portuguese exported rhino body parts for medicine in Europe, but
the appearance of a living rhino in Goa was a rarity. Garcia d’Orta (1501?– 68)
writes, for instance, that he never saw one alive in Goa: “I have not seen
any rhinoceros.”12 Orta, Diogo de Menezes, and the other Jesuit humanists
living in Goa knew of the immense fame that Muzaffar’s earlier rhino gift
of Ganda had after she arrived in Europe such as having inspired Dürer’s
Rhinoceros. Well aware of the uniqueness of new rhino in Europe to follow
on Ganda’s fame, they recognized the immense potential value of Abada.
Menezes loaded Abada, along with her mahout, onto a ship and sent them
to King Sebastian in Portugal.
Hawa’i and Abada’s overseas journey must have been harrowing. They
most likely travelled on a large three-mast vessel of 400 tons or more
developed by the Portuguese for transporting large cargoes across great
oceanic distances. The same type of boat was used by Vasco da Gama and
Christopher Columbus. Although the door may have had to have been
expanded, Hawa’i may have been led up a gangplank like horses were. A
model ship from the Naval Museum in Madrid shows how horses were led
up a plank into the hull of a ship.
Because she was more difficult to control than Hawa’i, the four-year-old
Abada may have been hoisted up and down from the vessel with ropes and a
pulley. One image from a sixteenth-century Tournai tapestry, the Arrival of
Vasco da Gama to Calicut or Cochin, on first glance, looks entirely fanciful. It
shows ornamental flowers where water should be and also a unicorn. Stylized
12 “eu não vi algum rinoceronte” (qtd. in Wicki 1970, 330 n.41).

tapestries form the late fifteenth century like The Lady of the Unicorn and
Unicorn Tapestries feature unicorns and thousands of small flowers. But
the Portuguese Tournai tapestry illuminates how animals were loaded in
vessels that traveled great distances along Portuguese trade routes, from
Europe, along the coast of Africa, to Goa, Malaysia, and then back again.
As sailors from Portugal made their way south along the west coast of
Africa around the Cape of Good Hope and into Asia, they often stopped
along the way and acquired live animals, such as birds, camels, and lions,
from markets in one port to sell in markets in another. One ship, the Bom
Jesus, left Lisbon for India in 1533 and sank near Oránjemund in Namibia in
southern Africa (it was found in 2008). It contained two tons of copper ingots
and 2,000 gold coins destined for the spice trade in Asia. A large number
of ivory tusks were on board, destined for markets in Goa, Cochin, and
Gujarat, probably collected en route along the West African coast (Jordan
Gschwend and Lowe 2015). It probably contained live animals, which also
would have been collected from the West African coast.
Many early European descriptions—notably, Marco Polo’s—referred to
the greater one-horned Indian rhino as a “unicorn.” The image of the unicorn
in Arrival of Vasco da Gama to Calicut or Cochin may provide insight on
how the weighty calf Abada was lifted into the ship when the Portuguese
vessel left from Goa toward Lisbon. Horses and smaller caged live animals
traveled below deck. Because of their size, Hawa’i and Abada traveled on
deck between the masts. Both animals would also have to be hobbled.
Trachtenbuch (The Book of Garments, 1530/1540) by Christoph Weiditz
(1498–1559) includes images of clothing and dress in sixteenth-century
Europe and as well as other images demonstrating, for example, how horses
were typically hobbled aboard ships. Even though they were below deck,
Weiditz’s image shows all four legs of the horse hobbled.
With respect to transporting elephants by ship, Bedini notes that even
the best behaved of elephants were hobbled. Some early images also show
Abada’s predecessor, Ganda, hobbled. Burgkmair’s woodcut image shows
ropes around the rhino’s front legs (fig. 6) and Penni’s woodcut of a rhino
shows metal shackles in the same place (fig. 7). I have circled each artist’s
rendition of how Ganda was hobbled.
Ganda’s death at sea in a storm was a well-known event in the sixteenth
century. Writers of popular books of emblems, such as Guillaume Rovillé
(ca. 1518–89) and Paulo Giovio (1483–1552) wrote that, after her ship sank
near Portovenere, Ganda was unable to swim because her legs were hobbled.
Both emblem books also note that the Pope ordered Ganda’s portrait and
gathered her remains, which were sent to Rome (Rovillé 1561, 48).
Fig. 6. Hobbled Ganda. Rhinoceros (1515) by Hans Burgkmair the Elder (Albertina Museum, Vienna).
Circle added by author.
The images and descriptions of Ganda provide evidence that Abada was
also probably hobbled to be kept at bay while on board the ship. Hawai’i
and Abada were given room on the vessel. In transporting horses, traders
allowed a prize horse some eight times more room that that given to a slave
(Ridley 2004, 8). Other domestic animals traveled with them to supply the
sailors with food. The log of one ship with the rhino for Versailles notes the
rhino had become tolerant of the presence of a goat, which it would allow
to eat hay from between its legs (Ridley 2004, 9). A canvas canopy would
have been rigged over the cage to keep the sun off Hawa’i and Abada. A cage
would have also been necessary for Abada. With Hawa’i and Abada on board,
the ship’s ballast became uneven, with the weight in the ship shifting from
the bottom to the top and making sea travel more precarious. The secured
iron cage on the foredeck provided Abada a safe berth if the ship pitched
violently in waters, such as off the Cape of Good Hope or in storms.
Many animals died during transportation on the transoceanic journey.
They experienced delays in ports and a confined space. Five degrees north
and south of the equator, ships experienced the doldrums in which winds
stagnate. Sailors often called the region “horse latitudes” because the sailors
threw horses overboard to get rid of ballast. Portuguese ships from Goa took
about 120 days with layovers in Mozambique, St. Helena, and on the Azores.
From 1500 to 1634, an estimated 28% of all Portuguese ships that sailed the
Fig. 7. Hobbled Ganda. Frontispiece for “Forma e natura e costume de lo Rinocerote” (1515) by
Giovanni Giacomo Penni (Biblioteca Capitular Colombina, Seville, sign.: 6-3-29[29])
(Copyright Cabildo Catedral de Sevilla). Circle added by author.
Indian Ocean trade routes were lost at sea (Strobel 2015). An Indian rhino
died en route to London in 1737. Another Indian rhino died aboard a ship
to Amsterdam in 1677 and, when James Douglas visited Leiden in 1739, he
saw the stuffed body of that rhino (Clarke 1986, 42).
The hull of the ship that Hawa’i and Abada travelled in would have
been filled with spices. Giovanni Giacomo Penni’s poem “Forma e natura
e costume de lo Rinocerote” (“The Shape, the Nature, and the Way of the
Rhinoceros,” 1515) purports to describe Ganda the rhinoceros. Instead, the
poem focuses on the humming commerce of consumer goods, especially
animals and plant products arriving from Asia. The poet begins by mention-
ing the origin of the energetic activity in Lisbon: “I hear that from Kolkata”
three boats have arrived.13 It mentions that the rhino arrived with other
creatures, including monkeys and baboons. It also mentions rare gems and
pearls. But the poem is principally dedicated to plant products on the laden
three-boat fleet. The poem describes pepper, ginger, myrrh, and sandalwood,
used as scents for courtesans, for food preparation, and for medicine.
Ganda had lived in Lisbon for the less than a year when Manuel I sent her
to the Pope as a gift. As part of the Pope’s gift package, Manuel I filled the
ship with spices from the Asian spice trade to offset the weight of the ship
carrying the 3,000-pound animal. As Silvio Bedini notes, the ship carrying
Ganda that sank in the Mediterranean also carried well over 3000 pounds
of pepper, cloves and cinnamon, ginger, aromatic nutmeg, ordinary nutmeg,
kevel pepper, and benzoin, the substance used in early modern medicine,
as well as to make incense (Bedini 1998, 126).
Portuguese sailors became experienced in animal care along the routes.
Abada and Hawa’i’s primary caregivers, however, were not the sailors, but
their mahouts. Abada and Hawa’i would not have survived without the bonds
of a human companion. Cristóbal Acosta (1515–1594) provides an example
of their physical and emotional bond: “elephants fear the night and, after
falling asleep, suddenly wake up with a fright and are afraid. Because of this,
their mahouts [who are called Nairs] sleep on top of them and speak to them
to calm their sleep.”14 Two students, Caleb Lightfoot and Yinting Fin, and I
created an image, Abada and Her Mahout on the High Seas, in which Abada’s
mahout sleeps in a covered cage on the ship’s deck (fig. 8). We have overlaid
the hand drawn image with a painted image of vessels from the period.15
Hawa’i and Abada’s mahouts were in charge of feeding on board. Bedini
notes that the famed white elephant Hanno was around two years old and
13 “Sento di Calicute” (Penni 2006, 160).

14 “son los elefantes muy temerosos de noche: y cuando duermen, despiertan con ímpetu y
temor despertándose. Por lo cual, sus maestros [que se llaman Nayres] duermen sobre ellos y
estánles hablando, impidiendo el sueño” (Acosta 1578, 436).
15 Compare with other visual renderings of rhinos on early modern ships such as Clara on a
Dutch vessel (Winters 2017, 151) and Walton Ford’s Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros (2008), which
shows Ganda about to drown on a Portuguese vessel.
Fig. 8. Abada and Her Mahout on the High Seas (2018) by Caleb Lightfoot and Yinting Fin.
accompanied by two mahouts who took care of his every basic need when
he was transported. The Portuguese viceroy Albuquerque specified that his
two mahouts on the ship should feed him hay and twenty liters of cooked rice
a day and that butter or oil was to be used to anoint his skin. The mahouts
anointed the animal to keep the skin soft and pliable in preparation for its
long exposure to salt air during the voyage (Bedini 1998, 31–32).
The first sixteenth-century image of Abada upon her arrival to Europe is
from an anonymous artist in a manuscript about the history of Portuguese
kings, attributed to Pedro de Andrade Caminha (1520–89) (found in a private
collection). The image in the manuscript shows, standing in a field with
a palace in the background, a lifelike Indian rhinoceros, especially in the
details of the folds on its skin, its large ears, and three-toed feet. A mahout
holds a long hook—a version of the ankusha—upright in his left hand,
standing beside the animal. The man is dark-skinned and is dressed with
a hat and an orange cloak. The text that accompanies this image provides
the inspiration for the image of Abada that my students and I made, since
it states that the mahout “slept by her side.”16
The text about Abada from the manuscript also gives details about her
demeanor and how she was fed: “she is very tame” and “eats everything you
feed her, even little stones, as well as hay, oats, wheat, and other legumes.”17
Abada most likely survived by eating great quantities of the foods supplied to
domestic animals. Glynis Ridley provides the life history of another Indian
rhinoceros in Europe in Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in
Eighteenth-Century Europe (2004). Like Abada, Clara (ca. 1738–58) was born
in India. Unlike Abada, Clara, who arrived in Rotterdam in 1741, traveled
on tour throughout Europe. She traveled from Denmark to Italy and later
died in London. Clara, like Abada, weighed about three tons and needed
prodigious quantities of food and drink—around 150 pounds a day.
Hawa’i and his mahout arrived in Lisbon from Goa in 1582. In turn, Abada
and her mahout arrived in Lisbon in 1578. Abada lived in Lisbon for five
years, where one visitor from Italy called her the “Marvel of Lisbon” (Jordan
Gschwend and Lowe 2015). In Lisbon, Abada had the benefit of a water
habitat. Indian rhinos favor wetlands and spend plenty of time in cool water,
grazing on grasses near wet areas, especially succulent and juicy aquatic
plants. Abada frequently bathed in the Tagus River. An account from two
Venetian visitors to the city state that she “would raise herself, plunge into
and wade through the water; it was stupefying to watch this great beast”
(qtd. in Jordan Gschwend and Lowe 2015, 157n.4). When Philip was living
in Lisbon, Philip delighted in observing Abada. One manuscript notes that,
in 1582, he asked for the animal to be sent to him: “as soon as he arrives
to Abrantes, his Majesty wants them to send the rhinoceros that he had
enjoyed seeing previously.”18
When he moved back to Madrid in 1583, Philip transported Abada, like
Hawa’i, to stables near his palace Alcázar. One royal document denotes that
the locksmith Benito Hernández was contracted in 1583 for the “house for
the rhinoceros” (Pérez de Tudela and Jordan Gschwend 2007, 443 n.87 and
n.88). I suspect that Abada’s stable was also near the Alcázar, like Hawa’i’s,
and that it was located on the present-day Abada Street. Hawa’i and Abada
had been transported from Lisbon to Madrid, and then were transported
16 “por dormir a par dele” (qtd. in Fontes da Costa 2009, 79).

17 “E muito mansa e vagorosa. Come quanto lhe dao. Silicet. Palha cevada trigo e os mais
legumes” (qtd. in Fontes da Costa 2009, 79).
18 “sua Magestade quer que tanto que embora for em Abrantes […] lhe mande aly a bada que
fogara de a ver” (qtd. in Bouza 1998, 191).
from Madrid to the Escorial. After briefly housing Hawa’i and Abada in 1583
near his palace in Madrid, Philip brought both animals to the Escorial about
thirty miles away. Moving both animals, especially Abada, across even this
relatively short stretch of land would have been filled with technical dif-
ficulties. She was probably caged and pulled in a specially made cart by oxen
or strong horses. In her narration of Clara’s life, Glynis Ridley recreates the
specific cart that had to be created when the Dutch rhino was transported
for public viewing across Europe.
After they moved from Lisbon, the quality of Hawa’i and Abada’s caretak-
ing diminished. The historical sources do not mention Hawa’i’s mahout
after the Escorial visit and Abada most likely killed the mahout who arrived
with her in Lisbon. Abada arrived to the Escorial a few days after Hawa’i.
Philip’s historian at the Escorial writes: “On October 16, 1583, they placed the
rhinoceros in the patio by order of his Majesty and, since the animal arrived
overheated, they put a number of buckets of water on its body and head. It
then rolled on the ground and gave happy-sounding moans.”19 Abada was
difficult to feed: “It is an ugly and melancholy animal. It appears armored.
It is ungrateful and unfriendly and it does not recognize those who want
to do it well, so it must be fed by putting the feed behind it.”20
Things turned for the worse for Abada at the Escorial. The Portuguese,
with more direct experience in India, seemed to have provided an environ-
ment for Abada that more directly fit her behaviors. Although rhinos have
good hearing and an excellent sense of smell, blinding a rhino is of little
consequence since the animal’s eyesight is already quite poor. Nonetheless,
Vincent Leblanc (1554–1640), a French traveler and trader who visited El
Escorial, describes her blinding and the removal of her horn:
The difficulty was in the execution [of cutting off the horn] for they were
constrained to put him [sic] in a close place to bind him [sic] which was
done with so much trouble and danger that nothing more; for he [sic]
wounded and maimed divers: there was one Casabuena, a bold resolute
man who to prevent danger, put an armor of proof under his cassock, the
beaste came upon him with such force, that he threw him against the
19 “En 16 de octubre de 83 metieron por mandado de Su Majestad el rinoceronte en el jardín

para verle desde allí, y como venía caluroso le echaron en el cuerpo y cabeza muchos cubos de
agua con que se refresco, y de contento se revolcó en el suelo y gimió” (Salvá y Sainz de Baranda
1845, 368).
20 “Es animal feo, melancólico y triste, esta como armado, es animal ingrato y desconocido
que no conoce a los que le hacen bien, porque para darle de comer, se lo echan por detrás del”
(Salvá y Sainz de Baranda 1845, 368).
wall with such violence he was carried forth for dead, bleeding both at
mouth and nose. The Duke of Medina advised the king to kill him [sic]
with a musket because he had maimed a gentleman. (LeBlanc 1660, 160)21
The Duke of Medina recommended that Philip execute the rhino because
of its bad behavior. Philip ordered that her eyes be cut out and horn cut off,
but ignored the Duke’s advice to execute the animal.
Images and accounts from those who later visited Abada at the General
Hospital later confirm the Escorial incident. Diego de Funes y Mendoza
(1560–1625), a translator of Aristotle’s treatise on animals, mentions: “there
was another rhinoceros in Madrid in 1585. When I went to see it, they had
removed its eyes to prevent it from causing injury.”22 The lexicographer
Sebastián de Covarrubias (1539–1613) also writes: “in our days they brought
21 Although some of the seventeenth-century account of LeBlanc’s world travels was made up,
his story of the rhino in the Escorial is an authentic account from his personal diary as collected
by Pierre Bergeron, who knew Vincent le Blanc when he was alive and published LeBlanc’s notes
and memoir (Atkinson 1922). I am convinced of the veracity of the rhino account at the Escorial
since LeBlanc provides details of the event that coincide with the events as described in other
contemporary sources. He also references a man from the obscure, but existent, Casabuena noble
line, a detail that only an eyewitness could muster, and the chronology of his travels suggested
that he would have been in Spain at this time. The passage in French reads: “La difficulté fut à
executer cela; car on fut contraint de se mettre en un lieu renfermé pour le lier, ce qui se fit auec
tant de peine & de danger que rien plus, il en bleffa & estroupia plesieurs. Il y eut un homme
braue & resolu, nomé Casabuena, qui s’arma d’une cuirasse à l’espreuue sous fa casaque, pour
euiter tout inconvenient: la beste l’atteignit de telle forte, qu’elle le ietta contre la muraille si
rudement qu’il sut remporté comme mort, iettant le fang par la bouche & par la nez. Le Duc de
Medine conseilloit au Roy de le faire tuer à coups de mousquet, pource qu’il auoit estropié un
de ses Gentils-homme, nommé le Cavalier Mortel; mais le Roy ne le voulut permettre, & enfin
apres beaucoup de peine on en vint à bout, & eut les yeux creuez, & le corne coupée” (LeBlanc
1648, 242). In Diálogos de contención entre la Milicia y la Ciencia (Contentious Dialogues between
the Military and Science, 1614), Francisco Núñez de Velasco also states that “it was necessary to
remove” Abada’s eyes. Núñez de Velasco’s account of the incident, however, differs from LeBlanc’s:
“Desta especie vimos uno en la corte de su magestad, al qual fue necesario sacar los ojos por
la persecución que hacía a los caballos onde quiera que los veía y yendo en seguimiento de un
caballo en la ciudad de Lisboa donde a la razón estaba el Rey don Felipe Segundo de gloriosa
memoria nuestro señor iba el rinoceronte con tanta velocidad en la corrida tras el caballo que
dio de encuentro con la testera y el cuerno en la copa y edificio de una famosa fuente que por
ser obra de uno de los reyes de Portugal es muy costosa y de notable curiosidad y del encuentro
la debarató y deshizo” (Núñez de Velasco 1614, 16). I suspect that Núñez de Velasco’s account
about Abada was a popular legend because it was written over twenty years after the eyewitness
account in the Escorial.
22 “En Madrid hubo otro rinoceronte el año de mil y quinientos y ochenta y cinco, que fue
cuando le vi, al cual le habían sacado los ojos porque no hiciese mal” (Funes y Mendoza 1621,
180).
King Philip II, may he rest in peace, a rhinoceros that was in Madrid for a
long time. Its horn was cut off and it was blind to not cause injury.”23
A gem engraver working in Philip II’s court observed Abada firsthand and
depicted Abada without her horn. Jacopo da Trezzo (ca. 1514–89) created
a lifelike image of Abada on a gem cameo, crafted on sardonyx—an agate
with straight and parallel banding (Jordan Gschwend 2017, 209). Trezzo had
served Philip II in the Netherlands and England and, in the 1580s, he worked
on a variety of royal projects, including the Escorial. His cameo suggests
that Abada’s horn had been removed, but a stump in its place indicates that
one may have been growing again.24
Female rhinos are solitary creatures and, when protecting their territory
against intrusion, they, like their male counterparts, can be tough and
aggressive, particularly during the estrus cycle every four months or so.
Covarrubias writes that Abada may have killed one or two people: “Her
caretakers act with great uneasiness because she had already killed one or
two of them.”25 Aside from her original mahout, Abada most likely killed
the nobleman at the Escorial. Moreover, Hans Khevenhüller (1538–1606),
the ambassador for the Holy Roman Emperor in the Spanish court, confirms
that she killed a member of Philip’s court: “Even though its horn has been
cut down off its snout, it does not cease to kick and maltreat people around
it. Recently, it killed a man in front of the Palace.”26 Another source suggests
Abada’s aversion to horses. An English–Spanish lexicon (1599) by John
Minsheu (1560–1627) has an entry for abada that indicates familiarity with
Abada in Madrid: “It is an enemy to the horse, so that when he [sic] seeth
him, he [sic] maketh al haste, and with swift runing overtaketh and killeth
him” (Nieto Jiménez 2007, 1, 6).
Following classical descriptions of the rhino such as those of Pliny (23–79
CE), writers from the period, like playwright Lope de Vega (1562–1635),
23 “En nuestros días trajeron al rey Felipe II, que santa gloria haya, una bada, que por mucho
tiempo estuvo en Madrid; tenía aserrado el cuerno y estaba ciega, porque no hiciese daño”
(Covarrubias 1998, 499).
24 Trezzo may have had two freed black slaves who helped create the gem cameo of Abada.
In addition to two elephants, Catherine of Portugal gifted Philip II two black slaves, Diego and
Juan. When the heir Prince Carlos died, Philip II set Diego and Juan free. Diego and Juan could
have been involved in helping Trezzo create the gem cameo of Abada because they began to
work for Jacopo Trezzo when they were set free (Pérez de Tudela and Jordan Gschwend 2001, 16
n.115).
25 “y curaban de ella con mucho recato por el peligro de los que la tenían a su cargo; de los
cuales mató uno o dos” (Covarrubias 1998, 499).
26 “Aunque le cortan el cuerno que trae sobre el hocico, no deja de atropellar y tratar mal las
gentes. Y mató el otro día uno delante del palacio” (qtd. in Staudinger and Irblich 1996, 265).
describe all rhinos as prone to attack, most especially as having a supposed

natural animosity toward the elephant. Pliny’s comments that the rhino
was ferocious and often killed the elephant through impaling it through
the soft underbelly, a fable echoed throughout the sixteenth century, are
untrue. In general, the two animals are not mutual predators (they avoid
each other) and no evidence exists that a rhino has ever killed an elephant.
Despite their obstinacy and periodic aggression, the single-horned Indian
rhino is, most of the time, calm and passive, even in captivity. Eyewitness
accounts of Abada note that she was generally docile. Francisco Vélez de
Arciniega, a Spanish pharmacist who had rhino horn in his pharmaceutical
cabinet as a remedy, describes Abada when she first arrived to Madrid:
“she did not dare eat or drink.”27 But, he concludes, “as time passed, she did
not only eat hay and oats that was put in her trough but, if someone took
a handful of that hay, she opened her mouth so one could put it inside.”28
The animal taxonomist Buffon’s firsthand experience with an Indian rhino
is instructive. An Indian rhino was held in the private menagerie at the
Palace of Versailles and, after the Revolution, it became part of Paris’s first
public zoo (Pequignot 2013; Rookmaaker 1983). Buffon regularly visited the
rhinoceros and mentioned that he fed and caressed the animal.
Most of the sketches of Hawa’i and Abada are now lost. But two anony-
mous and nearly identical oil paintings that depict Abada exist in Vienna.
Both images show Abada without a horn, with no added background features
(Jordan Gschwend 2015). A 1584 image of Abada appears in Adam Hochre-
itner’s diary in Innsbruck. Adam Hochreiter was a chamberlain and agent
for collecting animals for Archduke Ferdinand II. Hochreiter compiled his
travel records in the form of a diary and he wrote observations about animals
such as those in Philip’s menagerie in Aranjuez. Philip constructed an aviary
for exotic birds and ostriches in Aranjuez in 1584. Hochreiter described the
hedges in Aranjuez as cut in the shape of animals; he also noted its large
aviary and camel breeding station—with seventeen specimens. At Aranjuez,
Hochreiter saw two ostriches, five flamingos, as well as white peacocks,
Indian ducks, pigeons, guinea pigs, Indian swallows with red beaks, and a
“very small parrot, the size of a Eurasian bullfinch” (qtd. in Haag 2015, 123).
Aside from Aranjuez, Hochreiter went to Madrid in 1584 and saw Hawa’i
and Abada. He painted or purchased a watercolor painting of Abada
27 “aun no osaban darle de comer, ni beber” (Vélez de Arciniega 1613, 49).

28 “curóle el tiempo de manera que no solamente comía la paja y cebada que le echaban en los
pesebres mas si alguno cogía un puñado de la dicha paja, abría la boca para que se la echasen
dentro” (Vélez de Arciniega 1613, 49).
dehorned on a sort of elevated island. He notes in his diary that Abada was
accustomed to seeing people but was skittish around other animals: “in
Madrid I saw a young elephant as well as another monstrous animal called
a rhinoceros […] This animal doesn’t do anything to people, but it is not at
all nice to the horses, donkeys and other animals” (qtd. Haag 2015, 123; also
see Jordan Gschwend and Lowe 2015).29
La Casa del Campo, a forest-rich park that would be used for the Madrid
Zoo and Philip II’s garden and choice hunting grounds in the northwestern
vicinity of Madrid not far from the Alcázar palace, also held Abada after
she died in 1591. Abada’s remains were considered highly valuable. In order
to preserve the animal, first her flesh would have to be processed, most
likely butchered and eaten, like bull meat. Then, her skin would have to be
preserved in an improvised taxidermy method. Jakob Cuelvis (known as
Diego de Cuelbis in Spain, 1574–?), a German student, visited Madrid in May
of 1599 and saw Abada’s preserved body not far from where she was displayed
while alive. In his travel account, Thesoro Chorographico de las Espannas
(Chorographic Treasure of the Spanish Kingdoms), Cuelvis describes the Casa
del Campo: “There are many fish and swans swimming in the ponds. There
is a rhinoceros and elephant dead for more than eight years.”30
Philip put Abada’s body on display, next to another unidentified desic-
cated elephant. Taxidermy techniques were crude and undeveloped, but
monarchs and elites in Europe in the sixteenth century had their prized
animals stuffed and made them appear lifelike. Pope Leo X had Hanno the
elephant stuffed, and he also received a stuffed European bison as a gift.31
The second elephant that Philip gifted to his son died in Vienna in the
menagerie of Maximilian II (1527–76). After the elephant, affectionately
called Süleyman by Anne Marie Jordan Gschwend, died in 1553, Maximilian
II ordered the hide dried out and stuffed with straw. Two years later, a visitor
saw Süleyman on display in the King’s garden mounted by a mannequin of
an Indian mahout (Jordan Gschwend 2010, 33). In the Medici Boboli Gardens
in Florence, a chamber was filled with lifelike taxidermized displays of the
most prized animals from the menagerie (Groom 2019, 105). While Hansken
29 “zu Madrid ein iungen Elefanten, gleichfals ain ander groß ungeheüer Their genant Rinocero,
auf Spänisch La Abada gesehen, […] Dises Their thuet dem menschen nichts, Aber dem pferdten
Eseln un anndren thieren ist es gar gramb” (qtd. Haag 2015, 132–3).
30 “Hay una grande cuantidad de pescados y muchos cisnes nadando por los estanques. Hay
un rinoceronte y elefante muertos antes de ocho años” (qtd. in Checa Cremades 1992, 39-40).
For Diego de Cuelbis, see Domínguez Ortiz 1969.
31 For Hanno the elephant as taxidermy specimen, see Bedini 1998. For the stuffed bison, see
Booth 2019.
the elephant toured Europe, he died in Florence. The Medici Grand Duke
Ferdinando II (1610–70) ordered the skeleton and skin of Hansken be put
on display at the Uffizi Gallery (Groom 2019, 25n.1).32
After Philip II died in 1598, Abada’s remains were moved from the Casa
de Campo to the royal collections and kept in the Royal Treasury. Five
years later, Antonio Voto, the Royal Treasurer to King Philip III (1578–1621, r.
1598–1621) negotiated with Hans Khevenhüller, the ambassador to Rudolf II,
the Holy Roman Emperor (1552–1612, r. 1576–1612) who desperately wanted
Abada’s remains. In a letter dated December 6, 1603, Voto states that, the
day before, the King went to the Royal Treasury to see what remained of
the rhinoceros, Abada, and the elephant (the unknown specimen from
the Casa de Campo) in the Royal Treasury. Voto makes no mention of any
elephant remains but states that he “sent the partial horn” from Abada to
Khevenhüller.33 Rhino horns can grow back after removal (if the skull is
not damaged), so, in 1603, Khevenhüller would have sent Rudolf Abada’s
newly grown horn that she had when she died.
After searching the Royal Treasury, Antonio Voto found more of Abada’s
bones. Hans Khevenhüller reported to Rudolf the success of the negotiation
in obtaining the rest of Abada’s remains. On December 20, 1603, Khevenhüller
wrote the following to Antonio Voto:
today upon your instructions they handed over to me the rhino’s partial
horn […] I am quite sad that her skin has not been found—I have no doubt
your account of its deterioration is correct. I am thus asking you to hand
over to me the rest of the rhino’s bones so that I can include them with
the others that you gave me today so I can send them all to my king the
emperor. That would greatly please me.34
32 Other early modern taxidermy animals include numerous rhinos and a hippo. The collection
of Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa (1607–81) in Spain and the Gresham College London Museum
in England contained a number of stuffed rhinos. For a hippopotamus as taxidermy specimen
in the Medici collection, see Groom 2019, 248. For improvised taxidermy practice across time
and place, see Poliquin 2012. Also see Parker-Starbuck 2015 and Chapter 2.
33 “un cuerno chato de la Bada” (qtd. in Staudinger and Irblich 1996, 266). Also see Belozerskaya
2006, and Haupt, et al. 1990, 245 n. 21. For Khevenhüller and the Spanish, see Jordan Gschwend
2020.
34 “Hoy me han entregado por parte de Vuestra Merced el cuerno chato de La Bada […] y
pésame mucho que no ha aparecido el cuero de la Bada. Sin duda habrá pasado con lo que
vuestra merced dice. Así mismo suplico a Vuestra Merced me la haga de mandar me entregar
también los demás huesos de la Bada que quedan para que los pueda enviar juntos con los otros
que vuestra merced me envió hoy al emperador mi señor y será muy grande para mí” (qtd. in
Staudinger and Irblich 1996, 267).
Antonio Voto responded: “I already sent you the rest of Abada’s bones. There
are over 130 pieces.”35
Khevenhüller sent Abada’s remains to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna.
Rudolf II would have added Abada’s body parts to his already large collection
of rhino horns and body parts. One of Rudolf’s most prized possessions in his
massive collection was a large rhinoceros horn, mounted with filigree gold
bands set with precious stones (still extant in Vienna). Rudolf II was extremely
pleased to receive what he calls a “beautiful piece” as a gift from Empress
Maria of Portugal, who had, in turn, received the previous horn as a gift from a
Portuguese relative in Braganzas in 1582 (Pérez de Tudela and Jordan Gschwend
2001, 15). As evidence of Rudolf’s great esteem for rhino body parts, he had one
of his artists paint a rhino horn, as well as a tooth and piece of rhino skin, that
he included in the manuscript that contains the list of objects in his collections.
This manuscript can now be found in the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
Rudolf II never realized his lifelong desire to obtain Philip II’s pachyderms
alive. Rudolf chose two colored images of Philip’s rhino and elephant, based
on lost sketches of Hawa’i and Abada, for the first two pages of the inventory
of his massive collection. Khevenhüller sent Rudolf II at least one image of
Abada with a shipment of other rare collectables. Rudolf, however, never
obtained the live rhino, nor Abada’s supposed armor-like skin.
If Philip II had still been alive, he probably would not have given Abada’s
rotting remains to Rudolf. Philip II had kept two small rhino horns, inherited
from Charles V, in his private wardrobe. When Maria of Austria, who Philip
held in highest esteem, asked him to send her a piece, he only conceded a piece
of the horn the size of a small coin (Pérez de Tudela and Jordan Gschwend
2001, 15). His son Philip III, nonetheless, sent what remained of Abada to
Rudolf. Antonio Voto reports that Abada had rotted away: “we have not been
able to locate the hide of the rhinoceros. His Excellency the Duke of Lerma
gave me permission to inquire about the hide and I have discovered that,
since it was not properly preserved, it became swollen with worms and has
wasted away.”36 Abada’s skin decomposed by 1603. The skin from the only
living rhino on public display in the sixteenth century had decomposed, in
radically bitter contrast to the continued survival of the image of armor as
skin on Dürer’s Rhinoceros.
35 “Mir hat der Antonio Voto des Königs guarda joyas alberait die gepain von der Bada ange-
hendigt. Der sien über 130 stück” (qtd. in Staudinger and Irblich 1996, 266).
36 “no se ha podido hallar cuero de la Bada. El Señor Duque de Lerma me envió a mandar hiciese
diligencia en saber del y lo que he podido averiguar es que, como no se aderezó. Se hinchó de
gusanos y se perdió” (qtd. in Staudinger and Irblich 1996, 265).
Two Hospitals in Madrid
Louis XIV’s private Versailles menagerie was converted into the Jardin des
Plantes in 1793 after the French Revolution—effectively turning a menagerie
for aristocratic elites into Europe’s first modern zoo for the at-large public.37
The design of Europe’s first modern zoo, the Jardin des Plantes near Paris,
shares an important connection with a nearby hospital. Both the original
layout of the Jardin des Plantes and its neighboring General Hospital were
designed by the same architect, Louise Le Vau (1612–70). Le Vau designed
Louis’s menagerie at Versailles (1662) and, at the same time, began plans for
the consolidation of five hospitals into a single General Hospital (Salpêtrière
1656; Senior 2019). The consolidation of a group of older hospitals into a
single General Hospital in the same place as an area for observing animals
was not the first time that the architecture of a hospital combined with
animal spectacle. Philip II chose two hospitals as the place where people
could observe Hawa’i and Abada.
In the medieval and early modern contexts, hospitals provided “hospital-
ity.” They provided lodging; they were a place for the impoverished sick
to be healed; and they provided food for the poor. In the early modern
Spanish empire, hospitals also served the needs of the burgeoning public
interested in theater. As in seventeenth-century France, sixteenth-century
Spain consolidated Madrid’s hospitals into a single General Hospital and
also used the space to display animals.
Philip II could have put Abada and Hawa’i in one of his royal menageries:
with the swans in the Casa de Campo, or the camels in Aranjuez that he bred
not far from the fields he used to breed sixteenth-century Spain’s most famous
wild bulls. He could have sent them off to tour major cities like the Dutch
did with Clara the rhinoceros and Hansken the elephant in the seventeenth
century. Indeed, Hans Khevenhüller remarks to Rudolf II that Philip II con-
sidered a tour as a possible spectacle. Khevenhüller explains that Philip first
ordered Hawa’i and Abada “be taken to Seville and other parts of Spain so that
he could profit from them.”38 But Philip II decided against that idea because
of the great difficulty of a travelling with the animals, especially the rhino.
Philip II first put the rhino and elephant near the Alcazar in the center of
Madrid, where he had lions and other exotic animals, including birds and at
37 See, for instance, Robbins 2002, 206–30.

38 “dio la licencia para llevarlos a Sevilla y otras partes de España, para ganar con ellos, no es
poca merced si él lo sabe encaminar, por como la Bada es bestia tan fiera, no sé cómo se podrá
avenir con ella” (qtd. in Staudinger and Irblich 1996, 265).
least one llama.39 He then moved them briefly to the Escorial. Having just
experienced Abada’s rage at the Escorial, Khevenhüller writes, with regard
to the possibility of moving her across the country: “as the rhinoceros is so
savage, I do not see how they will be able to manage her.”40
Philip II’s choice of commercializing the spectacle in a hospital was a
natural fit in the context of Madrid’s burgeoning theater culture. From
the monarchy’s perspective, one way to show imperial beneficence in the
new design of urban space in Madrid was through the creation of hospitals
for the poor. The most important hospital that linked to the formation of
commercial theater in Spain was Philip’s General Hospital. One of the city’s
principal planners, Alonso Francisco de Sotomayor (1523–91), writes in 1565
that he discussed with the King many times the need to reform the city
hospitals (Escobar 2004, 366). As part of the urban design project, Philip II
combined three older hospitals and founded Madrid’s General Hospital (in
1566), which took in hundreds of patients annually.
The location of Madrid’s first consolidated General Hospital under Philip II
was at the end of the Carrera de San Jerónimo (“Saint Geronimo Street”) and
the end of Prado Street on the east side of Madrid, directly on the opposite
side of the city from the Alcázar. In an early seventeenth-century history of
Madrid, Jerónimo de Quintana writes that the General Hospital was formed
by consolidating three houses near the Saint Geronimo monastery: They
used “some houses near the meadow [prado] by the Royal Saint Geronimo
Monastery […] and they founded [the General Hospital] in that place.”41
When Philip II reorganized Madrid’s hospitals, his act of beneficence was
not only an altruistic act for the city’s poor and sick. He linked the function
of the imperial Spanish hospital to theater, a newly created way for filling
royal coffers.
Theater in Madrid was more active than in any other city in sixteenth-
century Europe. Under Philip II, commercial theater became a thriving busi-
ness and part of the daily culture of Madrid. As opposed to the extramural
playhouses of London, the public theaters in Madrid (as well as in other
cities across the Spanish-speaking imperial world) were centrally located,
close to the city’s commercial center. In the case of Madrid, the Corral de
39 For the exotic birds and the 1562 description of a llama as an animal from Peru that resembles
“both a camel and a sheep” in Philip II’s Alcázar in Madrid, see Martínez Arranz 2011, 10-11 n.25.
40 “como la Bada es bestia tan fiera, no sé cómo se podrá avenir con ella” (qtd. in Staudinger
and Irblich 1996, 265).
41 “unas casas cerca del prado de San Geronimo el Real […] y en ella se fundó este hospital”
(Quintana 1629, 449). For further study of Madrid’s sixteenth-century hospitals and the location
of the General Hospital in 1584, see Huguet-Termes 2009.
la Cruz and Príncipe were close to the Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol,
bustling centers of commerce and public activity.
Philip II forged a financial, structural, and symbolic connection between
Spanish theater and hospitals. Financially, like Madrid, in Valencia and
Lisbon (where Spanish plays were also popular), hospitals received funding
from proceeds from theatrical productions. Structurally, following Madrid’s
example, the patio or innyard within hospitals across Spain also served as
theater spaces. Today, the reconstructed early modern theaters in Alcalá
de Henares and Almagro reveal that each also served as a hospital. The
hospital patio in Guadalajara, Spain served as a theater for the produc-
tion of plays (Ruano de la Haza and Allen 1994, 198; Múnoz Jiménez 1984).
In Zamora, one source notes that a separate theater needed to be built
because the staff, including a doctor and a surgeon, put play-watching
above medical attention and allowed some patients to die (Shergold 1967,
194 n.6). Innyards of hospitals also served as theatrical spaces in Málaga
at the Casa de Comedias del Hospital, Murcia at the Hospital de Nuestra
Señora de Gracia, Salamanca at the Hospital de la Santísima Trinidad,
Tudela at the Hospital de Señora de Gracia, Trujillo at the Hospital de la
Caridad, and Toro at the Hospital Nuestra Señora del Pecador (Amelang
2019). Spain also exported the hospital-as-theater model to the New World.
In early seventeenth-century Mexico City, the innyard of the Royal Indian
Hospital in New Spain served as the city’s theater. Indeed, members of the
Mexico City council were assigned designated boxes within the Royal Indian
Hospital to view performances (Ball 2016, 74–75).
Spain’s first commercial theaters were based on the architectural space of
the corral. The primary characteristic of the corral was its singular entrance,
an essential architectural feature for allowing only those who had paid an
entrance fee to watch the play. The so-called corral de vecinos was a living
space common in Arabic urban architecture in which a door could close
to bar entrance to the living quarters on the inside. Mozarabic documents
describe the curral (qurraleat, in the plural), a type of living arrangement in
Jewish quarters in many Spanish cities, as a patio with a singular entrance
and surrounding living quarters (Morales Padrón 1974, 12). The corral living
arrangement helped keep inhabitants safe and isolated from other neighbors.
The corral also kept a community’s domestic animals, providing a place
where they could breed and be safe.
When converted into theaters, corrales—already surrounded by walls
with windows—could be covered and converted into a viewing space for
the public. Because the theatrical area was enclosed within the innyard
of the urban structure, the audience had to go through the main doors
of the structure. As opposed to the open area of a public square in which

anyone might find a place to see for free, the interior courtyard provided
an enclosed space in which only a paying audience could see the dramatic
production. In hospitals, rooms were occupied by the sick or the poor and,
typically, the residents were free to leave the infirmary rooms at will. As
a theatrical space, and as commercial theaters grew, the rooms bordering
the theatrical space converted from rooms for the sick into theater seats.
By 1583, when Philip II returned from Portugal with Hawa’i and Abada,
commercial theater had so grown in popularity in Madrid that it no longer
took place on makeshift stages in the patios of the city’s hospitals and other
structures. Madrid finished two newly constructed theaters, the corrales of
Cruz and Príncipe, stand-alone playhouses with new structural alterations
added in 1583 and 1584, such as a special gallery for women spectators, a
permanent stage with a place for costume changes, platforms for seating, and
windows for viewing. The creation of these stand-alone playhouses, Cruz and
Príncipe, did not eliminate the bond between hospitals and theaters in Madrid.
In fact, with the creation of two permanent playhouses, Philip solidified the
role of theater as a financial provider for Madrid’s hospitals. A royal decree
from 1616 notes that Madrid hospitals still controlled the administration of
theaters a quarter of a century later: “the property of theaters for plays in the
Court city of Madrid is controlled by and belongs to its hospitals.”42
Proceeds from theatrical spectacles went to help the downtrodden and
other patients at the hospitals. Davis and Varey provide archival evidence
stating that, in 1583, administrators ordered a quarter of theatrical proceed-
ings go to the care of patients in the General Hospital. One source notes
that “because of the great need to financially help the General Hospital
they ordered that four maravedis be targeted to the hospital from the ticket
cost to a play from every person regardless of their status and rank.”43 The
majority of money went to the General Hospital (rather than the other
three in Madrid). One document from April 24, 1584 notes: The money is
“destined to remedy the great and extreme need of poor people suffering
in the General Hospital.”44 In the “Memorial from the City of Madrid to
42 “la propiedad de los teatros de la comedia de la Corte toca y pertenece a los Hospitales” (qtd.
in Pellicer 1804, I: 110).
43 “y para alguna ayuda de lo mucho que es menester mandaban que de cada persona de
cualquier estado y condición que sea que quiere entrar a ver las dichas comedias cobren las
personas que para ello se han deputado cuatro maravedís de entrada por cada comedia para el
dicho Hospital General” (qtd. in Davis and Varey 1997, 123–4).
44 “la grande y extrema necesidad que padecen los pobres de el Hospital General y lo muncho
en que aquella casa esta enpeñada” (qtd. in Davis and Varey 1997, 123–4).
Philip II” (1598), theater revenues should be donated to hospitals: “Plays are
extremely important for maintaining hospitals in this court-city, including
the General Hospital […] and Antón Martín Hospital.”45
The names of the vast majority of plays and performances in hospitals and
other corrals are not preserved in the historical record. Sometimes, works
of fiction allude to early modern spaces for theater, such as when Berganza,
the talking dog in Cervantes’s El coloquio de los perros (The Colloquy of the
Dogs), states that he often acted in theatrical performances, many of which
took place in hospitals. The historical record indicates the cost of a play. In
the 1580s, people were charged half a real (sixteen maravedis or five cuartos)
to see a play. 46 In 1584, the price of admission was raised from twelve to
sixteen maravedis (Davis and Varey 1997, 18). Sometimes, people paid more.
A document from 1585 indicates that women spectators paid a full real for
admission and a seat (and the majority of the theater attendees were women)
(Shergold 1967, 187). Generally, a quarter of the admission ticket, around four
maravedis, went to the hospitals. An administrative council of theologians
in 1589 refers to Cruz and Príncipe, noting: “The General Hospital in Madrid
has two theaters [corrales] where plays are represented and every person
that enters to see those plays pays four cuartos for a seat to sit down. Of
this entrance fee, besides that which goes directly to the theater troupe,
another cuarto is given [to the General Hospital].”47
People in Madrid were accustomed to seeing live horses, donkeys, sheep, and
cows in the streets. They were also used to seeing live animals like chickens in
the markets. Some animals like dogs and pigs not only populated the streets
of Madrid, but were used in popular spectacles. Sancho Panza in Don Quixote
mentions having seen a dog thrown up and down on a blanket as part of
carnival festivities. There was also a pig race in Madrid, and the winning pig
was crowned and rode through the streets on a donkey (Montoliú Camps 2002,
120). As opposed to the domestic animals that people observed on a daily basis
across the urban landscape, the arrival of an elephant and rhino was something
new. People clamored to see the new animals and paid a fee to see them.
45 “Nace de las comedias otra muy gran utilidad […] que es […] sustentarse en esta corte […]
hospitales, como el General […] y el de Antón Martín” (“Memorial dirigido a Felipe II por la Villa
de Madrid,” as qtd. Sanz Ayán and García García 2000, 66).
46 For the buying power of maravedies in the period, such as the cost of eggs in Madrid in 1583,
see Alvar Ezquerra 1989.
47 “El Hospital General de Madrid tiene dos corrales donde se representan comedias y cada una
de las personas que entran a ver las dichas comedias dan por el asiento en que se asientan cuatro
cuartos, y a la entrada, además de lo que se da los comediantes se da otro cuarto” (“Consulta de
los administradores de las obras pías a los teólogos,” as qtd. in Pellicer 1804, 2: 191).
Philip II supplemented the funding of his hospitals from the newly built
permanent playhouses Cruz and Príncipe by putting Abada in the General
Hospital and Hawa’i in Antón Martín Hospital. Since permanent playhouses
were newly completed in Madrid, Philip II had hospital space available for
Hawa’i and Abada. Hans Khevenhüller writes, in a letter from July 10, 1583:
“The King put the rhinoceros in the General Hospital and the elephant in
Antón Martín Hospital.”48 The cost to see the pachyderms was a half real, the
same price that it cost for a play ticket in 1583. Khevenhüller corroborates:
“Whoever wishes to see them [Hawa’i and Abada] should pay a half real
which is then given as a donation to the poor.”49 Hawa’i and Abada would
have provided the hospitals with better revenue than plays since they were
owned by the King and the entire proceeds went directly to the hospitals,
as opposed to only the quarter of the proceeds from theater companies.
Like Spain’s first commercial theaters, the two hospital patios provided
an ideal enclosed space for seeing animals in exclusivity. After Abada and
Hawa’i, the Crown put on other types of animal spectacles in the innyards
of hospitals, such as staged animal combats, to raise money. Hospital
Administrators of the General Hospital in 1614 note that, when alms did
not suffice to meet expenses, the hospital made extra money by holding
staged animal combats: When “alms were not sufficient […] [the General
Hospital held] fights between tigers and lions.”50 Holding Hawa’i and Abada
in the corral of the hospital meant that they were placed behind the front
entrance of the building and were reached in the same way that one reached
a patio or corral from the street. In general, because the sun hit the patio,
a roof, or some sort of cover, was built to provide shade. This protected
the people in the patio from the sun and it protected Hawa’i’s and Abada’s
skin, which needed to retain moisture and stay cool. Documents do not
mention the animals’ original mahouts, but each animal needed continual
caretakers for feeding and cleaning urine and feces off the dirt floor of the
patio. The animals were not in cages, but it is likely that each animal’s legs
were shackled.
Hawa’i’ and Abada’s audiences were the same as theatergoers. The theater
public in Madrid included the imperial family, bureaucrats, and noble
members of the royal court. Spectators could also be visitors from other
48 “La Bada puso el rey en el Hospital General y el elefante en el de Antón Martín” (qtd. in
Staudinger and Irblich 1996, 266).
49 “Yeder ders sechen Will, muess ain haben real zallen daher, den Armen ain starckhes unnd
guetts almusen volgt” (qtd. in Staudinger and Irblich 1996, 266).
50 “no podía allegar limosna […] teniendo luchas de tigres y leones” (Informes, o relaciones
originales, que dieron los contadores de los hospitales el año de 1614, as qtd. in Pellicer 1804, I:158).
parts of Spain and from abroad, clergy, artisans, young people, and women
of means. One play, Diálogo de las comedias (Dialogue of Plays, 1620), jok-
ingly states that just about everyone went to see plays, including “working
people, people with nothing to do, and women.”51 The theatergoing moneyed
classes would most probably have gone to see Hawa’i and Abada on Sundays
and feast days because these were the same days that people went to see
theatrical performances in the 1580s (Albrecht 2001, 56).
Some authors make direct mention of the pachyderm spectacle in their
fiction. One such manuscript, the anonymously written Diálogos de la
montería (Dialogues about Hunting), circulated in Philip’s court in 1587.
Ostensibly a fictional dialogue, Boscán, one of the two interlocutors, states:
“I also saw [a rhinoceros] in Madrid where the King our Majesty ordered it
brought from Lisbon together with an elephant. The Indians call her ganda
and people here in Spain commonly call her bada.”52 Another poet from the
period evokes the pachyderm spectacle in his critique of Madrid’s growth
and the culture of popular spectacle. A sonnet (1588) by Luis de Góngora
(1561–1627) references Hawa’i and Abada in order to poke fun at the new
residents on the streets, flocking to the court city. The poem jokingly calls
all the new residents flocking to Madrid more “like elephants and rhinos”
than people.53 Góngora makes every Madrid resident out be another Hawa’i
and Abada, stating that they, like the elephant and rhino, were all arrogant
and overblown.
The public also fed Hawa’i and Abada. As in theaters, it is likely that the
public bought refreshments, not only for their consumption, but for feeding.
The humanist Alonso López (or López Pinciano, 1547–1627) describes the
scene inside the patio of the Corral de la Cruz. He describes a scene of “seeing
so many people together […] and seeing them sell fruits or sweets.”54 Pinciano
also writes that a fruit seller tossed up fruit into the gallery and sometimes
accidently hit spectators in the face with it. Sebastián Covarrubias suggests
that Hawa’i had readily available fruit:
A few years ago, in honor of our King Don Philip II they brought another
elephant with a rhinoceros, both of which we all saw in Madrid. The
elephant was so tame that it put its hand or trunk in the pockets of
51 “gente ocupada; gente ociosa and mujeres” (qtd. in Albrecht 2001, 72).
52 “También vide el animal en Madrid, adonde el Rey nuestro Señor lo mandó traer de Lisboa,
juntamente con un elefante. […] Los indios lo llaman ganda y la gente vulgar le ha puesto por
nombre en España la Bada” (Diálogos 1935, 32).
53 “más que elefantes y que abadas” (Góngora y Argote 2010).
54 “con ver tanta gente unida; […] y el ver al frutero o confitero” (qtd. in Albrecht 2001, 76).
those that entered to see it. It would take out money or fruit from inside
them. I use the phrase “put its hand in” because classical authors use
that expression for the trunk that it has on its snout which it uses as if
it were a hand.55
Quite likely, the fruit that Covarrubias mentions was sold on-site. People
would have been interested in looking at Hawa’i’s ivory tusks, a product
heavily used in crafting everyday objects and furniture for the houses of
European elites and as diplomatic gifts (Biedermann 2018). To sum up,
after surviving a journey from India to Madrid, Abada and Hawa’i spent
about eight years of their lives as public spectacle. Abada died in Madrid.
At this point, Hawa’i’s novelty as spectacle wore off and he was removed
from Antón Martín Hospital. Philip II chose to get new value from Hawa’i
and he gave him as a gift to the King of France, who, in turn, sent Hawa’i as
a gift to England, where he died.
Abada and Hawa’i at the Service of Philip II’s Planetary Control
By making Abada and Hawa’i a spectacle for eight years in Madrid, Philip II
firmly established himself as a player in the global economy of gift giving.
Monarchs and elites established global connections in sixteenth-century
Eurasia through using gifts for diplomacy (Biedermann, Gerritsen, and Riello
2018). Although a few elephants were gifted in the fifteenth century and in
the centuries before, the transport of Indian gift elephants to Europe began
in vigor at the beginning of the sixteenth with the reign of Manuel I, King
of Portugal and grandfather to Philip II of Spain (Bedini 1998). Philip II’s
grandfather Manuel gifted Hanno and a rhino to the Pope. The economy of
the pachyderm gift existed across the planet in the sixteenth century and,
of all diplomatic gifts, animals were the most valuable, and, among all gift
animals, live elephants and rhinos were the most valued.
Philip II used the bodies of Abada and Hawa’i to flex geopolitical muscle
in front of other men of power. When Abada arrived in Europe in 1578, the
Portuguese King Sebastian (1554–78; r.1557–8) promised to gift her to Pope
55 “Pocos años ha que a la buena memoria del rey nuestro señor don Felipe Segundo, le truxeron
otro con una bada o rinocerote, que todos vimos en Madrid, tan doméstico que metía la mano o
trompa en la faltriqueras de los que le entraba a ver, y les sacaba los dineros o fruta que aposta
en ellas; dije que metía la mano, porque así llaman todos los autores antiguos a la trompa que
tiene en el hocico, por usar della como si fuera mano” (Covarrubias 1998, 499).
Gregory XIII for the Belvedere Park. The Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol
(1529–95) also tried to purchase Abada for his menagerie at Ambras Castle in
Innsbruck (Jordan Gschwend 2017, 333). Most significantly, Philip II’s cousin,
Rudolf II the Holy Roman Emperor, yearned to acquire Abada and Hawa’i
from Philip II for decades—from the moment they arrived in Iberia. In not
gifting Abada and Hawa’i, Philip asserted a show of power over European
contemporaries, all the while enhancing the value of both animals in the
economy of pachyderm gift-giving exchange. Philip II showed that he did
not have to cement diplomatic bonds with anyone and, by keeping Abada
and Hawa’i in his possession, he flaunted Madrid’s status and circulated
his own image as the world’s premier monarch, who kept the planet’s most
valuable gifts for himself.
Philip II, for instance, used the bodies of Abada and Hawa’i as symbols of
international power by impressing a Japanese envoy.56 In an eventual effort
to exert geopolitical influence over China, Philip II first seeded relations
with Japan in 1584, when the Tenshō embassy, sent by the Christian Japanese
Lord Ōtomo Sōrin (1530–87), arrived in Europe. The four young Japanese
men bore Philip diplomatic gifts, including two sets of Japanese armor that
Philip so highly prized that he kept them with his beloved armor collection.
After seeing the Escorial, Philip impressed his visitors by showing them the
Alcázar palace in Madrid. He showed off his armor and prized horses. The
Macau-based Jesuit Duarte de Sande (1547–99) published a book in Goa in
which he speaks on behalf of the Tenshō embassy:
After taking our leave of the religious of that most celebrated monastery
and of the prior we did indeed go back to Madrid, where there were many
things which we had yet to see. After our return, then, we saw first a
royal stable and then a royal armory, both of them in the same building,
with the horses in the lower part, and the upper story given over to arms.
(Sande 2012, 248)
The Japanese visitors marveled at Philip’s horses:
This royal stable had […] seventy specially selected horses, some trained in
the art of jumping, others for racing, some outstanding for their fighting
power, others for their bodily form and singular beauty in walking; all of
them standing out for their size, some of them especially so; all of them,
56 The Portuguese missionary Luís Fróis (1532–1597) wrote a description of the trip of the
Japanese envoy, which includes a portrait of each of the young men. See Fróis 1942.
finally brought from various provinces and chosen from the flower and
breeding of the noblest of horses. (Sande 2012, 248–9)
Philip kept the armor, including bards, in the upper story above the live
horses: “there were besides, placed all over the armory, fifteen cabinets
containing different kinds of arms for the protection of the body […] at the
far end of this armory there were six wooden horses with sheets of copper
found them in the form of armor” (Sande 2012, 249).
After the visit to the Alcázar, Philip showed Abada and Hawa’i to the
Japanese emissaries. The emissaries concluded:
we saw two animals of, as it were, a prodigious nature, namely an elephant

and a rhinoceros, which have been brought from India to Portugal and
then to Madrid, and which are kept there because of their enormous
bulk of body and extraordinary shape, so that all can view them as sort
of prodigies of nature. (Sande 2012, 250)
Sande’s account was published in Macao, and the Japanese emissaries

traveled back to Japan from Europe, spreading news of Philip’s spectacle.
Thirteen years after the Japanese emissaries visited Madrid, Philip gifted
an elephant to Japan in 1597, a result of the establishment of diplomatic
relations, after having whetted Japan’s appetite by showing off Abada and
Hawa’i. While, ostensibly, the intent of animal gift giving in European
courts was an offer of friendship and influence, in Asia, Philip’s diplomatic
gifts were established protocol that aligned with a stringent hierarchical
system of tributes. Japan, desirous for a position of geopolitical dominance,
modeled itself in the image of China, and interpreted the acceptance of gifts
as reinforcing its position of superiority over the gift giver (Pérez Riobó
2015). Philip II’s gift to Japan included the elephant, Don Pedro, and two
mahouts, who left the port of Manila in 1597.57
Japan’s second great unifier, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–98) favored Don
Pedro the elephant above Philip’s other gifts. Upon the elephant’s arrival,
Hideyoshi invited the Spanish ambassador Luis de Navarrete to his court:
“when don Luis de Navarrete arrived to Nagasaki, Hideyoshi summoned
57 When Toyotomi Hideyoshi received Don Pedro the elephant, it was probably not the first
time that Don Pedro was given as a gift. Don Pedro might have previously been a part of a gift
package sent to the governor Luis Pérez Dasmariñas of Manila (r.1593–6). Antonios de Morga
(1559–1636) notes that “two elephants […] and quantities of benzoin, ivory and other saleable
goods” (Morga 1971, 81) were sent as gifts to Luis Pérez Dasmariñas in 1594.
him and his gift from Luzón to his court because he wanted to see them,
especially the elephant, of which he took great delight.”58 The elephant
caused great public uproar. Hideyoshi organized a procession in Nagasaki
for the animal, and one Spanish merchant wrote that there was such a
rush to see the animal that a number of people died in the tumult to see
the spectacle.
In Europe, animal gifts confirmed status, solidified friendships, main-
tained peace, and joined the person and animal in a more intimate way
with the family group (Zemon Davis 2000; Pérez de Tudela and Jordan
Gschwend 2001, 5). In the case of Japan, Hideyoshi interpreted European gifts
as tributes from a less potent regime that celebrated his growing hegemony
in the region. Hideyoshi aspired to outdo China and convert Japan into a
new Asian power. One source states the gift of Don Pedro the elephant “was
proudly valued and publicized” and that “the Spanish had sent the elephant
because of their fear of Hideyoshi, as tribute of respect for his power, and
so that he would not destroy them.”59
In turn, from Philip II’s perspective, the gift of the elephant with two
mahouts was diplomatic in nature in the sense that he attempted to lever-
age influence. The elephant was designed to appease potential Japanese
aggression against Manila and its fleets in the region. With the elephant gift,
the Spanish requested Hideyoshi to return the valuable cargo of the galleon
San Felipe, which Japan had looted the year before. Hideyoshi ignored the
request. The Spanish also used the elephant to request the return of the
bodies of the Christians martyred in Nagasaki in 1597. Hideyoshi agreed to
the second request and returned the bodies (Pérez Riobó 2015, 133).
Closer to home, other European powers considered Philip II’s spectacle of
animals as a display of imperial power. The spectacle, for instance, caught
the eye of an important imperial actor for the Dutch empire, Jan Huyghen
van Linschoten (1563–1611). In Lisbon in 1582, Philip II appointed Linschoten
to serve João Vicente da Fonseca (1530–87), the archbishop of the East Indies
(Thomas and Chesworth 2017, 73). Linscholten, considered a spy working for
the Dutch, later published descriptions of strategically important Portuguese
trade routes and maps in Voyage ofte schipvaert van Jan Huygen van Lischoten
naer Oos ofte Portugales Indien (The Voyage of Jan Huygen van Linscholten
58 “llegado a Nangasaqui don Luis de Navarrete, Taicosama envió desde la carta, con mucho
gusto, por el embajador y presente que se le enviaba de Luzón, que lo deseaba ver, especialmente
el elefante, de que holgó mucho” (qtd. in Pérez Riobó 2015, 132–3).
59 “arrogantemente se preciaba y publicaba”; “se lo habían mandado los españoles por miedo
que le tenían y por reconocimento de tributo y señorío, porque no los destuyese” (qtd. in Pérez
Riobó 2015, 133).
to the East Indies, 1596). The information about navigation routes supplied
by Linscholten that served Dutch maritime expansion also included notes
on Abada and Hawa’i: “In the year 1581, as King Phillip was at Lisbone, there
was a rhinoceros and an Elephant brought him out of India for a present and
he caused them both to be let with him unto Madrid, where the Spanish
Court is holden” (Linscholten 1598, 88).60
Emerging European Orientalism
Linscholten was not the only author that described Philip II’s rhino and
elephant in the context of a book about the distant East. Philip II’s display
of Abada and Hawa’i played a role in shaping how China was exoticized by
Juan González de Mendoza (1545–1618). Even though he gathered most of
his information from the travel notes from Miguel de Luarca (1540–1591),
González de Mendoza was the most important author since Marco Polo to
spread ideas about China in Europe. Mendoza’s Historia de las cosas más
notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China (History of the Most
Notable Things, Rituals, and Customs of the Great Kingdom of China, 1586,
reprinted in 1596, and published in English in 1588) was the first book to
contain Chinese characters for Western readers and, with multiple editions
and translations, had an enormous impact on early modern European
perceptions of China.
Aside from his book, Juan González de Mendoza perpetrated an image
about China in Europe through material objects. Philip II had sent a letter
to emperor Wanli (1563–1620) of the Ming dynasty in 1581, accompanied
by lavish gifts, including f ine textiles dyed in crimson with American
cochineal, engraved harnesses and silk saddles, two portraits of Charles V
on horseback by Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531–88), live American elk, and
horses (Hsu 2010, 337; Hsu 2004). After the ship with the gifts sank, Juan
González de Mendoza traveled to Lisbon in 1582 to report to Philip about
the unfortunate mishap and told Philip that the envoy of gifts to China
were lost at sea. González de Mendoza, however, brought Philip gifts from
China that had arrived to Mexico from the Philippines. The gifts caught
Philip’s eye. Among the gifts, Philip was most impressed with a pair of Ming
square-backed huanghuali folding chairs, probably because they appealed
to his austere practicality (Sola 2018, 215). Philip placed the chairs in the
60 For the Dutch description, see Linscholten 1596, 70.

Escorial along with his collection of porcelain and books in Chinese that
he kept in the “desk of the emperors” (Pérez de Tudela 2012, 29).
Even as he had an enormous impact on Europe’s perception of China,
González de Mendoza never set foot there. Mendoza’s only firsthand experi-
ence in the Far East was having seen Abada in Lisbon. While writing the
History of the Most Notable Things, Rituals, and Customs of the Great Kingdom
of China in 1584, Mendoza states proof of having seen a rhino: “I saw one in
Lisbon” and it was the same as the one that “is now in Madrid.”61 Mendoza’s
book about China also served as an advertisement for the spectacle in
Madrid as a novelty for all of Europe: “many go to see the animal because of
its strangeness and since it has never been seen in our Europe.”62 Mendoza’s
experience of having seen Abada provided the public a sense of an authentic
experience of the East.
For Philip II, the pairing up of Abada with Hawa’i was important for
communicating a more complete sense of an oriental experience. In his ac-
count of China, Mendoza generally mentions rhinos and elephants together.
Moreover, the pairing of both animals as an iconic pair from the East Indies
could be found in the work of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) and Marco
Polo (1254–1324). Marco Polo’s descriptions of places frequently contained
elephants and rhinos. In his copy of a Latin Marco Polo incunabulum
(published in Ambers in 1485), Columbus jotted down the words “elephants
and rhinos” on a number of occasions in the marginalia. For instance,
when Marco Polo mentions that elephant, rhinos, and other unnamed wild
creatures abounded in the Mien Province, Columbus noted two words in the
margin: “elephants” and “rhinos” (Gil 1987, 109). At another point, alongside
the names of the two animals, he annotated geo-nautical information of a
specific area and then wrote that, in this place, there was an abundance of
all sorts of spices that had never been seen before in Europe (Gil 1987, 109).
Columbus’s annotations of Marco Polo, thereby, helped make the elephant
and rhino pair an icon of a yet-to-be discovered world of spices in the Indies.
Sixteenth-century artists and illustrators paired the rhinoceros and
the elephant, most commonly depicting them in a fight. Replacing classi-
cal motifs of human forms, Nouveaux pourtraitz et figures de termes pour
user en l’architecture (A Terminology of New Portraits and Figures for Use in
61 “vi uno en Lisboa” “está ahora en Madrid” (González de Mendoza 1596, 357). Although
published later, as the prologue indicates, Mendoza wrote the manuscript of History of the Most
Notable Things, Rituals, and Customs of the Great Kingdom of China in 1584 while in Rome.
62 “lo van a ver muchos por cosa extraña y nunca vista en nuestra Europa” (González de
Mendoza 1596, 357).
Architecture, 1586) by Josephe Boillot (1546–1605), one of the first books of

early modern architecture, imagined a rhino atop the figure of an elephant
as part of new spatial design. Sometimes, the image of an elephant and
rhino was literally part of buildings, such as in a fresco by Rafael titled The
Creation of the Animals in the official residence of the Pope. The Villa di
Castello gardens of the country residence of Cosimo I de Medici include an
elephant and a rhino in the grottos. Beyond the Pope’s residence, images of
rhinos and elephants are part of other powerful people’s houses, even those
built on the outskirts of Europe’s newly controlled territory in America,
such as one in the New Kingdom of Granada.
The elephant-rhino pair was also included within cities in the form of
ephemeral architectural structures that celebrated a royal entrance or
military victory. One image from the period depicts an arch displayed at
the Rossmarkt in Vienna (Jordan Gschwend 2010, 46). The arch was the
highlight of a 1563 Habsburg celebration of the transfer of power granted from
Emperor Ferdinand I to his son Maximilian II. It depicts live horses passing in
between a rhino and elephant that face each other. The pachyderms signify
the geographical reach of Habsburg power into Asia, now contained on
ephemeral architecture in an urban space that celebrates a new monarch.
As symbol of the Orient, the spectacle of Abada and Hawa’i in the 1580s
later impacted the creation of allegorical displays of the continents of the
world in Spain. An artificial elephant and a rhino were part of one of the
most ornate public spectacles on the streets of Madrid in the seventeenth
century, as described by Fernando Monforte y Herrera in Relación de las
fiestas que ha hecho el Colegio Imperial de la Compañía de Jesús de Madrid en
la canonización de San Ignacio de Loyola y S. Francisco Xavier (News about
the Parade That Imperial College of the Company of Jesus Held in Madrid for
the Canonization of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis Xavier, 1622).
As part of the celebration in honor of the Jesuit saints, four allegorical floats,
representing the parts of the world, were included. Each float consisted
of three or four carriages, and each elaborately ornamented carriage was
pulled by six horses. Floats representing America were followed by Asia,
then Africa, and then Europe.
Monforte y Herrera wrote that the elephant in the parade represented
Africa. The people in the African float wore long black gloves and black face
masks; the person who sat on top of the float wore emeralds and diamonds
and carried a shield with three silver elephants. The Asia section of the
parade ended with a woman dressed up as Asia, who sat in a throne riding
on top of a float made in the image of Abada. Asia’s riches were allegorized
with Abada’s body: “The last float in the Asia procession was flat with railings
of jasper and gold. Its five-leveled terraces were of a thousand colors upon
which sat a throne. On top of the throne was a rhinoceros [abada], the iconic
animal from that land.”63
Men were most likely hidden inside the artificial automaton of the hol-
lowed life-size Abada. It was not unusual to create animal floats for parades.
One elephant in a 1579 Medici pageant was made with papier-mâché (rags
soaked in plaster) applied over an internal support of wire mesh, wood, and
other materials, with men inside (Groom 2019, 147). The baroque fanfare
of the massive procession in Madrid underscored that the iconographic
program of the seventeenth century was impacted from three decades
earlier, when Philip II wished to put the world on display in Madrid with
the live pachyderm spectacle.
Tenochtitlan’s Zoo
When Philip II renovated the urban space of Madrid, he wanted an imperial

capital to rival ancient Rome. He, also, however, wanted to rival great cities
from the Indies, like Tenochtitlan. At the time of Madrid’s renovation as
capital, Philip II was familiar with detailed maps of Tenochtitlan. Indeed,
Charles V and Philip II promoted themselves as emperors of universal peace
and as just conquerors of the Amerindian continent through disseminating
printed maps of Tenochtitlan.
Maps of Tenochtitlan circulated across Europe in the sixteenth century.
The maps included a depiction of the gardens and zoos in the city center of
Tenochtitlan. Hernando Cortés had sent off a map of conquered Tenochtitlan
in 1520 (which arrived to Seville in 1522), where it was promptly copied and
appeared in published form across Europe. The German translation of
Hernando Cortés’s second letter to Charles in Nuremberg (1524) included a
map of Tenochtitlan, which was republished in Lyon (1564), Cologne (1576),
and Venice, with multiple editions throughout the course of the sixteenth
century (1524; 1556; 1565) (Mundy 1998).
The printed maps of Tenochtitlan depicted the House of Animals alongside
the religious temples in the center of the city. The House of Animals is a
square space divided into smaller squares, displaying birds, a feline, and
humans—Moctezuma collected humans, including albinos, dwarves,
63 “Daba fin Asia en un airoso carro, que, desde un plano coronado de verjas de jaspe y oro,
daba paso por cinco gradas bordadas de mil colores a un trono sobre que estaba echada una
abada, animal propio de aquella tierra” (Monforte y Herrera 1622, 43).
hunchbacks, and those with deformed limbs. Just as Moctezuma had

displayed power through a royal menagerie, so Cortés brought back exotic
animals and people to Europe, which had formerly been occupants of cages
in the House of Animals in Tenochtitlan.
Tenochtitlan’s House of Animals may have partially impacted Philip II
when he constructed places to symbolize imperial power. For instance,
the construction of the aviary in Aranjuez may have been inspired by
Montezuma’s magnificent House of Birds, the Totocalli, a space found in
sixteenth-century depictions of Tenochtitlan. Europe had a long tradition of
menageries, but none was in the center of a newly built capital city for public
display. Tenochtitlan’s House of Animals may have also inspired Philip II
to take two live animals—prized captives from the East Indies—and put
them in Madrid’s center. In that sense, Philip II took the model from the
West Indies, the House of Animals, now destroyed, and refounded it within
Madrid’s urban landscape.
With regard to the public perception of the pachyderm spectacle, many
would have seen the animals as symbols of the Indies. In the case of a
nineteenth-century zoo in a European capital city, the public would have
perceived the geopolitical distinction between India and America in quite a
different way than in the sixteenth century. Abada and Hawa’i would have
been considered captive prisoners of war from the far-off “Indies,” the lands
that supposedly belonged to Philip II.
Abada as Emblem of Philip II as Christian Warrior
Books of emblems were one of the most popular early modern literary
genres. In Gobierno general moral y politico hallado en las fieras y animales
silvestres (The General Governing Morals and Politics Found in Beasts and
Wild Animals, 1658), Andrés Ferrer de Valdecebro (1620–80) used the emblem
book genre to connect the rhinoceros will all sorts of moral advice. After
pages of sermonizing about the rhino as Christian emblem, Valdecebro
mentions Abada’s captivity under Philip II, who he calls “Seneca,” as one of
three historical moments in which Europeans observed a living rhino: “The
Romans saw one in their Coliseum; the Portuguese saw one in Portugal in
the time of King Manuel; and the Spanish [during the time] of our Seneca
of Spain.”64
64 “En su teatro le vieron los romanos, en Portugal los lusitanos en tiempo del rey Don Manuel;
y de nuestro Seneca de Espana los españoles” (Valdecebro 1658, 56). Valdecebro calls Philip II
Books of emblems, particularly those that included a copy of Dürer’s

Rhinoceros, would have served as a visual guide for interpreting Abada when
she lived in Madrid. The circulation of books of emblems, like the Spanish
language itself, formed part of an evangelization process in establishing
the sixteenth-century global Habsburg political order. In the context of
Spanish-language publications of emblem books and attesting to the growth
of Spanish as the new imperial language under Philip II, the most significant
book of emblems to include the Dürer’s Rhinoceros is the Diálogo de las
empresas militares y amorosas (Dialogue of Military and Love Emblems, 1561)
by Guillaume Rovillé (ca. 1518–89).
Guillaume Rovillé, a humanist working in sixteenth-century Lyon, was
a pioneer of emblem books in France, having translated and published
Andrea Alciato’s emblem book into French. Rovillé received permission to
publish Dialogue of Military and Love Emblems in Lyon under the auspices of
the French King Henry II (1519–59). Dialogue of Military and Love Emblems,
written in Spanish, although published in France, combined two different
emblem books and included Rovillé’s introduction. Rovillé explains that
he published the book to celebrate Philip II of Spain.
Dialogue of Military and Love Emblems follows the formulaic genre of the
emblem book. It first includes an image with an accompanying motto. It then
includes an explanation of the allegorical image-motto. Dialogue of Military
and Love Emblems also followed the enormously popular sixteenth-century
genre of the dialogue—two interlocutors comment on the book’s emblems.
As opposed to his French translation of Alciato, Rovillé published Dialogue
of Military and Love Emblems with the help of Alonso de Ulloa (?–1580), a
Spanish-speaking fellow resident of Lyon. The combined emblem books that
formed the single volume were a Spanish translation of two Italian books.
The first book was Rovillé’s translation of Dialogi dell’impresse militare
et amoris (Dialogue of Military and Love Emblems, 1557) by Paulo Giovio
(1483–1552). The second was Rovillé’s translation of Imprese morali et heroiche
(Moral and Heroic Emblems, 1559) by Gabriele Simeoni (1509–70), which he
had published in Lyon two years earlier.
Rovillé states in the introduction that he published the book in Span-
ish to “be in some way a service to the Spanish nation.”65 Saving the most
“Seneca” based on a reference originally found in Felipe Segundo, Rey de España (Philip II King of
Spain, 1619) by historian Luis Cabrera de Córdoba (1559–1623). Philip as Spain’s second “Seneca”
was a seventeenth-century commonplace, repeated by authors like Juan Pérez de Montalbán
(1602–38).
65 “servir en algo a la nación española” (Rovillé 1561, n.p.).
important for last, the final emblem is not found in the original Italian
books. Rovillé adds a new emblem into the Dialogue of Military and Love
Emblems. It is a description of an emblem of Philip II: “I have decided to
finish the book with the greatest prince and king of the Christian faith of
our time.”66 The emblem for Philip II is a horse: the “swiftest horse, running
in the middle of the Roman Circus.”67 The motto that accompanies the
image of the horse is “the world is not enough,” or non sufficit orbis (Rovillé
1561, 217). Eschewing plus ultra, the well-known Spanish motto from the
beginning of the sixteenth century, Rovillé adopted a more geographically
expansive motto to celebrate Philip II’s imperial reach. In the explanation of
the image-motto, he explains that, since his father Charles V went beyond
Europe and conquered America, his son Philip II justly merits non sufficit
orbis to demonstrate that a single kingdom is not enough for a Habsburg,
because “our King continues to prosper with every day discovering and
naming new kingdoms.”68
The image of Philip II as horse is the last emblem in Rovillé’s book. To
complement that image, one of the f irst emblems of Rovillé’s Dialogue
of Military and Love Emblems is Dürer’s Rhinoceros—copied from Paolo
Giovio’s Italian version. Dürer Rhinoceros is amplified. It has more armor
and an enlarged second horn. Rovillé’s prose description of the rhino in
Dialogue of Military and Love Emblems notes that Giovio designed the
emblem in celebration of the marriage between Alessandro de Medici
(1510–37) and Margarita de Parma (1522–86), the daughter of Charles V
(47). The rhino symbolizes Alessandro de Medici’s loyalty to the Spanish
Habsburgs. Alexander is Charles V’s armored beast, ready and willing to
die for the Spanish imperial cause. The emblem “demonstrates valor and
greatness in war” on behalf of Charles V, “for having achieved fame by
having valiantly faced every sort of hardship, ready to conquer or willing
to die [vencer o morir].”69
I have translated vencer o morir as “ready to conquer or willing to die.”
The use of the verb vencer (conquer, win a battle) in the context of fighting
66 “determinado de acabarlo con el mayor príncipe y rey de cristianos de nuestro tiempo”

(Rovillé 1561, 216).
67 “velocísimo caballo que puesto en carrera sale y pasa de la mitad del circo romano” (Rovillé
1561, 216).
68 “no le basta un reino solo. Por lo cual prosperando nuestro señor sus cosas, le va cada día
descubriendo y dan nuevos reinos” (Rovillé 1561, 217).
69 “deseaba mostrar su valor y bondad en la Guerra […] que por alcanzar floria, y defender la
parte imperial habria entrado valorossamente en cuaquiera dificultosa empresa, determinando
vencer o morir” (Rovillé 1561, 48–49).
for Charles V directly inspired the motto for the rhino emblem: no vuelvo
sin vencer (I do not return without winning). Rovillé mentions Giovio’s
classical inspiration, stating that the motto was derived from the verse “The
rhinoceros never returns from the enemy defeated.”70 The modified Dürer
Rhinoceros became a battle emblem for fighting on behalf of the Habsburg
monarchy. For this reason, Rovillé underscores that Giovio originally wrote
the motto in “the Spanish language”—as opposed to Italian—in a show of
his allegiance to the Spanish monarchy.71
The conclusion of the description of the rhino emblem states that it
was engraved on the breastplate of the Duke of Medici’s favorite running
horse.72 By adding the last emblem about Philip II as racehorse, Rovillé
linked the Dürer Rhinoceros that was engraved on horse armor with the final
emblem—a noble racehorse that represented Philip II. Linking Rhinoceros
with horse armor and the Habsburgs, the Duke of Medici’s racing horse is
the final allegorical emblem that celebrates Philip as planetary monarch
for whom “the world is not enough.”
Although the vast majority of public that saw Abada had not read Rovillé’s
emblem book, they would have nonetheless connected Abada with King
Philip II, seeing her as a former enemy and now as his captive. Moreover,
they would have visualized Abada in the context of the heightened turn to
religious orthodoxy in Counter-Reformation Spain. Another emblem book
published in Spain approximates a description of the version of Catholi-
cism as practiced in the Spanish Habsburg context. Empresas espirituales
y morales (Spiritual and Moral Emblems, 1613) by Juan Francisco de Villalva
(1545?–1619?) redeployed Dürer’s rhinoceros image as emblem. As with
Rovillé, Villalva used a rhinoceros image to convey an allegory of a didactic
and religious message with an accompanying motto, as well as prose and
poetry to describe the image-motto.
The publisher of Spiritual and Moral Emblems also included a crude
rhinoceros woodcut inspired by Dürer. As with Rovillé’s rhinoceros, Villalva’s
rhino image further accentuates the armor garniture originally found in
Dürer’s Rhinoceros. Villalva’s image shows a rhino with multiple plates
of armor, four clear rivets, a horn that looks like a drill, and, in the place
where Dürer had added a second horn to the single-horned Indian rhino,
Villalva adds three additional small horns. The image in Spiritual and Moral
70 ‘Rhinoceros nonquam victurs ab hoste redit’ (Rovillé 1561, 49).

71 “lengua castellana” (Rovillé 1561, 48).
72 “la hizo entallar de labor grabada en el pecto de su arnés” (Rovillé 1561, 49).
Emblems depicts the rhino sharpening its largest horn, getting ready for
battle, borrowing from the description found on Dürer’s Rhinoceros.
The rhino image in Villalva’s Spiritual and Moral Emblems is accompanied
by the Latin motto Fortius ut pugnem (“I am strong so that I can fight,”
Villalva 1613, 45). As in many emblem books, Spiritual and Moral Emblems
includes a poem and further description to explain the meaning of the
image-motto. The gloss poem reads:
The noble rhinoceros

Never fights with the
Wise, belligerent elephant
Without first sharpening its horn […]
He who decides to fight
A savage enemy
Must sharpen his steel
On the divine stone
Which is Christ,
The affirmed weapon of faith.73
The rhinoceros was no longer an exotic beast, but a man who went into battle
armored and armed with faith sharpened by the whetstone that is Christ.
Spiritual and Moral Emblems, then, provides one religious interpretation of
how people might have interpreted their visual experience with Abada. The
living rhino was perceived through a Dürer-inspired allegorical lens that
made her an emblem of a Christian in the context of Counter-Reformation
Spain—a soldier of Christ made captive by their armored monarch King
Philip II.
Abada as Panacea
One characteristic of Counter-Reformation Spain was a heightened interest

in relics of saints. Philip II had over 7,000 human relics, including ten whole
bodies, 144 heads, 306 arms and legs, and thousands of bones in his vast
collection (Kamen 1997, 189). Following Philip II’s belief in the healing
73 “Con el sagaz belígero elefante / competidor eterno, / nunca lucha el gentil rinoceronte /
sin que en piedra bastante / primero aguce el cuerno / […]Quien mostrar quiere al enemigo
fiero / bien agudo el acero / que en la piedra divina / que es Cristo / la arma de la fe se afirma”
(Villalva 1613, 45).
power of holy relics, people believed that touching a saint’s body part was
a panacea. Relics—body parts of holy people—had the power to cure, and,
if the holy flesh-and-blood person was still alive, then their power to cure
was even more extraordinary. Contact with a living saint was more powerful
than touching a relic. If the sacred object was living, people desired to touch
the saint’s body or blood. They desired to come close enough to the sacred
person so that he or she might breathe upon them.
Products from the Indies, such as coconuts or bezoar stones extracted
from the animal’s stomach, circulated in the sixteenth century were believed
to have curative powers like holy relics.74 Simple physical contact, or the
consumption of a liquid that touched the object from the Indies was like
touching a relic—it offered, for instance, an antidote against poison. One
example of a cup composed of a coconut, bezoar stone, and rhino horn is
found in Rudolf II’s collection. In order to get a maximum effect of all three
different objects’ curative powers, the cup is half coconut, it has a bezoar
stone that sits at the bottom of the cup attached with a golden chain, and
the cup’s handle is made out of a rhinoceros horn. One who drank out of
the cup got a triple curative effect because the liquid touched the coconut
and came into contact with the bezoar stone. Moreover, the hand of the
person who drinks has also touched the rhino horn handle (Fricke 2018, 358).
Products from the Indies were not only purchased by elites. Influenced
by practices common in Chinese workshops, apothecaries across Europe
took advantage of marketing an influx of panacea cures related to rhino
products. Iberians living in Goa helped not only to establish popular medical
practices of coconuts and bezoar stones, but they also touted the curative
power of the rhinoceros horn, teeth, blood, hide, and three-toed hooves.
Garcia d’Orta, for instance, the author of Colóquios dos simples e drogas da
India (Colloquies of the Remedies and Drugs from India, 1563), wrote that,
although he had not seen a live rhinoceros, the curative properties of rhino
body parts were well known. An inventory from a ship sailing from Goa
in 1578, the same year that Abada was sent to Lisbon, included a box for
the Jesuit Father António Cordeses (1518–1601) in Toledo. It was filled with
coconuts, bezoar stones, and rhino parts: “Three rhino teeth; a rhino hoof;
a rhino horn; two small bezoar stones; rhino blood; three pieces of coconut
from the islands [one big one and two small ones]; a large piece of rhino
74 Bezoar stones were extracted from the stomachs of a variety of animals, including monkeys,
porcupines, hogs, goats (Borshberg 2010). When the stones came from the Indies, such as a
rhinoceros from the East Indies or a vicuña from the West Indies, they were considered more
powerful.
hide; […] two rings made from a rhino hoof which they put on the index
finger in order to cure the disease of melancholy.”75
The panacea lore of the rhino is a great myth. Its curative power, for
instance, is still believed in parts of the world, even though rhino horn is
nothing more than compacted hair, composed of keratin, not much different
from a human finger nail. Pharmacies in early modern Spain nonetheless
processed animal body parts, like rhino hooves or horns, and sold them to
the public. Apothecaries, for instance, would grind up the hooves of the
rhino on a mortar and make it into a powder, or mix the results with a liquid
such as extract of primrose flowers. The essence or concentrated liquid was
then sold as an antidote for poison, a cure for epilepsy, or a general cure-all.
Cristóbal Acosta translated and annotated Orta’s Colóquios dos simples e
drogas da India as Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las indias orientales
(Treatise of the Drugs and Medicines of the East Indies, 1578). By including
descriptions of rhinos in a treatise on elephants in a book about medicine
from the East Indies, Cristóbal Acosta contributed to the legend of the
curative power of the rhino. Acosta also wrote Remedios específicos de la India
Oriental y de la América (Specific Remedies from East India and the Americas)
and worked in a pharmacy in Burgos. He describes the rhinoceros or abada
as a cure for all sorts of ailments: “its blood, like its hide, bones, and other
body parts have infinite virtues.”76 Specific Remedies from East India and
the Americas concludes that “A speck or two [of the powder from the rhino’s
hoof] in an infusion is most highly recommended” as a “cure for mental
disorders and the worst heart problems: […] [it is] a universal medicine.”77
Dürer’s creation of the armored beast from the Indies influenced early
modern medical practice, like that of Acosta. As mentioned in Chapter 2,
Monardes wrote a book about the medicinal quality of plants from the
Indies and, influenced by Dürer, he included an image of an armadillo, the
armored beast from the West Indies, in his book. Animals with impenetrable
skin became legendary for their miraculous power to cure, fueling a global
market for animal body parts such as hooves. The Dutch, for instance,
75 “Tres dientes de bada, una uña de bada, un cuerno de bada; dos pequeñas piedras del bazar;
sangre de bada; tres pedazos de coco de las Islas, un grande y dos pequeños; un grande pedazo
de cuero de bada; […] dos anillos de uña de bada puestos en el dedo del corazón aprovechan
para la melancolía” (Wicki 1970, 330).
76 “sus virtudes son infinitas en su sangre, como en el cuero, huesos y otras partes de su cuerpo”
(qtd. in Chinchilla 1841, 59).
77 “Un grano, o dos en infusiones será mas eficaz […] remedio contra afectos hipocondriacos,
y cardiologías más rigurosas […] le tiene por medicamento universal” (Acosta n.d., n.p). The
pagination would be folio 31.
followed the Spanish example, naming one animal reputed to have armored
skin, the elk, the “Great Beast,” and mass marketing its hooves for European
pharmacies (Podgorny 2018).78
If an animal was naturally endowed with impenetrable skin, then its body
parts offered a cure. Hooves, horns, and other rhino body parts were also said
to have an intrinsic therapeutic value in curing epilepsy (“the falling sickness”),
characterized by the sudden onset of convulsions and seizures. Some writers,
such as Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–81), criticized the use of rhino body
parts as a cure for epilepsy. In a Calderón play from the mid-seventeenth
century, “Mojiganga del Parnaso” (Parnassus Interlude), two cheeky women,
María and Bernarda, scam men passing by them on the street. María pretends
to faint and go into an epileptic attack (gota coral). A man passing by shows
concern and wants to help María. He asks Bernarda where María lives and
Bernarda tells him: on “Calle del Abada” (Calderón de la Barca 1989, 256).79
The man responds: “I’m off to that street to find out what I can do to fix this.”80
The women are mountebanks in two senses: They try to scam men out of
their money, and they purport the fanciful curative properties of the rhino.
In the sixteenth century, rhino body parts were believed to offer miracle
cures like holy relics. The arrival of Abada to the General Hospital was like
the arrival of a living saint. The very first description of Abada when she
arrived to Lisbon highlighted her special power to cure:
They say that she has the ability to cure sickness. There is a black man
that takes care of her who was cured by her breath because he sleeps by
her side. They also say her blood cures many sicknesses. The king [King
Sebastian of Portugal, 1554–78] holds her in great esteem and he shows
her off because she is a novelty for us and very strange.81
78 Hooves from the African oryx and American tapir and moose were also marketed for
medicinal purposes in the seventeenth century.
79 Abada’s first stable in Madrid was located on the present-day Abada Street in Madrid near
Philip II’s Alcázar. Aside from referencing popular belief of the rhino as panacea, Calderón’s
play confirms M. Molina Campuzano’s study on early Madrid cartography, which shows that
the popular name for Abada’s street had already become a standard name in the seventeenth
century. Abada Street is where King Philip II first put Abada upon arriving from Lisbon. Molina
(1960, 520) notes that the street was mostly called “Abada” or rhinoceros (eleven times), but also
“Bada” or rhinoceros (six times), and Abad or abbot (three times). He also cites Concerning the
Names and Streets of Madrid (1626–32), which refers to Bada Street (Calle de la Bada).
80 “Yo iré por allí a saber en que el accidente para” (“Mojiganga del Parnaso, Segunda parte de
la rabia,” Calderón de la Barca 1989, 256). Also see Casey 2019.
81 “Dizem que tem muita virtude para sarar gafos e que um negro que tinha cuidado dela que
com o seu bafo por dormir a par dele que sarao e que o sangue aproveita muitas enfermedades […]
Touching Abada and feeling her breath was a much more powerful curative
experience than simply touching or consuming a rhino body part. Spectators
who came to see Abada in the General Hospital would have associated her
with the unicorn and its horn, a legendary panacea. They would have tried
to touch the place of her missing horn or the horn that was starting to grow
back. In seeking to come in contact with her, many probably touched Abada
compassionately, like they did their small companion animals.82 Their touch
may have even benefitted Abada’s well-being, a moment radically at odds
with the suffering she experienced most of her life.
Conquered Enemies
At the end of the eighteenth century, in order to raise hospital income, the
Bedlam Asylum in London charged the public a fee of a penny to stare at
caged patients. People did not pay to see patients in Philip II’s hospitals, but,
nevertheless, he not only consolidated Madrid’s hospitals in an act of charity,
but also as a way to control and observe vagrants, prostitutes, criminals, and
the mentally ill. In places such as Bedlam and the General Hospital in Paris,
crowds treated the ill and insane with cruelty (Senior 2004, 222). People also
observed and mistreated the deranged and mentally ill in early modern
Spain, and they were increasingly the object of spectacle. The character
Don Quixote, at the end of the spurious sequel to Part I of Cervantes’s novel,
was sent to a hospital for the insane. Quixote was not only a character in
fictional novels, but he was also the protagonist in short comic plays and in
parades, spectacles that exaggerated his character as ridiculous and loony.
One historical patient in Spain may also have been the object of spectacle.
Juan de Dios was forcibly detained in the Hospital of Antón Martín in the
1580s, and evidence exists that one woman went to see Juan de Dios at the
same time she may have also seen Hawa’i. Hawa’i was lodged in the Hospital
of Antón Martín, located near the present-day plaza of Antón Martín. The
Hospital of Antón Martín was dedicated to skin diseases, primarily sexually
transmitted diseases like syphilis. Lucretia de León (1567–?), the daughter of
Tem-la El Rei em grande estima qui la aquí desenhar por ser cousa nova a nos e muito estranha
e dar fim a este libro pois neste tempo veio” (qtd. in Fontes da Costa 2009, 79). Also see Cruz de
Almeida and Lino Rodrigo 1992.
82 Some small dogs were kept near the breast or on the lap and touched intimately (Martín
2020). Accounts exist of elites that cherished the act of touching their small companion animals.
Isabella d’Este Marchesa de Mantua acquired a small cat with soft fur from India that she kept
in the sleeves of her clothing (Cockram 2017).
a merchant who lived in Madrid in the 1580s, visited the Hospital of Antón
Martín in 1588—ostensibly, not to see Hawa’i, but Juan de Dios. Richard
Kagan has studied inquisitional documents that record the Lucretia’s dreams.
In one record from 1588, Lucretia describes a dream in which she recounted
a visit to the hospital of Antón Martín and in which she saw a monstrous
elephant-like creature (Kagan 1990, 71–72).
For Kagan, Lucretia’s dream description suggests a real experience she
might have had with the quack prophet Juan de Dios in the hospital. Lucretia
states that, when she was in the hospital, Juan de Dios told her that King
Philip II would cause the destruction of Spain because he did not expel the
moriscos. Lucretia’s description of an elephant monster follows popular
accounts of a prophesy about moriscos connected to elephants. The Carmelite
friar and historian, Marcos de Guadalajara (1560–1631), for instance, wrote
about the popular elephant connection in Memorable Expulsión y justísimo
destierro de los Moriscos de España (Commemoration of the Expulsion and the
Most Just Exile of the Moriscos of Spain, 1613). Marcos de Guadalajara writes
that the Spanish (whom he refers to as the Sagittarians) “are stronger than
the elephants.”83
Lucretia’s experience suggests that not all the public who came to the
hospitals to see the pachyderms came seeking a cure. They did not all touch
Abada and Hawa’i with compassion. Some of the public would have also
looked at both pachyderms as Spanish enemies and great prisoners of war.
They touched them with awe and disgust. Overawed by their immense
size, some poked and prodded their thick hides and attempted to injure
the animals.
The poem in Villalva’s Spiritual and Moral Emblems describes the Christ-
rhino as fighting a “belligerent” elephant. Many would have associated the
elephant with Islam, Spain’s outcast religion. For instance, when Philip arrived
to Lisbon in 1580, the city celebrated a royal entrance procession, and the
silversmiths of the city created a float. They represented Philip as a lion and the
Turk as an elephant. A description describes the float: “The right-hand panel
showed a globe of the world split in two halves. One of them was clutched
in the claws of a lion and the other half had an elephant with its trunk ac-
companied by ferocious wild animals with claws.”84 The interpretation of
the iconographic program continues: “the image was an allegory of the world
83 “son más fuertes los Sagitarios que los Elephantes” (qtd. in Lee 2020, 181).
84 “O painel da mano direyta se mostraba o globo do Mundo partido em duas ametades. Huna
das quaes tinha aferrada com as unas hun leão & a otra hum elefante com a trova juntamente
como outros animais feroces con as unas” (qtd. in Pizarro Gómez 1999, 140–1).
divided in two parts. The first was King Philip II as a strong and powerful
lion that possessed half the world and the other half was controlled by the
Great Turk, accompanied by the Muslims and other pagans.”85
Many visitors who saw Hawa’i would have thought of him as a Turkish
captive. Early modern Europe in general often equated elephants with
Turks. In 1531, Charles V’s envoys, Joseph von Lamberg and Niklas Jurischitz,
reported that, on their way to the audience chamber in the first court of
the Ottoman palace, they saw two elephants (Reindl-Kiel 2010, 279–80).
The Turk-elephant connection appears in European accounts such as Ogier
Ghislain de Busbecq (1522–92), who served as ambassador in the Sultan’s
court (1554–62). Ghislain de Busbecq, like Covarrubias, calls attention to
elephant’s “hand”:
I also saw a quite young elephant which greatly amused me, because it
could dance and play ball […] When the elephant was ordered to dance it
advanced on alternate feet, swaying back and forth with its whole body,
so that it obviously meant to dance a jig. It played with a ball by cleverly
catching it, when it was thrown, with its trunk and hurling it back, as we
do with the hand. (qtd. Jordan Gschwend 2010, 28)
The connection between Turks and elephants can also be found in published
images from the period, such as the Danish engraving (1559) by Melchior
Lorck (1527–64), which shows Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (1494–1566)
in front of the mosque that he built in 1557 with two men riding on the back
of an elephant.
When King Philip II placed Abada and Hawa’i in Madrid, he not only fol-
lowed the example of the House of Animals in Tenochtitlan, he also adapted
the Turkish practice of keeping captive animals for imperial propaganda. In
the sixteenth-century Ottoman court, live elephants provided the necessary
splendor for a properly magnificent Islamic court (Reindl-Kiel 2010, 279). The
Ottoman Empire’s two capitals, Cairo and Istanbul, held animals— such
as lions, cheetahs, panthers, giraffes, and most especially elephants—in
enclosures, as living symbols of empire (Mikhail 2014). In sixteenth-century
Istanbul, over 200 animals were on display and Süleyman strategically
expanded the power of the Ottomans in the East, facilitating Istanbul’s
steady supply of animals (Groom 2019, 11).
85 “A qual historia significaba o Mundo divido em duas partes, das quaes el Rey Phillippe como
forte & poderoso leão possue ametade: & a outra o grão Turco, juntamente com elle os Mouros
& mais paganos” (qtd. in Pizarro Gómez 1999, 140–1).
In a short comic play, La gran sultana Doña Catalina de Oviedo (1615) (The
Great Sultana, 2010a and 2010b), Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) jokes about
the common popular connection between the elephant and the Turks. The
comic gracioso human character, Madrigal, a Spanish captive in Istanbul,
pretends that he is a mahout and can teach the sultan’s elephant to speak.
The elephant in the play is a symbol of the Great Sultan of Turkey, Murad III
(1546–95), and Madrigal (rather than the elephant) is the captive. Cervantes
cleverly inverts cultural references: The live Turkish captive is not Hawa’i
in Madrid, but the human Spanish captive Madrigal in Istanbul.
For many spectators, Hawa’i and Abada were the embodiment of Philip II’s
conquered enemies like the Great Turk. Much of the public would have per-
ceived both animals as animals of war under Philip II’s control. With regard
to elephants, sixteenth-century artists depicted images of elephants, with
soldiers riding them into bloody battle, alongside Hannibal (247–183BCE)
attacking Rome. Monarchs staged live mock battles that included battle
elephants. One tapestry (ca. 1576) shows Catherine de’ Medici watching a
magnificent mock battle—complete with fireworks—with soldiers in a
two-story box on top of an elephant, alluding to Hannibal’s crossing of the
Alps. Moreover, disseminating the image of the war pachyderm in Treatise
of the Drugs and Medicines of the East Indies, the book on plants from the
East Indies, Cristóbal Acosta included a supplement titled “Tractado del
elephante y sus calidades” (“Treatise on the Elephant and its Qualities”).
The treatise contains a woodcut of an image of an armored elephant (fig. 9),
and Acosta states that elephants “go to war with armor garniture on the
forehead, and on their breasts, like armored horses.”86
Some members of the public, perhaps soldiers or those interested in the
military, would have been interested in Hawa’i as prisoner of war and his
potential as new European war technology. In turn, with regard to Abada,
members of the public would have imagined that the greatest armored beast
from the Indies was under Philip’s dominion. Dürer’s depiction of the rhino
as a war machine was known from emblem books and popular legends
that described rhinos as tools used in battle.87 Francisco Hernández, who
86 “Van a la guerra armados en la frente, y en el pecho, como caballos encubertados” (C. Acosta
1578, 438).
87 No evidence exists to suggest that rhinos were actually used in battle. Nonetheless, early
sixteenth-century Portuguese historians described epic battles in the Orient that included
armored elephants and rhinos. A 1645 Spanish translation of the experience in the Portuguese
East Indies of Fernão Mendez Pinto (1509–83) refers to abadas and notes that “80,000 rhinos
carried the military equipment” in a battle waged on Peking (“ochenta mil abadas en que traían el
bagaje”) (Pinto 1645, 236). In Lendas da India (Legends from India, 1534), Gaspar Correa (1492–1563)
Fig. 9. Elephant with armor. “Tractado del elephante y sus calidades” (1578) by Cristóbal Acosta
(Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla).
describes a fantastic battle with elephants and epic rhinos with the grandeur of the weaponized
war rhinos from the film Blank Panther. Referring to Ganda and also calling rhinos ganda or
“beast” in the feminine (bicha), Correa states that the Tartar king: “divided his army into five
well-arrayed battalions, consisting of 140,000 on horseback and 280,000 on foot, and in front of
them a battalion of 800 elephants, which fought with swords upon their tusks, and castles with
archers and musketeers on their backs. And, in front of the elephants, 80 rhinoceroses, like the one
wrote a Spanish translation of Pliny in the 1570s, referred to the popularity of

Dürer’s Rhinoceros: “no better description can be made of the rhinoceros than
its icon and image which, as I have said is well depicted and authentically
represented in books by contemporary authors who discuss the animal.”88 One
Dominican author, Luis de Urreta (1570–1636), mentioned Abada in Madrid
and referred to the image of the rhino in “portraits and books.” Like Mendoza,
who described China with contemporary accounts without having been there,
so too Urreta described Ethiopia largely through the lens of contemporary
fantasy accounts of Prester Juan. The live presence of Abada, however, just
as she was an observable fact for Mendoza, was also important for Urreta:
The rhino is now quite well known since people saw it in Madrid for a
long time and there are many portraits and prints in books. The entire
animal is armed with scales, a cuirass so durable that no lance, or arrow,
or any weapon can cause a dent to it. There is no shotgun nor musket
that can penetrate its hide.89
Urreta’s description suggests that people not only sought a cure when they
saw her, they may have also tried to test the durability of her hide with
weapons.
Plays from the period highlighted the popular desire to see new animals
with natural armor. In the play Lo fingido verdadero (Acting is Believing,
1607–8) by Lope de Vega, a character marvels at a group of animals. One
of the animals is a fantastical elk that has lames on an armor-type hide of
that which went to Portugal, and which they called ‘beast’ fought strongly, carrying three-pronged
iron weapons on the horn of their snout […] the Mogors took the advantage by shooting arrows,
wounding many of the rhinos and elephants, which, as the arrows pierced them, turned and fled”
(“fez repartição de sua gente em cinqo batalhas bem ordenadas, em que leuaua cento e corenta
mil de cauallo e duzentos e oitenta mil de pé, e diante huma batalha de oitocentos alifantes, que
pelejauão com espadas nos dentes e em cima castellos com frecheiros e espingardeiros. E diante
dos alifantes oitenta gandas, como huma que foy a Portugal, a que chamarão bicha, que no corno
que tem sobre o focinho tinhão ferros de três pontas com que pelejauão muy fortemente […] os
mogores com frechas fizerão grande entrada, ferindo muy fortemente nas gandas e alifantes,
os quaes, sentindo as frechas, voltarão fogindó”) (Correia 1862, 3: 573–4).
88 “Y esto baste de la forma del rhinocerote porque le describen muchos autores antiguos y
modernos y no hay mejor descripción que su icón y figura, la cual está, como tengo dicho, muy
bien retractada y sacada al natural en algunos libros de modernos que ventilan esta materia”
(Hernández 1976, 2: 377).
89 “su figura ya es cosa muy conocida, porque le vieron en Madrid mucho tiempo, y ay muchos
retratos y estampas en los libros: todo el esta armado de unas costras, y como corazas tan fuertes,
que ni lança, ni saeta, ni arma ninguna le puede hacer mella, ni ay escopeta, ni mosquete que
le pueda falsar el pellejo” (Urreta 1610, 245).
which are made shields through which “no iron can penetrate.”90 Urreta’s
description of the rhinoceros suggests that people who went to see Abada
wanted to test how tough her supposedly armor-like skin was. González
de Mendoza wrote that her “hide is so tough that no man, no matter how
strong, can pass a stake through it.”91 Another eyewitness in Madrid in 1585,
Diego de Funes y Mendoza, notes that she had “very hard shells around the
head and the hide was so strong as to withstand a bullet.”92
Juan de Arfe Depicts Captives of Scipio Africanus
In 1583, the master goldsmith and engraver Juan de Arfe y Villafañe (fig. 10)
rented his house in Seville and went to Madrid, where he observed Abada
and Hawa’i. Arfe, in turn, chose a scene from classical antiquity to represent
each. In the scene that he crafted on an elaborate ewer, which is now owned
by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 11), an elephant and rhino march
as part of a victory parade of Scipio Africanus (236–183 BCE).93 Arfe ignored
each animal’s place of origin.94 His primary concern was to measure their
90 “ningún hierro los penetra” (Vega 1986, 85–86).

91 “cuyo cuero es tan duro que ningún hombre por de grandes fuerzas que sea lo podrá pasar
de una estocada” (González de Mendoza, 1596, 357).
92 “En Madrid hubo otro rinoceronte el año de mil y quinientos y ochenta y cinco, que fue
quando le vi, al qual le habían sacado los ojos porque no hiciese mal. Tenía este unas como
conchas muy duras cerca de la cabeza, y el cuero tan fuerte que casi pudiera resistir una bala”
(Funes y Mendoza 1621, 270–1).
93 An ewer is essentially a glorified water pitcher, often crafted with an accompanying basin.
Finely crafted ewers and their accompanying basins formed part of the silverware of elite homes
across Renaissance Europe. Luxurious sixteenth-century ewers and basins were produced in
Portugal, France, Italy, and Germany and can be found in collections across Europe, including
Venice (Conte Cine Collection); Florence (Museo degli Argenti); London (Victoria and Albert
Museum, Wallace Collection); and Munich (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Schazkammer of
the Residenz). Today, it is difficult to see a Spanish ewer from the period because almost all of
the ewers were melted down to take advantage of their base metal. One surviving ewer and
basin is on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; it was taken as booty by the Dutch from
a captured Spanish ship from the period. Paintings also give an idea of the lost elaborate master
craftsmanship of ewers from this period. One painting depicts an ostentatious ewer with a
dragon-head-shaped spout. The ewer on its basin is in the front and center of La última cena
(The Last Supper, 1588) by Alonso Vásquez (ca. 1565–ca. 1608) in the Museo de Bellas Artes in
Seville.
94 Arfe was not the first artist to use an Indian rhinoceros in an African setting. For instance,
based on Ganda, Francesco Granacci depicted an Indian rhino and his mahout in a scene that
depicts Egypt in Joseph Introduces his Father and Brothers to the Pharaoh (1517) (Bedini 1998,
134).
Fig. 10. Juan de Arfe’s self-portrait. Frontispiece Fig. 11. Gilded silver ewer (1583) by Juan de Arfe
from De varia commensuración para la esculptura (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).
y architectura (1585) (Biblioteca de la Universidad
de Sevilla).
proper proportions. They served as captive African animals in a scene that

celebrated Philip II as emperor of universal peace and just conqueror of
Portugal and Portuguese Asia.
No scholar has identif ied Juan de Arfe as the creator of the ewer, a
detail of which I have chosen for the cover of this book.95 Juan de Arfe
was sixteenth-century Europe’s most important humanist-goldsmith. His
craftsmanship of metal objects for the Catholic church is well known.
Aside from reliquaries, chalices and patens, altar crosses, incense boats,
and candlesticks, he most notably designed a massive monstrance for the
cathedrals in Avila, Valladolid, and Burgos. His monstrance for the Seville
cathedral weighs over a thousand pounds and stands at ten feet tall.
Aside from the vast number of material objects made in gold and silver,
Arfe also published De varia commensuración para la Esculptura y Archi-
tectura (Varying Proportion for Sculpture and Architecture, 1585), which was
95 The Scipio Africanus ewer and accompanying basin by Arfe survive in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City. J. F. Hayward was the first to put forward the possible attribution
of the ewer and basin to Arfe: “This ewer and basin are of the quality one would expect from
[Juan de Arfe’s] workshop” (1976, 194). The Roman mark on the ewer does not correctly indicate
its origin. Hayward notes that the mark appeared well after the ewer’s creation: “Both ewer and
basin are struck with a later Rome mark, apparently dating from the 18th century” (1976, 369).
reedited and published several times over the next three centuries.96 In
Varying Proportion for Sculpture and Architecture, Arfe explains that there
are many ways to make a ewer, but that he, in a show of pride, created ewers
of the most felicitous proportions and that he was the most accomplished
ewer artist. Arfe’s description of the ewer’s ideal proportions—the special
height of the handle as well as the different parts, including the spout,
body, and basin—corresponds to the Scipio Africanus ewer that survives
in the Met.
Varying Proportion for Sculpture and Architecture was Arfe’s argument
on behalf of metalsmiths as distinguished artists, rather than craftsman.
Charles V had not officially recognized the artistry of the goldsmith until
1552, and Arfe used Varying Proportion for Sculpture and Architecture to
dispel the notion that those who practiced metal crafting were commonplace
and unexceptional (Hayward 1976, 92).97 He begins Varying Proportion for
Sculpture and Architecture with “To His Readers,” in which he explains that
his purpose was to show the ideal proportions of the human body in the
art of sculpture and architecture and, after showing diagrams of how to
imitate nature’s design of the human body, he concludes: “Truly sculpture
and architecture are the epitome of all the arts because they are born from
crafting material with your hands and using one’s reason and judgment to
inform the creation of that artifice.”98
Even though many know Arfe as having created opulent objects for the
Church, Arfe also made many objects influenced by iconography from the
classical tradition. Arfe wrote that the objective of Varying Proportion for
Sculpture and Architecture was to establish rules of proportion for crafting
precious metals: “In my book I only wish to gather all the authors that
96 Other publications include Quilatador de oro, plata y piedras (Assayer of Gold, Silver, and
Precious Stones, Valladolid, 1579) and Descripción de la traça y ornato de la custodia de plata de
la Santa Yglesia de Sevilla (Description of the Form and Decoration of the Silver Monstrance in the
Holy Church of Seville, Seville, 1587). See Sanz 2006.
97 Arfe influenced how Diego de Velázquez conceived of his role as artist. Jonathan Brown
has argued that the desire to raise the status of painters was fundamental for understanding
Diego de Velázquez’s art (Brown 1986, 2). Arfe’s Varying Proportion for Sculpture and Architecture
influenced Arte de la pintura (The Art of Painting) by Francisco Pacheco (1564–1644), which
appeared in Seville twenty years later and would have been obligatory reading for Diego Velázquez
(1599–1660). Arfe’s desire to raise the status and prestige of the metal crafter above that of manual
laborers influenced Pacheco who, in turn, impressed the desire to raise the status of painters
upon Diego de Velázquez.
98 “Verdaderamente la escultura y arquitectura son una perfección de todas las artes: las cuales
nacen de la fábrica que labra la materia con las manos, y de la razón y juicio que dan las cosas
fabricadas” (Arfe 1585, 5r).
correctly interpret these arts to establish the necessary rules to craft gold
and silver and other metals.”99 He writes that, of all the arts practiced by the
Greeks and Romans that were later taught to “barbarous” nations, the most
important were sculpture and architecture, the subjects of his treatise.100
Arfe’s primary sources were Greek and Roman authors, and he described
the craftsmanship of precious metal as the height of all the arts.
As Varying Proportion for Sculpture and Architecture was republished
over the next centuries, architects and scientists appreciated the detailed
attention to the proportions of machines and the human body. Early modern
zoologists also appreciated Arfe’s dispassionate treatment of animals. Arfe
described the proper proportions of animals by stating the height and length
of each and by including an image in which its height and length is marked.
One of the silver plates of the massive monstrance in the Seville cathedral
shows a lion, bull, eagle, and man pulling a crowned figure on a Roman-style
chariot. The prophet Ezekiel received a divinely inspired vision in which
God was pulled by the four beings. Arfe borrows the common motif of the
Christian renaissance in which each one represented the four evangelists—
Matthew, the man; Mark, the lion; Luke, the ox; and John, the eagle.
One of the lions on the Scipio Africanus ewer is remarkably similar to
the lion on the 1580 Seville monstrance. Aside from the Scipio Africanus
ewer designed for Philip II, Arfe designed another ewer, now lost, for Philip
III upon Philip II’s death in 1598. The Philip III ewer also depicted animals.
Even though the object is lost, the description of the Philip III ewer survives.
The Philip III ewer contained an image of Orpheus charming the animals
(Martín 1980). Arfe’s interest in Orpheus connects to one of the great visual
motifs—and human fantasies—of the Renaissance: a man who uses music
to control the animal world.101
99 “Pues lo que yo en mi obra pretendo es solamente juntar de todos los autores que mejor
acertaron estas artes, solas las reglas necesarias para labrar artificiosamente la plata y oro, y
otros metales” (Arfe 1585, 5v).
100 “De todas las artes que antiguamente florecieron entre los griegos y romanos, de los cuales
después fueron enseñadas otras naciones bárbaras, las que más llegaron a su punto fueron la
escultura y arquitectura” (Arfe 1585, 5r).
101 Because it is lost, it is impossible to know how Arfe depicted Orpheus on the Philip III ewer.
Nonetheless, the Orpheus motif was common in printed books and even on elite household
furniture. Following models of table cabinets produced in the Grand Ducal Medici court (one
example is found in the Detroit Institute of Arts), elites in Europe passionately collected table
cabinets made of multicolored, intricately cut hard semiprecious stones. A common iconographic
program for the cabinets was to show Orpheus mollifying the wild animals of the world with his
music. Wolfram Koeppe and Anna Maria Giusti (2008) note at least eighteen of the hardstone or
pietre dure with the Orpheus animal plaquettes in cabinets in existence today. Demonstrating
Arfe devotes an entire section of his master opus Varying Proportion for
Sculpture and Architecture to animals, and states that he represents the
animals that he observed firsthand. Under the entry for “Rhinoceros,” he
explains “other animals have horns, but not having seen them alive, I do not
discuss them.”102 In an effort to create an authentic image, Arfe describes
animals as living machines and provides details on how the metal crafter
can reproduce the movement of live animals.103
Varying Proportion for Sculpture and Architecture contains woodcut
images of the animals that Arfe observed. Aside from the measurements of
each animal, he includes its phenotypical description, such as the number of
toes or the length of the animal’s thumb. The lion description, for instance,
describes its appearance and how it moves: “a graphic description of move-
ment is as follows: it sets the back foot down before it lifts up its front foot
from the other side, it takes big steps when it walks and the back foot does
not pass the front foot.”104
With respect to the elephant and rhinoceros on the Scipio African ewer,
Arfe radically displaced their Indian origins and depicted them through the
lens of firsthand observation experience by making them captive African
animals. Scipio Africanus is a victorious prince leading the animals: He
returns to Rome from the victory in Africa, leading the procession of soldiers
and animals. Scipio Africanus reclines in his chariot, with the detail of his
elbow on the side of the chariot and a palm frond in the shape of a rope
flowing alongside.105 Scipio is followed by a procession: two men on bucking
orientalism as fashion for home design, Tomás Hiepes (ca. 1595–1674) in Spain (Grapes, peaches
and a snail in a Chinese porcelain bowl atop a gilt and inlaid cabinet, Valencia, 1646) depicted a
still life of a Chinese porcelain bowl sitting atop a cabinet that shows Orpheus playing his lyre
among the animals, including a rhinoceros facing off against an elephant.
102 “otros animales de cuernos ay, pero por no los haber visto vivos no tratamos dellos” (Arfe
1773, 205)
103 Arfe also published a version of Aesop’s fables. When Arfe returned to Seville, his brother
Antonio died. Arfe wrote that he had saved a series of poems that his brother had written in
Aesop’s style and, in honor of his brother’s memory, he published the animal poems. He writes
in the prologue: “After the death of Antonio my brother, I was going through his papers and
found these Aesop fables among them […] for the love of my brother and not letting them die
with him, I decided to bring them to light for the eyes of the world” (“Después de la muerte de
Antonio de Arsemi hermano, revolviendo un día sus papeles, entre otros, a caso, hallé estas
fabulas de Esopo […] por el amor de hermano, en no dejarla morir juntamente con el, y así
determiné sacarla a luz y ponerla ante los ojos del mundo”) (A. Arfe 1642, 2–3).
104 “Su movimiento a diámetro, que es asentar el pie antes que alce la mano de su lado, alza
mucho los pies manos cuando camina y no pasa del pie a la mano” (Arfe 1773, 194).
105 In his creation of the triumphal procession on the ewer, Arfe borrowed themes and im-
ages drawn by Giulio Romano (1499–1546), which were used for a number of tapestries that
horses, a bull in between a female and male lion, a camel, an elephant, a

rhinoceros, and, finally, another bull. The Barbary male lion looks back
menacingly at the rhinoceros (fig. 12).
The Scipio Africanus iconographic program had formerly been represented
in some of the most famous tapestries produced in the period. Arfe added a
rhinoceros to the procession of animals, an image not found in the source
images of animals such as the Scipio Africanus iconography on the tapestry
cycle. With respect to his zoological description of the rhinoceros, Juan de
Arfe writes a short prose description stating that the rhinoceros is “of great
size—about two meters high. It has enormous strength and it is light on its
feet. It is covered with hard shells.”106 Arfe also repeats much of the same
information found in the text from Dürer’s Rhinoceros. After the prose
description, Arfe includes a short poem about the rhino. He writes that
depicted scenes of the triumphal return of the Roman general Scipio Africanus. Renaissance
artists considered Scipio Africanus one the greatest Roman generals and emblematic of Roman
imperial triumph. The most prominent visual representation of the triumph of Scipio Africanus
from the sixteenth century was realized in a magnif icent tapestry cycle woven in Brussels,
commissioned by Charles V—but which ultimately fell into the hands of King Francis I of
France (1494–1547) due to lack of money from the Spanish Crown. Gaining back much of what
his father lost, Philip II acquired seven of the tapestries when they were bequeathed to him by
Mary of Austria (1505–58) (De Armas 1998, 74). Ten out of the twelve of the Scipio tapestry cycle
show Scipio’s triumphal return to Rome. One of the tapestries, “The Triumph of Scipio” (in the
Maryland State Art Collection) depicts Scipio outside the gates of Rome. Scipio sits in a chariot
and holds a palm frond, the Roman symbol of victory, in his hand. The tapestry shows soldiers
on foot and horses lined up around him in preparation for the victory procession to celebrate
Scipio’s victory against Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. It also depicts a Roman soldier riding a
bucking horse. Arfe uses the image of the bucking horse and adds the detail of a Roman soldier
riding the horse carrying a shield with the letters SPQR, an anagram for “Senate and People of
Rome” (senatus populous-que romanus). In the Roman era, SPQR was on coins, documents, and
flags, and, in the Renaissance, Arfe and other metal engravers used the letters SPQR to evoke
an image of Roman glory. One example of a Renaissance casting of the Roman motif of SPQR is
found on a medal cast for Pope Julius, which shows a bucking horse with Roman soldier holding
a shield embossed with SPQR (Hersey 1993, 46). Like the tapestry “The Triumph of Scipio,”
Arfe’s ewer depicts Scipio seated in his chariot with Roman soldiers around him. Scipio is not
only holding a palm, but woven ropes of palms on the ewer fill the ewer. A palm frond extends
down from Scipio’s elbow across the chariot and another palm frond hangs down from the
first bull’s horn, which is flanked by a male and female lion on its right and left, respectively.
One of Giulio Romano’s sketches (found in the Walker Gallery, Liverpool) used as model for
the tapestry cycle is also called “The Triumph of Scipio” and shows a haphazard procession of
Romans and animals. The animals include four bulls, leading two elephants—one with a lion
on its back—and a camel. In his depiction of the procession on the ewer, Arfe also depicted the
same animals: two bulls, two lions, a camel, and an elephant.
106 “El rinoceronte es animal de mucho cuerpo y su alto dos varas, tiene mucha fuerza y es muy
ligero, todo su cuerpo tiene cubierto de recias conchas” (Arfe 1979, 8).
Fig. 12. A lion looks back at a rhinoceros. Detail from section of gilded silver ewer (1583) by Juan de
Arfe (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).
this animal—“born in the Orient”—is fierce and covered in plates that are
so thick and tough that steel weapons could not penetrate or injure it.107
Arfe depicts Abada as a peaceful animal. She is not fighting the elephant.
Images and stock descriptions of the rhino throughout the sixteenth century
show rhinos and elephants at war with each other. Arfe also does not depict
Hawa’i as a war animal. Arfe depicts the elephant with the mounted box,
suggesting its previous role as a war animal, now converted it into a peaceful
captive.108 Arfe’s elephant and rhino walk side by side peacefully, and lions
and bulls celebrate Philip II as Scipio Africanus who supposedly has fully
realized the Roman notion of pax universalis.
Arfe did not borrow the image of the elephant as war machine, nor did
he associate it with the Turk. Instead, he turned to its image as halcyon
of peace under the wings of Philip II. In this sense, Arfe borrowed from
the iconographic tradition that associated the elephant with peace, such
as one city’s elephant that welcomed Philip II. In contrast with Lisbon,
107 “Es el rinoceronte, animal fiero / Cuerpo grande y de conchas guarnecido / Tan recias que
resisten al acero / De fuerte que no puede ser herido / Un cuerno en la nariz ancho y somero /
Con que ofende y también es defendido / Nada y corre veloz y sueltamente / Y nace este animal
en el oriente” (Arfe 1773, 205)
108 In the tapestry cycle, the elephant is a battle animal fighting alongside Scipio and his Roman
forces, which attack Hannibal’s (247–183 BCE) army, fighting from the box-like perches atop
elephants.
which used the elephant icon to symbolize the Grand Turk, the Puerta de
Guadalajara at the entrance of Alcalá de Henares built a structure that
celebrated Philip II’s entrance into the city with an image of an elephant
among sheep, symbolizing the peace that King Philip II supposedly brought
to the empire (Pizarro Gómez 1999, 140).
The icon of the war elephant turned peaceful was a borrowed motif
from Alciato’s emblem book. Under the entry pax in his book of emblems,
Alciato depicted an elephant leading a triumphal carriage. Alciato describes
the elephant as follows: “even the beast recognizes the nations reconciled
on every side, and rejecting the weapons of war, it performs the duties
of peace.”109 Spanish scholar Sebastián de Covarrubias, who included six
emblems dedicated to the elephant in his book on emblems and one of the
longest entries in his dictionary to the word “elephant,” also copied Alciato’s
emblem, writing: “Alciato himself made an elephant the symbol of peace.”110
Arfe, then, used the icon of the elephant as a symbol of peace on his ewer, a
material object that connected the elephant to Philip II’s imperial glory. The
rhino on the ewer, like the elephant, was also a symbol of peace. In contrast
to Dürer, who added fanciful armor embellishment, Arfe’s rhinoceros on the
Scipio Africanus ewer is an image with measured proportions, an authentic
and astonishingly lifelike representation of an Indian rhinoceros. T.H.
Clarke notes that no rhino image from the sixteenth or seventeenth century
matches the authenticity of Arfe’s image. According to Clarke, it took more
than a century and a half for any artist to accurately represent an Indian
rhino—that is, when the French artist Jean-Batiste Oudry painted a portrait
of Clara the rhinoceros in 1749 (1986, 34).
The depiction of the animals, especially the rhinoceros, on Arfe’s ewer are,
in their proportion and accuracy, one of the great goldsmith achievements
of the sixteenth-century. J. F. Hayward, a specialist who has examined
hundreds of ewers from this period, describes Arfe’s ewer and basin as the
“the most richly decorated” and “superbly wrought” (Hayward 1976, 369).
Hayward writes that they are “the finest of all the sixteenth-century ewers
and basins, irrespective of country of origin” (Hayward 1976, 193).
Despite the artistic accomplishment, the humanist logic that Arfe employs
in the representation of animals is troubling. Arfe conceives of animal
individuals as moving machines that serve a Habsburg imperial propaganda
message of supposed planetary peace. Arfe did not represent the material
109 “Vel fera cognoscit concordes undique gentes, / Proiectisque armis munia pacis obit” (Alciato
1556, 133).
110 “El mismo Alciato puso por símbolo de paz un elefante” (Covarrubias 1998, 499).
conditions of the elephant and rhino in Madrid, but carefully measured

their size through rational calculation—their physical form made them
imperfect beasts that contrasted to the perfection of the human male. He
discards their Indian origins and makes them African.
The animal procession on Arfe’s ewer is a slogan of universal peace for a
monarch who falsely claimed dominion over the planet and contributed to
the formation of institutions like zoos. In short, the depiction of animals on
Arfe’s ewer aligns with the logic that Philip used when he put the elephant
and rhino as spectacle in Madrid. Philip’s proto-zoo, as Randy Malamud
describes the modern zoo, could not “facilitate better understanding of
or care for animals,” but instead dangerously promoted a belief “that we
are entitled to see everything and have the power to control everything”
(2017, 398–9).
Conclusion
Ever since the Assyrians, potentates collected captive animals in menageries

as a symbol of how a city could capture the four corners of the world within
its walls. This chapter has pointed out that animal spectacles in early modern
Spain are fundamental for the history of collecting captive animals because
King Philip II transformed the classic menagerie into a proto-zoo. In keeping
Hawa’i and Abada for himself (and not gifting them away), he invented
the novel idea of an animal display for a public at large in hospitals that
intimately tied the animal spectacle to the growth of commercial theater.
Tracing the stories of the spectacle of Spain’s two transoceanic pachy-
derms has shown how Spain shaped a fleeting imperial moment into a
legend of the past, present, and future that constituted one aspect of daily
life experience of the public in Madrid, a city for which the King fashioned
a self-image of planetary control. The animal spectacle in Madrid led to
more zoos that enhanced ecological disaster and an ethically bankrupt
treatment of animals. The aesthetic of the elephant and rhino spectacle
sought a totalizing imperial aim that would be exploited more fully centuries
later in Europe, most especially, in the English Victorian Age.111
By way of conclusion, I would like to underscore that historicizing the
zoo, a microcosm of the Anthropocene, can inspire compassion for animal
111 With regard to the zoo in the English Victorian Age, Harriet Ritvo (1987) explains how
it reflected imperial networks. Kurt Koenigsberger (2007) likewise shows how the zoo com-
municated imperial totality.
sentience, especially for an animal’s sense of territory. For instance, a bet-

ter understaning of the imperial logic of the proto-zoo stimulates new
ways of thinking about animal and human communities. In 1587, medical
philosopher Oliva Sabuco (1562–1622) published a dialogue, the Nueva
filosofia de la naturaleza del hombre (New Philosophy of Human Nature).
I suspect that, aside from the classical and contemporary sources that
she mentions, Sabuco’s dialogue was influenced by having seen Hawa’i or
having talked to someone that had seen him firsthand. Although she does
not mention Hawa’i, Sabuco discusses how elephants respond to complex
verbal commands in New Philosophy of Human Nature (Alves 2011, 45–54).112
The experience of seeing live animals can enhance an understanding of
how animals communicate. As opposed to the official propaganda found in
Arfe’s representation, Sabuco is one example from early modern Spain that
heightens sensitivity to animal communication. Scholars are increasingly
looking to creativity across disciplines to enhance awareness on how diverse
species are entangled in specific cultural systems.113 Two students at Texas
Tech University, Yinting Fin from the School of Art and Caleb Lightfoot from
the School of Architecture, and I created two images to show Abada’s story,
which can heighten sensitivity to an animal’s sense of communication as
it relates to territory.
The first image we produced, Abada as Madrid (fig. 13), considers the
human sense of territory. Sixteenth-century European world maps that
include India used the space to serve the need of the imperial center. In the
Portuguese Miller Atlas (1519), for instance, two elephants and a rhino were
depicted in the region where they lived in the wild, providing a cartographic
guide to each animal’s origins and destruction. The image of an animal was
placed on a map where it could be found, so that it could be seen, hunted,
or brought into captivity.
Abada as Madrid follows the model of taking the medium of a historical
document—a map of Madrid by Frederic de Witt (1630–1706)—and overlap-
ping it onto an image of Abada. We preserved the sense of the early map of
Madrid that shows its streets, appearing almost as tattooed on her body. The
image entices the viewer through the words and partial words at the top of
the map: “DE MADRID CORTE DELOS REYES CATOLICOS D[E ESPANNA]”
(“of Madrid, court of the Catholic Monarchs o[f Spain]”).
112 For elephants and language in the Renaissance, also see Cummings 2004.
113 For a model of interdisciplinarity, see the “Multispecies Salon,” an art exhibit from 2008–10
that involved collaboration between artists and anthropologists interested in multispecies
ethnography as described in Kirksey 2014.
Fig. 13. Abada as Madrid (2018) by Yinting Fin and Caleb Lightfoot.
The second image we produced, Abada and Her Mother with India as Teat,
emphasizes Abada’s sense of space. Rejecting Philip’s model for the proto-zoo,
Abada is not subsumed within cartographic space, but subsumes carto-
graphic space, making visually manifest the internal cognitive process of
mapping. Abada and Her Mother with India as Teat envisions Abada before
her capture, as an infant in 1573 in India. It joins the spirit of twenty-first
century efforts that recuperate the habitat for elephants and rhinos, such
as Kaziranga National Park in the state of Assam, India, encouraging the
visualization of the animal in a nurturing environment. She feeds on the
plants that coevolved with her.5 Grazing with her mother, the image shows
an outline of the Indian subcontinent that forms part of Abada’s mother’s
body and evokes her teat.
The second image is both humorous and a sign of nurture, shifting the
epistemology of mapping away from the human toward the animal, offering a
visual alternative to oppressive forms of cartography that have existed since
Fig. 14. Abada and Her Mother with India as Teat (2018) by Yinting Fin and Caleb Lightfoot.
the period when Abada was first captured and brought to Iberia. As opposed
to the space of the proto-zoo as depicted in Abada as Madrid, the mapped
space within the body of the animal in Abada and Her Mother with India
as Teat emphasizes the cognitive sense of territory that all animals share.
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2. Fuleco the Armadillo
Abstract
Chapter 2 provides a biogeography of Fuleco the armadillo, beginning
with his birth in South America. Gonzalo Argote de Molina placed Fuleco’s
carapace in his collection in Seville and Nicolás Monardes visited Argote’s
collection, thereafter publishing a woodcut image of Fuleco (1571 and
1574). Fuleco functioned as a specimen in a modern museum in the sense
that Argote, following the model of other Renaissance curiosity cabinets,
sought to create a theater of the world. Fuleco was an important collectible
because his body was considered an American wonder in which nature
fashioned a bard on the skin of an unusual horselike animal. By contrast,
Fuleco as specimen symbolically enhanced the value of live horses and
armor as collectibles in both Argote and King Philip II’s collection.
Keywords: museum history, armor and bards, Fuleco the armadillo (ca.
1559–ca.1569), Philip II of Spain (1527–98), Nicolás Monardes (1493–1588),
Gonzalo Argote de Molina (1548–96)
Museum animals are distinct from others because they receive the beauti-
fully severe honor of becoming specimens after biological death. For each
taxidermy animal on display in museums, thousands of others hide away
in storage facilities. The reconstruction of the lives of individual animals in
museums is daunting and often impossible to chart fully. But many animal
bodies that survive or once existed in museums deserve biogeographies.
Some museum scholars are studying individual animal specimens. The
Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie (Alberti 2011), for instance,
examines the individual material lives and afterlives of seven museum
animals. Some of them had names, such as Alfred the gorilla. Others had
none. One study in The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie examines
the biogeography of a bird species commonly known as the hen harrier.
“The Biogeogeographies of a Hollow-Eyed Harrier” is inspired by a desic-
cated specimen of a harrier found in the Hunterian Zoological Museum in
doi 10.5117/9789463720441_ch02
Edinburgh and retells the fascinating story of the life of the harrier speci-
men through images of the bird (drawings and photos) and other forms of
interdisciplinary research (Patchett, Foster, and Lorimer 2011; Foster and
Lorimer 2012).
When I reimagine Fuleco as a specimen in Gonzalo Argote’s museum,
I see him as hollow-eyed like the hen harrier. For some animals, such as
Fuleco the armadillo, only a record of a life as a specimen—rather than the
actual specimen—exists. In such a case, the hurdle of reconstructing the
animal’s life and the creation of a biogeography is even more formidable. It
is highly probable that Fuleco as specimen did not have eyes. Despite the
difficulties, the following chapter examines the life of Fuleco, a member of
the favorite type of animal specimen in humanist collections across Europe
in the sixteenth century.
I first provide an overview of armadillos in sixteenth-century America.
I then explain how the period of time in which Fuleco was a specimen
illuminates the lives of three culturally significant human figures: Gonazlo
Argote, Nicolás Monardes, and King Philip II. Fuleco was found in the
museum collection in the home in Seville of the soldier-humanist Gonzalo
Argote. Nicolás Monardes, humanist and businessman, reproduced Fuleco’s
image in Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la Historia medicinal, de las
cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales (Medicinal History of the
Things Brought from Our West Indies, 1574). Finally, Fuleco as a specimen
provided enhanced symbolic value to Philip II’s collection of live horses and
armor because the armadillo was as a small version of an armored horse.
After Monardes newly minted the word “armadillo,” meaning “little
armored horse,” he stimulated a market for armadillo carapaces in collec-
tions and the dissemination of armadillo emblems of America. Monardes
perpetuated the notion that armadillos were curious bard imitations,
arguably Philip II’s most valuable collectible item. The final part of the
following chapter examines Fuleco as a specimen in the context of the
seventeenth-century Netherlands by briefly examining how Charles de
L’Écluse described exotic animals.
Argote, Monardes, and Philip II’s encounters with Fuleco contributed to
the emerging anthropocentricism behind the display of specimens in natural
history museums. Today, those in museum studies—just as those who work
in zoos—intimately come in contact with living and dead companions. Each
person that carefully handles an animal specimen in a museum partakes
in bestowing that animal an afterlife, or confining it again to storage.
In the following, I figuratively and carefully take Fuleco out of storage. I
provide Fuleco with a lighthearted legacy. The choice of the anachronistic
Fuleco the Armadillo 117
name Fuleco is motivated by the fact that scholarly work—a history of an

animal specimen from the early modern period—can rigorously incorporate
source material for the purpose of raising the awareness of ecological issues,
while, at the same time, encouraging creativity and sparking a smile. Scholars
in the humanities and sciences do not have to describe animal extinction
as if it were a Greek tragedy or the apocalypse. Instead, telling the story of
an armadillo with levity can inspire transformational modes of survival
over extinction.1
Fuleco’s Life (ca. 1559–ca. 1569)
Some species of armadillos, like the nine-banded variety, are expanding

their natural habitats. The nine-banded variety is the only variety to have
crossed the Rio Grande and has survived urban growth and highway traffic
in Texas. Its habitat continues to expand into states as far north as South
Carolina. The success of the nine-banded armadillo variety is due in part
to every mother having a litter of four genetically identical pups.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, the entire range of armadillos in the
recent geologic period extended from Argentina to northern Mexico. The
border of their northernmost habitat ended at the Rio Grande. Scientists still
debate exactly how armadillos arrived to the United States after the 1850s.
Some argue they came through Florida by boat while others, more plausibly,
suggest that they simply swam across the Rio Grande. Armadillos do not
mind water and can cross either by floating (in which case they swallow
air to inflate their bodies and create buoyancy) or simply walking along the
bottom, holding their breath for five minutes at a time.2
I take creative liberties in the naming of “Fuleco” for the heretofore un-
named armadillo. I also make him a him. Fuleco was the name of the official
mascot of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. The chapter’s protagonist,
Fuleco, was born deep in the ground in a burrow in Brazil, sometime in the
mid-sixteenth century. He was of the six-banded variety, one of some twenty
armadillo species. Based on observing Fuleco firsthand, in Medicinal History
1 For the role of humor in environmental cultural studies, see Findlen 1990; Beusterien and
Callicot 2013; and Beusterien 2019. For the role of humor in ethics and trans-species communities,
see Willett 2014.
2 For the arrival of the common nine-banded armadillo in Texas in 1854, see Humphrey 1974.
For armadillo expansion in the United States, see Taulman and Robbins 1996. Also see Beusterien
2017.
of the Things Brought from Our West Indies, Nicolás Monardes standardized
the name “armadillo” in Spanish and English.
Monardes’s coining of the word “armadillo” was not universally adopted
in the Americas. Many nonstandard common names still exist. In Peru,
Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile, people call armadillos quirquinchos (from
the Quechua kirkinchu) and, in Colombia, they are called cachicamo. In
Colombia, one variety is called gurre or herre-herre, a reference to the com-
mon hairy armadillo variety and an adaptation of the English “hairy-hairy.”
Some Colombians avoid herre-herre, the English lexical contamination, and
just call this armadillo variety peludo (“hairy”).
Before the Spanish arrived, peoples in Mesoamerica associated the arma-
dillo with success in agriculture. Generally, pre-Columbian Mesoamerica
societies connected the armadillo’s fertility with agricultural fertility. In one
Yucatan Maya legend, a god sits upon an armadillo, the name of which in
Yucatan Maya can also mean a stool or bench. Moreover, in the Yucatan Maya
tradition—as well as in the Tzotzil, Mazatec, and Aztec traditions—gourd
containers in the shape of armadillos or armadillo carapaces were used for
collecting corn when sowing the maize field (Stross 2007).
In his widely published account of America, Suma de Geografía (Sum of
All Geography, 1518), Martín Fernández de Enciso compares the armadillo
to the armored horse and states erroneously that armadillos eat grass like
horses. Some Spaniards that arrived to America, however, properly identi-
fied the armadillo’s diet. Tomás López Medel (1520–82) was born in Spain
(Tendilla, Guadalajara) and lived in Guatemala from 1549 to 1555 as a royally
appointed Spanish administrator and tax collector (visitador). He visited
the jurisdictions of Salvador, Chiapas, Yucatán, Tabasco, and Honduras. In
contrast to Fernández de Enciso’s account of America, López Medel’s was
never published. Nonetheless, López Medel closely observed armadillos
and correctly writes that they eat “ants and little worms.”3 Armadillos
generally forage for a variety of insects and other invertebrates, mostly grub
like beetles and insect larvae.
López Medel also writes that the “Mexican Indians call the [arma-
dillo] ‘ayotoche’ in their language.”4 “Ayotoche” refers to the Nahua word
ayotochtli. The Nahua historian Chimalpahin (1579–1660), who lived and
worked at the church of San Antonio Abad in the district of Xoloco, explains
the etymology of the Aztec word in his translation and addendum to the
account of the armadillo as found in Historia general de las Indias (General
3 “su comida es hormigas y gusanillos” (López Medel 1990, 178).

4 “los mexicanos indios en su lengua llaman ayatoche” (López Medel 1990, 178).
History of the Indies, 1552) by Francisco López de Gómara (1511–66). In the

description of the armadillo, Chimalpahin translates López de Gómara’s
description of the armadillo as armored horse and adds that “the Indians
call it ayotochli, which means ‘gourd rabbit’” (Schroeder et al. 2010, 97).
Many peoples in the Americas, both Europeans and indigenous peoples
alike, were not interested in armadillos as symbols—they were interested
in eating them. In some parts of Spanish America, the armadillo is still
known as siete carnes (“seven meats”) because it tastes like a combination
of seven different meats. Armadillo is eaten in various places and, in each
one, has a different name: jueche in Tabasco, toche in Veracruz, and cozuco
in Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.
If López Medel had come across Fuleco, he would have been somewhat
interested in his symbolic value. López Medel interpreted armadillos as
nature’s way of telling us we should favor the weak. He writes:
it is noteworthy that nature endows such a tiny little and worthless animal
with such an armor artifice and harmony [and not put that on an ox or
other great animal]. But, of course, everything has a purpose, and with
this animal and others like him, let us learn to care for and defend the
dim-witted and weak since they cannot care for themselves […] on its
own this animal is weak and delicate so it needed all of that protection
for its defense.5
López Medel expresses a noble moral about the meaning of armadillos for
humanity and writes that the armadillo is peaceful and delicate. But, in
the end, he still enjoyed eating them: “they are great to eat and their meat
tastes like pork.”6
One Spaniard did not like the taste of the armadillo. José de Acosta
(1540–1600), the sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit missionary and naturalist,
who lived in the areas of present-day Peru, Panama, and Mexico, writes in
his Historia natural y moral de las indias (Natural and Moral History of the
Indies) under the section “Of Game Animals”: “They are small animals that
are found in the woods, and are called armadillos because of their natural
5 “Es de notar aquí y de considerar que más artificio y armonía puso naturaleza en producir
y componer un animal tan pequeñuelo y sin fruto que no en un buey y en otro mayor; aunque,
cierto, todo sirve para nuestro particular enseñamiento, que con éste y otros ejemplos aprendamos
a mostrarnos más favorables y defensores de los imbéciles y flacos y que por sí no se pueden
defender, que no amparadores de los recios y bravos hacellos más bravos y tiranos contra otros,
como naturaleza lo hizo con este animal, que él de sí es flaco y delicado” (López Medel 1990, 178).
6 “Es bueno para comer y sabe la carne de él como de puerco” (López Medel 1990, 178).
defenses, with many scales that open and shut at will like a cuirass. I have
eaten them and do not think them good. A much better meat is that of
iguanas” (Acosta 2002, 240).7 Acosta’s opinion about their bad taste was
the exception not the rule.
Many writers noted the taste of the armadillo. Jean de Léry (1536–1613)
describes in Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil (Voyage to Brazil,
1578): “its meat is white and fairly tasty.”8 The anonymous French author
of Histoire Naturelle des Indes (The Natural History of the Indies) included
drawings of two different types of armadillos. He added to the image what
he claimed to be their indigenous names, tatovai and chupa. The author
states that tatovai tasted good: “This animal burrows into the ground like
rabbits. It lives on roots and is very good food” (Drake Manuscript 1586,
70v–71). Although the author mistakenly states that the armadillo lives off
of roots, he, like López Medel, ate armadillo.
Regarding the chupa variety, the anonymous French author notes a higher
quality meat: “This is an animal that lives underground like a badger. It
only feeds on roots and no animal dares attack it since it retracts its head
and paws in a ball in it shell similar to that of a tortoise. Its meat is very
excellent eating” (67v–68). Since the name chupa is not recorded by other
sources in the period to refer to the armadillo, I suspect that the French
author heard chupa when people were eating armadillo. Chupar means
“to suck” and, when eating an animal, such as a chicken, one sucked the
bones and other parts of the animal. Apparently, the author mistakenly
misinterpreted chupa, the imperative or command form of the verb. When
his fellow companions told him to suck the bones clean, he heard what he
thought was the name of the animal, chupa.
The armadillo is described as a food source in the work of the Dutch
artist, Frans Jansz Post (1612–80), who, like the anonymous French author
of The Natural History of the Indies, also drew different types of armadillos.
Upon his return to the Netherlands from Brazil, he painted View from Olinda
(Rijksmuseum 1662), which includes an image of an armadillo. While in
Brazil, Post made two armadillo images with watercolors, gouache, and
black ink (ca. 1638–44). He depicted a nine- and six-banded armadillo, both
of which he saw in seventeenth-century Brazil. The image of the six-banded
armadillo (fig. 15), for which Post uses the Portuguese name tatu peba,
probably looks quite similar to how Fuleco would have looked when he had
7 “son unos animalejos pequeños […] yo he comido de ellos: no me pareció cosa de precio.
Hará mejor comida es la de iguanas” (J. Acosta 1608).
8 “la chair en este blanche et d’assez bonne saveur” (Léry 1994, 263).
Fig. 15. Six-banded armadillo (1637–44) by Frans Post (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
eyes. Like the anonymous French author, Post declares that he had tasted
armadillo, calling the six-banded variety “a kind of armored pig” and adding
that it was “good to eat” and “tastes like chicken” (Rijksmuseum 2016).
Europeans who went to the Americas feasted on armadillos. They enjoyed
its taste, following native practices of hunting and eating the animal. André
Thévet (1516–90), Franciscan friar and cosmographer to King Henry II in
France, sums up the majority of European attitudes to armadillo meat.
After observing the people’s customs and animals in Baía de Guanabara
in 1555–6, Thévet writes that armadillos “are hunted with great diligence
because they have meat that is the softest that I have tasted in all my life.”9
I estimate that the vast majority of armadillos, perhaps hundreds, were
first eaten and then brought back to Europe as specimens in the sixteenth
century. Two, however, were brought back alive. One seems to have survived
one of the first shipments of American products back to the King of Spain.
López de Gómara, who had served as priest for Hernán Cortés, notes that,
when Cortés returned from America in 1528 in a show of Roman triumph,
he brought King Charles feather shields (see Conclusion) and “a large sum
9 “são caçados com grande diligência, porque têm a carne mais delicada que pensó ter provado
em toda a minha vida” (Thévet 2009, 182)
of feathered and hair blankets, fans, bucklers, plumage, stone mirrors, and
the like to give away” (qtd. in Roa de la Carrera 2005, 178). He brought eight
acrobats and twelve ballplayers. He also brought former captives from
Tenochtitlan’s “House of Animals” (see Chapter 1), which included living hu-
man beings—dwarves, albino men and women, and live animals—jaguars,
pelicans, an opossum, and an aiotochtli (“armadillo”).10
I have found one other mention of a living armadillo in Europe in the
sixteenth century. Jean de Léry refers to an armadillo that survived by
“feeding on grains and fruits.”11 The first records of living armadillos in
Europe begin to appear with more frequency at the end of the seventeenth
century. With the emergence of the modern zoo and the field of zoology,
expeditions increasingly sought live specimens. One live armadillo arrived
at the end of the seventeenth century in Jan Velten’s zoological garden in
the Netherlands (Winters 2017, 19) and another in eighteenth-century Spain
(Gómez-Centurión Jiménez 2009, 193).12
The maritime pilot that came into possession of Fuleco had no need to try
to keep him alive. Sailors, of course, did go to great lengths to keep animals
alive when necessary, as was the case with Abada and Hawa’i. They also
kept less valuable cargo alive on the return voyage, because they could earn
extra money selling live birds and monkeys as pets at the European port
of entry in Lisbon, Seville, Amsterdam, and London. I suspect that Fuleco,
a full-grown six-banded armadillo, was hunted, eaten, and sold sometime
around 1569 and then shipped to Seville with other commercial merchandise.
Most of the ship’s cargo, probably precious metals, commercial cotton, and
Brazilwood (Paubrasilia echinata), a wood used for producing red dye in
textiles, would have been taxed by the Crown. In contrast, the carapace of
Fuleco was not taxed.
Sailors often returned from the West Indies with live animals for sale in
Europe. Sometimes, they were forced to slaughter those animals for food.
When Jean de Léry returned to France from Brazil, his ship was loaded
with parrots and monkeys and, after his ship got stuck in the doldrums, he
10 “traía para ver tigres, alcatraces, un aiotochtli, otro tlaquci […] Y para dar, gran suma de
mantas de pluma, y pelo. Ventalles, rodelas, plumajes, espejos de piedra, y cosas así” (López de
Gómara 1877, 424).
11 “se nourrir de grain et de fruicts” (Léry 1994, 264).
12 Jan Velton also wrote and illustrated Wonders of Nature (ca. 1700). The frontispiece to the
manuscript shows an allegorical Mother Nature (a woman similar to the allegorical America)
surrounded by animals, including an armadillo and an Indian elephant. Velton includes various
armadillo images, including a depiction of Levinus Vincent’s zoological cabinet with a stuffed
pangolin and armadillo (Pieters 2001).
grudgingly allowed his men to eat the animals to ward off starvation (York
2006). Unlike parrots and monkeys, armadillos never became pets, nor was
there a market for live armadillos in menageries. Europe had little interest
in armadillos as living specimens, but their carapaces were already prized
collectible items among elites and humanists in the 1550s, especially after
Conrad Gesner described his specimen in 1551. Carapace specimens were sold
across Europe. One appears in an engraving of the cabinet of the apothecary
Ferrante Imperato (1550–1625) in Naples and in the cabinet of the natural
historian Ole Worm (1588–1654) in Copenhangen (Asúa and French 2005).
One report from the period notes the carapace of an armadillo for sale at a
market in Istanbul (Léry 1994 and George 1985).
On his return voyage, the maritime pilot that ate Fuleco could have eaten
other American animals. Jean Mocquet (1575–1616) is a probable model for
the sailor that sold Fuleco to Argote. When Jean Mocquet returned from
South America in 1604, he brought snakes and alligators for food. Mocquet
might have also eaten an armadillo as a snack because he returned to Europe
with an armadillo carapace that he sold to a private collection (Asúa and
French 2005). Fuleco’s flesh would have been removed, keeping the carapace
intact. French naturalist Perre Belon (1517–64) describes the process:
The reason why this animal is already commonly seen in many cabinets
[of curiosities], and why it is transported to such a distant country, is
that nature has armored it with a hard shell and large scales after the
fashion of a corselet, and also that its flesh can easily be removed from
inside [the shell] without losing anything of its original, natural form.13
With these words, Belon repeated the same armadillo description originally
found in the 1554 account by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner, who
described how the armadillo was “easily transported from distant regions,
because nature has armed it with a hard skin” and that the “flesh inside
can be easily taken out without any harm to the original shape” (qtd. in
Lawrence 2015).
After clearing out flesh, organs, and other organic material, the sailor
probably would have dried and stuffed Fuleco with straw. On the return
voyage across the Carrera de las indias (“American Passage”), after a stop
13 “Ce qui fait qu’on voit ceste beste ja commune en plusiurs cabinets, et estre portée en si
loingtain pays, est, que nature l’a armée de dure escorce et larges escailles à la maniere d’un
corcelet, et aussi qu’on peut aisement oster sa chair de leans sans rien perdre de sa naifve figure”
(qtd. in Léry 1994, 264).
in the Canary Islands, Fuleco and his sailor arrived in Seville. Fuleco’s
carapace, made of bone and tough tissue coating, probably did not decay or
decompose for the rest of the century, or even longer. Paula Findlen notes
that one five-century-old armadillo carapace from the collection of Ulisse
Aldrovandi (1522–1605) still survived in Italy at the time she wrote her study
on museums and collecting in early modern Italy (1994, 30).
Fuleco as Specimen (1570–1586)
Sixteenth-century museums in Seville had armadillo carapaces. Rodrigo

Zamorano (1542–1620), the Piloto Mayor (Chief of Navigation) of the Casa de
Contratación, had a museum with animals and shells with natural defenses,
including armadillos. A letter sent to Charles L’Écluse notes that each pilot
who returned from the Indies had the pleasure of bringing Zamorano
“something new or extraordinary and so he has the walls of the doorways
of his house full of strange-looking shells, fish, and animals” (qtd. in Martínez
Arranz 2011, 8). Like Zamorano, Gonzalo de Argote most likely received
Fuleco’s carapace from a maritime pilot in the port of Seville around 1570.
Argote then placed Fuleco in the “museum” at his home. Fuleco probably
remained in the collection within Argote’s home until 1586, at which point
Argote moved to the Canary Islands and got married. Then, Fuleco’s carapace
was on display in Seville for about a decade and a half, a period that exceeds
what I calculate to be his own biological life (the life expectancy for the
six-banded armadillo is around ten years).
Argote’s home was on the Calle de Francos in the center of Seville and a
short walk from the Cathedral. The Wellcome Institute created a diorama
of the study in Argote’s home for the Science Museum in London (1945–60).
The diorama had a big window, books, a table for work, a few aquatic animal
specimens on the wall, and a great window overlooking the city of Seville.
It did not, however, show the paintings of illustrious men, most especially
that of Philip II and his wives. It did not show the trophy animal heads that
Argote probably hunted while staying at the Pardo Palace, Philip II’s hunting
lodge. It did not show Fuleco the armadillo. Finally, it did not show the two
most important items in the collection: armor and live horses.
In the mold of many sixteenth-century humanists, Argote not only had a
private collection, but he also edited and wrote a number of books. Rather
than studying and publishing the classics like many fellow humanists, Argote
had a special interest in old Spanish texts. His book collection contained a
medieval manuscript of El libro de buen amor (Book of Good Love). Argote
Fig. 16. Portrait of Gonzalo Argote. Libro de descripción de verdaderos retratos ilustres, y memorables
varones by Francisco Pacheco (Sevilla: Litografía de Enrique de Utrera, 1870) (Biblioteca de la
Universidad de Sevilla).
also edited and published a sixteenth-century edition of El conde Lucanor

(The Count Lucanor).
Some of Argote’s publications demonstrate that he worked in collabora-
tion with other humanists. For instance, Juan de Arfe, the most renowned
goldsmith and metal craftsman of the period, created seventeen copper
engravings for the printing of Argote’s Nobleza de Andalucía (Nobility of
Andalucía, 1588) (Lacarra 2016). Argote also collaborated with Juan de Arfe
in the publication of Libro de la Montería (The Book on Hunting, 1582), for
which Arfe designed and etched the thirty-five woodcuts. The collaboration
between Argote and Arfe for The Book on Hunting probably began after one
of Philip II’s hunting excursions at the Pardo Palace in 1580.
In Chapter 1, I noted that Arfe, the voracious master engraver and hu-
manist, designed the Scipio Africanus ewer for Philip II, which expounds
a humanistic principal in which the human male claims dominion over
the world’s animals. In the Book on Hunting, Argote also celebrates man’s
power over the animal world through, in this case, the human use of horses
and dogs as tools to kill other animals. The three books included in Book
on Hunting primarily focus on quarry in Spain like boars, bears, and deer.
Argote also includes bulls as hunted animals in Spain and describes the
practice of bullfighting in towns and cities, which he situated as part of a long
tradition dating back to the classical period, but which he also emphasized
as distinctly Spanish. The end of the book includes chapters on hunting
elephants in Africa and Asia and lions in Africa. It also has sections on
hunting animals in the Americas. Testifying to the quick adaptation of
species originally bred in Spain now found in America, Argote describes
hunting wild Spanish cattle in the Caribbean.
The Wellcome Institute diorama chose to highlight Argote’s work as a
scholar editing old texts and publishing new books to give the impression
of a man shut up in a study writing day and night. It did not depict the fact
that Argote was, first and foremost, a man of arms. The best surviving
image of Argote (fig. 16) is found in the Libro de la descripción de verdaderos
retratos de ilustres y memorables varones (Book of the Description of the True
Portraits of Famous and Noteworthy Men, 1599) by Francisco Pacheco. In
the Book of the Description of the True Portraits of Famous and Noteworthy
Men, Pacheco explains that Argote’s collection highlights Argote’s life as
a soldier to the King. The collection, according to Pacheco, was a “noble”
endeavor, following the “exercise of arms” (qtd. in Cacho Casal 2006, 689).
More than the stereotype of a humanist locked away in his study, Argote
was a central actor in the construction of Spanish imperialism on multiple
levels. The year before he added Fuleco to his museum, he was in charge
of the military forces for Andalucía and famously put down the revolt of
the moriscos in Granada and the Alpujarras. A decade and a half later,
he left Seville for military expeditions on the high seas in the Canary
Islands, the crucial stopping point for ships to and from the Americas en
route to Seville. Argote protected the Canary Islands from attacks from
the Turks from Algiers in 1586 and from Francis Drake in 1595. When in
the Canary Islands, he also got married, ordered the construction of a

church, and died.
In the 1570s, while in Seville, Argote was also in charge of the Santa
Hermandad (“Holy Brotherhood”), in a role that was essentially the head of
police—he was in charge of keeping the peace.14 Argote, in his role of chief
of the Holy Brotherhood, would have protected and been a close observer
of the unloading of ships at Seville’s docks. The chapter about hunting wild
cattle in the Caribbean in his Book on Hunting (“Hunting Wild Cimarron
Bulls in the West Indies”), indicates that Argote frequented the docks. He
writes: “200,000 bull and cow hides are killed in the hunt and arrive to Seville
every year. They are brought by the fleets from the American Passage. The
meat of these animals is not processed and there are even more animals
wasted than the number of hides.”15 Steven Wagshal describes the scene,
stating that hides were “brought back to his city and strewn along the banks
of the Guadalquivir” (2018, 137). As with other commodities that arrived to
the Seville port, cattle hides were regulated and Argote would have ensured
those products made it safely to Seville’s Casa de Contratación.
In 1570, Argote purchased Fuleco’s carapace and added it to his growing
private collection. Other wealthy men had collections in Seville in the same
years that Argote amassed his own.16 Monardes’s use of the term “museum”
for Argote’s collection followed the academic Juan de Mal Lara (1524–71),
who collaborated with Argote and had established a museum in his home
in Seville before Argote. One poem from the period notes that men gathered
at the “museum of the illustrious Juan de Mal Lara.”17
Seville humanists used the museum space for inspirational gatherings.
As the voice of the muse was reputed to have inspired the classic epic poem,
so the objects in the space of the museum inspired intellectual creation. For
centuries, dictionaries defined the museum as the place in the humanist’s
home where the muses inspire. For John Minsheu, “it is a place dedicated to
14 For a biography of Argote de Molina, see Palma Chaguaceda 1949.

15 “es tan grande el número de los toros y vacas, que esta montería se matan, que vienen a
Sevilla cada año en las flotas de las indias de doscientos mil cueros, sin los que en las mismas
se gastan, que debe ser mayor número” (Argote de Molina 1582, III: 9r).
16 Artificialia in sixteenth-century European collections included paintings, sculptures, arms,
medals, coins, objects from antiquity, scientific instruments, manuscripts and printed books,
drawings, prints, sculptures, and paintings. The naturalia included plants and other natural
objects of rare or exotic provenance, including minerals, gems, stones, shells, coral, fossils, and
animal body parts. Live animals such as dogs, monkeys, birds, and horses were also considered
an integral part of many collections.
17 “Museo del ínclito Malara” (qtd. in Montero 1986, 21). The poem was published fifteen years
after the death of Mal Lara.
the muses” and Covarrubias calls it consagrado (“venerated”) to the muses.

In the early eighteenth-century Spanish–English dictionary under the entry
for museo, John Stevens writes it is “any place dedicated to learning” (Nieto
Jiménez and Alvar Ezquerra 2007, VII: 6938).
The inclusion of portraits or busts of famous men was an important
characteristic of collections of elites and princes, and it was also important
for humanist museums. Francisco de Pacheco’s portrait of Argote is included
among portraits of other famous men in Book of the Description of the True
Portraits of Famous and Noteworthy Men. Each portrait is framed as if it were
a work of art. Another book from the period demonstrates that humanists
both wrote about and collected images of famous men in their museums.
Elogios o vidas breves de los caballeros antiguos y modernos, ilustres en valor de
Guerra que están al vivo pintados en el museo de Paolo Iovio (Praises or Short
Lives of Historical and Modern Noble Men Shown as Valorous Soldiers that
Are Painted Alive in Paolo Giovio’s Museum) by Paolo Giovio was published
in Granada in 1568. Paulo Giovio’s “museum,” a collection in Como, Italy,
included portraits designed to celebrate each man and his great feats. Each
portrait included an honorary eulogy (Cacho Casal 2006, 692).
In 1570, roughly the same year that Argote included Fuleco in his collec-
tion, Per Afán Enríquez de Ribera (1509–71), the Viceroy of Naples (1558–71),
added four Roman statues to the collection in his palatial home in Seville
(known popularly as “La Casa de Pilatos,” or the Home of Pontius Pilate).
Ribera was heir and nephew to Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera (1496–1539),
who had already amassed a collection in the early sixteenth century that
included musical instruments, books, gems, maps, tapestries, and “large and
small rugs from Turkey.”18 When Ribera brought the four statues dating
from Roman times to Seville from Naples, he not only added them to his
uncle’s collection, but quite literally modified the interior of his home to
accommodate the statues. A sculptor in Italy had cleaned and polished the
ancient sculptures and modified them to fit the interior patio of Ribera’s
home. The same sculptor also created a series of busts for Ribera’s patio,
whose ideological program was to show a direct lineage between the found-
ing of Rome with Romulus to Charles V, Philip II’s father (Lleó Cañal 2017).
With these statues, Per Afán Enríquez de Ribera attempted to please Philip
II, but his museum would not have done so as much Argote’s. Rather than
material from Roman antiquity, Philip II favored archeology from Asturias
because it demonstrated a connection to Spain’s Visigoth past (Morán Turina
1992 and 2010; Maroto 2001). Rather than Roman emperors as forebears,
18 “siete alhombras de Turquía entre chicas y grandes” (qtd. in Lleó Cañal 2017, 37).
Philip II favored iconic dynastic series that favored the Visigoths—indeed,

he placed a gallery of Visigoth kings in the Royal Pardo Palace.
Argote’s museum also included portraits. The Wellcome Institute
diorama did not include the portraits of famous men that were in Argote’s
museum. Argote had visited and hunted at the Pardo, and his portraits
celebrated Philip II. Indeed, Argote secured permission for using portraits
in his museum that were painted by Sánchez Coello, the same painter
commissioned by Philip II and whose portraits once hung in the Pardo
Palace. The thirty portraits that hung in Argote’s museum included one of
Philip II and four portraits of his wives. Other portraits celebrated Philip II
by alluding to his victories. Even though the two portraits of the Ottoman
sultans, Süleyman I and his father Selim I, were defeated by Philip’s father,
their portraits represented Philip’s conquest over the Turks at Lepanto
(Cacho Casal 2006).19
Argote’s collection shows similarities to Ribera’s, his contemporary
in Seville, by showing off famous men from the past. Argote’s collection,
however, diverges from Ribera’s because Argote was not interested in us-
ing the museum to celebrate the Habsburgs through recovered Roman
antiquities. Argote rightly assumed that Philip II was not as interested in
using the collection space to show off a genealogical link to classical Rome.
Moreover, Argote, like Philip II, preferred that the collection be a symbolic
microcosm of the four continents, a veritable “theater of the world”—a model
for collecting increasingly adopted in the sixteenth century (Mochizuki
2018, 1). In this vein, Argote did not look to Italy, but Spain’s new lands in
Asia and America for many of his collectibles.
When Argote included Fuleco in his collection, he wanted to add an
emblem that would give a West Indies flavor to his collection to fulfill
its purpose as a theater or a microcosm of the world. Argote’s museum as
theater showcased Philip II’s early modern worldview of dominion over the
four parts of the world. Other sixteenth-century scholars designed their
collections to reflect the ever-expanding sixteenth-century geographic
world. Athanasius Kircher (1602–80) described his collection as a “theater
of nature and art” (Göttler 2018, 43). The physician Samuel Quiccheberg
(1529–67) wrote Inscriptions or Titles of the Most Ample Theater that Houses
Exemplary Objects and Exceptional Images of the Entire World, in which
“ample theater” was synonymous with his collection (1565; Göttler 2018, 43).
19 The Pardo Palace (in the queen’s tower) also had representations of the animals from the
menagerie from the Alcázar. The frescoes of the animal representations were discovered after
a restoration of the palace. See Martínez Arranz 2011, 10n.25.
Aside from “museum,” humanists in Seville also referred to their collec-

tions as “theaters.” The humanist Benito Arias Montano (1527–98) called his
collection a “theater of art and nature” (qtd. in Göttler 2018, 37). Collectors
like Montano conceived collectible objects as actors in a theater that brought
to life the four corners of the world. Moreover, those same collectors also
described maps as “theaters.” Montano sent his friend and fellow humanist
Abraham Ortelius (1527–98), who lived in the Netherlands, a number of items
from his collection in Seville in response to Ortelius, who had sent him a
copy of the Theater of the World (1570), a book that contained fifty-three
bundled maps by different cartographers, and is considered one of the first
modern atlases.
In order to make his museum a theater of the world, Argote included an
armadillo (the only animal mentioned by name by Monardes) and other
animals and birds from the West and East Indies. The Wellcome Institute
diorama included two fish and a small alligator hanging from Argote’s
ceiling just over the window. The Wellcome Institute not only omits the
armadillo and exotic birds in the Argote diorama, but also neglected to
include the animal heads that were probably quarry and trophies from
his hunts at Philip II’s palace at the Pardo. In the Book on Hunting, Argote
mentions firsthand observations from the hunting palace:
Two leagues from Madrid one will find the Pardo, the Majesty’s leisure
home, in the middle of forest next to Manzanares River where the Sierra de
Segovia begins and the Jarama River passes among its poplars and willows
[…] one walks down an outdoor hallway that opens up on a view of that
spacious forest filled with all kinds of animals, including boar and deer.20
Although no record exists of what hunting trophies Argote had on display,

I suspect that they included at least a boar and a deer because he mentions
in detail how to hunt them in his book and mentions that they populated
the forests at the Pardo.
The Wellcome Institute diorama also did not include the two most valu-
able collectibles in sixteenth-century Habsburg Spain that were found in
Argote’s museum: armor and live horses. Scholars who study curiosity
20 “A dos leguas de Madrid está el Pardo, casa de placer de su Magestad, planta de en medio
de un bosque, junto al río Manzanares, que naciendo de la Sierra de Segovia, pasando por este
bosque entre verdes álamos y sauces entran el en río […] se pasa un corredor cuya vista descubre
aquel espacioso bosque poblado de diversidad de animales, jabalíes, corzo” (Argote de Molina
1582, III: 20v).
cabinets often ignore the presence of live animals, but ample evidence
exists that live animals formed part of the collections, along with stuffed
animals and aesthetic objects made out of animal parts. The painting,
The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Visiting a Collector’s Cabinet, for
instance, shows a large study with artificialia—paintings, sculptures, books,
and an astrolabe—as well as naturalia, including flowers in pots as well
as cut flowers and live animals, including monkeys and different dogs (a
greyhound and a spaniel) (Jordan Gschwend 2016, 115). Although not depicted
in the painting, Archduke Albert (1559–1621), sovereign of the Habsburg
Netherlands, also had live horses as part of his collections. An image of
his white Spanish stallion with its long, curled mane survives in a private
collection (Jordan Gschwend 2016, 123).
Among the live animals in early modern European collections, horses
were among the most prized and, among the horses, Spanish horses were the
favorite breed. Throughout the sixteenth century, horses bred in Andalucía
regularly arrived to the homes of powerful men in central Europe. Ferdinand
of Austria (1503–64) brought horses to Vienna, building stables and employ-
ing Spanish aristocrats with equine expertise to maintain the animals. Aside
from Don Pedro the elephant, Philip II shipped Spanish horses to Manila as
part of a gift to appease the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideoyoshi.
In Book on Hunting, Argote reaffirms the horse’s role in making the man;
that is, the caballero is realized by his caballo (horse). He explains that the
only true noble hunting occurs when the hunter is mounted on a horse. Like
those that visited Philip II’s armory in Madrid, visitors to Argote’s home
were able to observe Philip II’s favorite collectibles, armor and live horses
of different razas or breeds. The horse breeds themselves were a sense of
Spanish pride. Pacheco describes the razas of horses at Argote’s museum
as “elegant and extraordinary horses of fine breeding and different coats”
(qtd. in Cacho Casal 2006, 689).21
In 1570, King Philip II visited Argote’s museum—the same year that
Fuleco was added to the collection. Francisco Pacheco describes the King’s
visit: “Finding himself in Seville in the year 1570, His Majesty was compelled
to visit the very renowned cabinet incognito” (qtd. in Cacho Casal 2006,
691). For Argote, imitation was the highest form of flattery. He showed to
Philip II, the premier sixteenth-century collector, a replication of Philip’s
version of the theater of the world in his own home. Argote showed the King
portraits, hunting trophies, live horses, and antique and modern armor. He
also showed the King an armadillo. Fuleco—the iconic animal from the
21 “lucidos y extraordinarios caballos, de linda raza, y vario pelo” (Pacheco 1870, n. p.).
Indies—was a curious and wondrous object of interest to King Philip II, a

small armored bard, a natural object that embodied the King’s two favorite
collectibles—armor and horses.
The Printed Image of Fuleco as Specimen (1571 and 1574)
Fuleco appeared as a printed image in the 1571 and 1574 edition of Medicinal
History of the Things Brought from Our West Indies. Biographers sometimes
call Nicolás Monardes (ca. 1512–88) a physician, gardener, or natural his-
torian. But Monardes was, first and foremost, a businessman. Monardes
visited Argote’s collection on Francos Street in Seville the same year that
Philip II did. In 1565, Monardes had already published an edition about
medicinal plants and, due to its success, he published another edition in
1569 in which the publisher printed a woodcut image of Monardes at 57
years old on the frontispiece (fig. 17).
Monardes lived on Sierpes Street, a short distance away from Argote,
where, like Argote, he also has had a curiosity cabinet that he opened to
fellow humanists in Seville, as well as travelers. He began a garden in 1554
with seeds that were brought from the Americas. He grew some of Europe’s
first sunflowers. He primarily grew plants that had potential as consumer
goods in Europe, especially in medicine, such as tobacco for toothaches.
Always the enterprising man, he tried to harvest cochineal, a small scaled
insect that lives on American cacti and was used for the creation of the
highly valuable carmine dye. Aside from his botanical interests, Monardes
was also interested in bezoar stones for medicinal purposes.
Whereas Argote was a humanist with soldierly interests, Monardes was
a humanist with economic ones. An entrepreneur in the early modern
mercantile economy with America, Monardes imported precious met-
als, spices, and other medicines from America (Bauer 2014). In turn, his
mercantile cargo to the Americas were slaves. According to one estimate,
154,376 people leaving Africa were forced onto ships between 1551 and
1600 (Burnard 2011, 91). In one shipment in 1560, the mercantile company
to which Monardes belonged sent African men, women, and children to
the mines in Veraguaa, Panamá, for profits in gold. In another shipment in
1564, he sent 300 slaves from Cabo Verde. For this shipment, the registered
name that was branded on the slaves was the letter “M” for Monardes (Pardo
Tomás 2002, 99–100).
The publication of Medicinal History of the Things Brought from Our West
Indies was a veritable sixteenth-century publishing success story. After a
Fig. 17. Portrait of Nicolás Monardes at 57 years old (1569). Frontispiece of Historia medicinal, de
las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales as reprinted in Estudio histórico de la vida y
escritos del sabio médico, botanico, y escritor del siglo XVI by Joaquín Olmedilla y Puig (Hijos de M.G.
Hernández: Madrid 1897) (Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla).
print run in 1565 and 1569, Monardes expanded the book. In the 1571 edition,
Monardes included a new attached text entitled Diálogo del hierro y sus
grandezas y excelencias (Dialogue about Iron, Its Greatness and Excellence),
demonstrating a connection between publishing and an interest in market-
ing metal as a consumer good in Europe. The updated 1571 edition reflected
the wish that Monardes had to communicate the value of American products
in Europe. The 1571 edition of Medicinal History of the Things Brought from
Our West Indies also added a new chapter, “Del armadillo” (“Concerning the
Armadillo”), not found in the 1565 and 1569 editions.
Garcia d’Orta, who had been to India, published Colóquios dos simples e
drogas da India (Colloquies of the Remedies and Drugs from India, 1563), which
included a treatise about the elephant; this provided Monardes a model for
including a description of an animal in a treatise on plants (Pardo Tomás
2015). Whereas Orta provided a literary model for including iconic fauna
in a book on flora, Albrecht Dürer’s pictorial example provided Monardes
the reason for choosing an image of Fuleco the armadillo as specimen.
Dürer’s Rhinoceros (see fig. 1 in Introduction) had been a touchstone for how
enterprising businessmen used print culture in early modern Europe. The
use of the technology of mass reproduction of the printing press enabled
Rhinoceros to circulate relatively easily, making this animal image more
accessible than any before it in European history. No single image, let alone
an image of an animal, was reproduced as often as Rhinoceros. Copied from
Dürer’s own woodcuts, it was sold alone as a broadsheet (with five lines of
printed text) and also reproduced in thousands of books.
When Monardes observed Fuleco, he did so in the company of Argote and
possibly in the company of Philip II. The men actively discussed the objects
and animals in the space of Argote’s home, possibly over a meal. Ostensibly
inspired by the muses, Argote used the museum in his home for discussing
collectibles, following the model of other Spanish humanists in Seville. In
their discussions about the collectibles, the men would have realized the
power of using the printing press for marketing an image. Aside from the
portraits of great men, Paolo Giovio had a picture of Dürer’s Rhinoceros
in his own museum and soldier humanists like Argote and market-savvy
humanists like Monardes would have been quite familiar with the com-
mercial success of Dürer’s creative use of the printing press for marketing
the image of the century’s most popular printed animal.
Early in the century, Dürer used creative ingenuity to outsmart his rival
and fellow artistic competitor Burgkmair. Both men were active in using the
new printing press technology for economic gain. They took advantage of
the new market in which more and more people could buy printed books,
broadsheets, and globes. When news of Europe’s first rhinoceros arrived
in Lisbon in 1517, Dürer and Burgkmaier made woodblock prints of rhinos
based on a drawing brought by a fellow businessman. Each’s rhino image was
added to their portfolio of marketed images of the Indies as a new appealing
visual exotic space. Burgkmair’s Rhinoceros (see fig. 6 in Chapter 1) had a
miserably short life. One printer borrowed the Burgkmair rhino to mark
a point on a globe, but it then it disappeared from circulation. Pervading
print and material culture across Europe, Dürer’s Rhinoceros won the war
of images against Burgkmaier’s.
Rhinoceros helped Dürer establish himself as the sixteenth-century
authority of the true-to-life animal image. He adopted an ad vivum approach
to animal depiction: “life in nature manifests the truth […]Therefore, observe
it diligently, go by it and do not depart from nature arbitrarily, imagining
to find the better by thyself, for thou wouldst be misled” (qtd. in Smith
2012, 92). Dürer paid hyperreal minute attention to detail and initiated
a veritable genre of animal portraiture. He sketched a male and female
lion (1521), a stork (1517; Musée Luxee), and an owl (1508; Albertina). He
captured the texture of a wing of a blue-bellied roller and the carapace of
a crab. Dürer’s contemporaries considered his depiction of the hare (1502)
to be a hallmark of exquisite naturalism. After observing animals at the
gardens at Warande, which belonged to the Dukes of Brabant, he drew a
delicate watercolor of the palace landscape, with lions, an ibex, a lynx, and
a baboon (whose weight and size he duly notes, 1521). After these animal
drawings, he heard of a stranded whale to the north, and he left Brussels to
observe it. Although his trip was futile (he did not see the whale), he, while
in Zeeland, drew and captured the expression of a walrus (1521; London;
the British Museum).
When he added a coat of armor to his rhino, he added a supposedly lifelike
animal to the oeuvre of animal images that sixteenth-century culture had
verified as authoritative. Wealthy elites collected Dürer’s animal images
and, with Rhinoceros, he ingeniously took entrepreneurial advantage of
his authority to propagate a fake image of a rhino with a skin of armor
garniture. In the text that accompanies Rhinoceros, Dürer explains that it
is a true-to-form drawing of an animal from the Indies. Rhinoceros received
further authoritative confirmation as an authentic animal when Conrad
Gesner published Rhinoceros as part of his monumental History of Animals
(Historia Animalium, 1551–8), in which he certified the veracity of the image
by turning to a credible eyewitness. Gesner notes that Justinianus, Corsican
bishop who was also an authority on all things oriental, confirmed to him
that Rhinoceros was a true likeness (Leitch 2017, 247).
Monardes could have picked any number of the extraordinary animals
from America, but chose an armadillo for the animal image in Medicinal
History of the Things Brought from Our West Indies. As he received no
report of a rhino from the West Indies, Monardes chose the animal that
best approximated it or, at least, the one that he could convince others
best approximated it. When Monardes published the updated 1571 edition,
he provided an account from bishop Juan de Simancas (?–1570) to provide
credibility for the armadillo description. Simancas arrived to Seville from
Cartagena in 1569, after serving nine years as Bishop of the Indies (Garzón
Marthá 2018). He was sick and died in 1570, shortly after he met Monardes.
Simancas, who was familiar with Monardes’s 1564 edition of Medicinal
History of the Things Brought from Our West Indies, provided new information
about the Indies. He told Monardes that he commonly saw armadillos in
the bishopric in the Indies. Monardes writes: “the noble bishop verified to
me that he had seen [the armadillo] many times in that faraway, hidden
place of the world.”22 Simancas also told Monardes that armadillos in Brazil
were called encubertados and that it was amazing to think they could exist
in such a hidden, faraway place.
Like Gesner in History of Animals, Monardes included a bishop’s eyewit-
ness account in the new edition of Medicinal History of the Things Brought
from Our West Indies to provide credibility to the description of the armadillo.
Monardes also doctors up the armadillo description—not by tailoring an
image but through prose. Monardes placed the chapter “Concerning the
Armadillo,” immediately following the chapter “Dragon Blood.” Dragon’s
blood, a red resin obtained from various plants, particularly fruit plants,
was a consumer good that Monardes wanted to see marketed in Spain and
Europe (Bauer 2014). The image of the armadillo immediately follows the
image included in “Dragon Blood,” which literally shows a small dragon inside
the fruit. The chapter, “Concerning the Armadillo,” not only describes an
armadillo, but other water animals.23 Within “Concerning the Armadillo,”
Monardes included a description of an enormous fish called a shark and
an alligator that could swallow an Indian. Monardes’s description of the
armadillo alongside the shark and alligator thereby invokes the notion of
a threatening aquatic beast.
The same woodcut image of Fuleco was used in the 1571 and the 1574
editions of Medicinal History of the Things Brought from Our West Indies
(f ig. 18). In 1571, the year after Monardes and the King visited Argote,
Monardes published the first version of Medicinal History of the Things
Brought from Our West Indies with a woodcut armadillo based on his own
armadillo sketch that he made when he visited Argote’s museum (Pardo
22 “y el señor Obispo me certificó haberlo visto muchas veces con grande admiración que tal
es ella ver que hay tal virtud en tan oculta parte” (Monardes 1574, 18).
23 Monardes followed Oviedo, who originally decided to classify the armadillo as a water
animal (Myers 2007, 232).
Fig. 18. The Printed Image of Fuleco as Specimen. Historia medicinal, de las cosas que se traen de
nuestras Indias Occidentales (1574) by Nicolás Monardes as reprinted in Estudio histórico de la vida y
escritos del sabio médico, botanico, y escritor del siglo XVI by Joaquín Olmedilla y Puig (Hijos de M.G.
Hernández: Madrid 1897) (Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla).
Tomás 2006, 94). Monardes refers to the original image that he drew: “This
animal I have copied from another real one that is in Gonzalo Argote de
Molina’s museum.”24 The woodcutter who set the block for the image for the
1571 edition tried, the best he could, to follow Monardes’s original drawing.
Even though the image shows only five bands, the 1571 and 1574 images
24 “Este animal saqué de otro natural, que está en el museo de Gonzalo de Molina” (Monardes
1574, 81). Also see Cacho Casal 2006, 690.
approximate the six-banded variety, or the Euphractus sexinctus, a species

common in Brazil today.
With the woodcut image, Monardes used a book about plants to dis-
seminate an image of an armored beast as icon of America. Monardes was
interested in the medicinal potential of the armadillo, writing that the
armadillo tail was ground into powder to make pills for curing earaches:
“[the armadillo] has the virtue of a single bone for its tail. This is taken
to make a fine powder that is made into little pills the size of the head of
a thin pin. When the earaches, this is put inside of it and it wonderfully
alleviates it.”25 Traditional sixteenth-century medicine in Mexico does
not include the armadillo as a folk remedy. A Latin translation of an Aztec
medicine manual (1552) by Juan Badiano (1484–1560) mentions plants and a
number of animals, such as rabbit, coyote, scorpion, opossum, ocelot, frog,
and mole, but no mention is made of the armadillo for cures.26 In turn, in
Brazil, people used (and still do) the six-banded armadillo for medicine. In
a study on the current status of the trade of medicinal animals in Brazil,
the authors found that the tail (as well as the legs, fat, urine, and skin) of
the Euphractus sexcinctus were sold in nine cities across Brazil (Ferreira,
et al 2013, 854).
In contrast to the successful marketing of exotic animal products like
rhino horns in sixteenth-century Europe, the primary impact of the Fuleco
image in the book, however, was symbolic, not material. The images of
Fuleco in 1571 and 1574 only appeared in those two editions. Even though
later editions include Monardes’s statement—“this animal I have copied
from another real one”—that was no longer true with the printing of the
1580 edition. The printers of the 1580 edition opted for a slicker, more saleable
armadillo image. The same block print image for the 1580 edition can be
found in subsequent printings, including in an Italian translation from 1582.
The majority of armadillo images printed in the 1580s and 1590s were
based on two standard model drawings of a three- and nine-banded speci-
men (fig. 19) by an unknown artist found in an album originally put together
by Lambert Lombard (1505–66) for King Charles V. The two armadillo im-
ages in this album, Libro de diversos animals, aves, peces y reptiles (A Book
of Diverse Animals, Birds, and Reptiles, 1562) (Egmond and Mason 1994),
were shared and copied across Europe by printers and painters, such as
25 “Tiene la virtud solo en el hueso de la cola, el cual hecho polvos sutiles, y tomando dellos
tanto como una cabeza de alfiler gordo, hecho una pelotica: y metiéndolo en el oído, habiendo
darlo en el, lo quita maravillosamente” (Monardes 1574, 18).
26 For a complete list of animals in Juan Badiano, see Martín del Campo 1991.
Fig. 19. Two armadillos (ca. 1560). Artist unknown (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1601), who used the three-banded specimen for the
Four Elements (Rikken 2012). The publisher of the 1580 edition of Medicinal
History of the Things Brought from Our West Indies also used a copy of the
three-banded armadillo from A Book of Diverse Animals, Birds, and Reptiles
and he discarded the woodcut of Fuleco that had been used for the 1571
and 1574 editions. The original woodcut of Fuleco as six-banded armadillo
was lost after 1580. Subsequent editions of Medicinal History of the Things
Brought from Our West Indies used the new image of the three-banded
armadillo specimen. Most surely, the six-banded Fuleco would have been
highly disappointed if he had discovered that the image of his species had
been replaced by one from another species.
The Resurrection of Fuleco as Equine Caricature of America
The depiction of Fuleco as iconic emblem of the Indies in Monardes impacted

the creation of the use of an armored animal as emblem of America. A few
artists used Dürer’s Rhinoceros to symbolize America. One image shows
Rhinoceros on a lead plaque (ca. 1580–90) with traces of gold that contains
a woman, symbolizing America, holding a bow and club in ostrich feathers
(Mason 2001, 80). Another artist used Dürer’s Rhinoceros as part of an allegory
of an American scene—America sits on a tree stump with a headdress and
loincloth, flanked by a parrot (Clarke 1986, 148).
As mentioned in Chapter 1, visual depictions of Rhinoceros impacted
how people experienced the spectacle of Abada in Madrid. Rhinoceros also
impacted how some authors experienced the armadillo. In The Discovery
of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596), Sir Walter Raleigh
(1552–1618) assumed that, because it had armor, the armadillo must be
like a rhinoceros. The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of
Guiana provides an account of Raleigh’s expedition to South America. In his
description of the gifts brought to him by the King of Aromata, he describes
“a beast called by the Spaniards Armadilla” (qtd. Nicholl 1997, 178). Showing
he had read Monardes, Raleigh explains that a little powder from the beast
“put into the ear cureth deafness” and that it “seemeth to be all barred over
with small plates somewhat like to a Renocero” (qtd. Nicholl 1997, 178).
Armor was the distinguishing feature of the rhino and armadillo until
the early eighteenth century. In A New Spanish and English Dictionary (1726),
John Stevens (ca. 1662–1726) nearly conflated the two animals. Stevens
describes the armadillo as “a beast in the West Indies cover’d all over with
shells, or scales, like armour, whence it has its name” (qtd. in Nieto Jiménez
and Alvar Ezquerra 2007, II: 1027). Under the word abada, Stevens provides
the following: “a beast in the East Indies of a great bulk cover’d with a sort
of shells or scales, like armor; and proof against any weapon” (qtd. in Nieto
Jiménez and Alvar Ezquerra 2007, I: 7). Although one is a great beast from
the East and the other from the West, both the armadillo and rhinoceros,
according to Stevens, are covered “with shells, or scales, like armor.”
By the late sixteenth century, many scholars and artists chose the ar-
madillo as the iconic animal species to represent America. They corrected
Gesner, who erroneously suggested armadillos might come from other
places, like Africa. André Thévet, for instance, wrote that one would not
find any examples of the armadillo species in either Africa or Asia (2009,
182). Monardes was largely responsible for the creation of the armadillo
as American emblem. Monardes made the armadillo a horselike creature
naturally encased in armor that was awe-inspiring, dragon-like, and associ-
ated with enormous sharks and menacing, man-eating alligators.
Following Monardes, the armadillo’s link to the West Indies or America
became firmly entrenched in European visual imaginary. Artists depicted
images of the armadillo in the posture of a horse. Copying the nine-banded
armadillo from A Book of Diverse Animals, Birds, and Reptiles, they chose a
more dragon-like image. Most famously, the Flemish Mannerist Maarten
Fig. 20. America (ca. 1589). Designed by the Flemish artist Maarten de Vos and engraved by Adriaen
Collaert (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).
de Vos (1532–1603) used the nine-banded armadillo from A Book of Diverse

Animals, Birds, and Reptiles for an allegory of America (fig. 20). Adrian
Collaert (ca. 1550–1618), in turn, took De Vos’s image and engraved it for
publication. In America, an allegorical figure of America sits sidesaddle
with only her genitals covered, wearing a feathered headdress and carrying
a bow and arrow.
Attesting to its popularity, De Vos’s America was found engraved on col-
lectible objects that circulated throughout Europe. America was reproduced
in books, maps, and on material objects, including pottery stove tiles, silver
tankards, and platters. It was inscribed on tiles on a house in East Germany
(Honour 1976, 89). Maps from the period often had armadillos to mark
spaces in America and versions of De Vos’s America were later found on
maps to indicate America, such as the sixteenth-century world map by Claes
Janszoon Visscher (1587–1652).27 Other versions of the De Vos image could
27 For an armadillo on Diogo Ribeiro and Descelier’s maps, see George 1969, 63–4. For the De
Vos image on Visscher’s world map, see Mignolo 1995 and 2005.
be found in books of emblems. For two editions of Iconologia (Rome, 1604

and Amsterdam, 1644) by Cesare Ripa (ca. 1560–ca. 1622), printers used a
copy of De Vos’s America (Whitehead and Boeseman 1989, 90–94). A copy
of America can also be found on the cover of the Dutch edition of States,
Empires, and Principalities of the World (1621) by Pierre d’Avity (1573–1635).
De Vos’s America inspired other artists such as Stefano della Bella
(1610–64), to depict the armadillo as a horse—again accompanied by a
woman—and as an emblem of America (fig. 21). In Bella’s Amerique, the
woman does not carry arms, but sits in a dress, a beaded necklace, and
headdress on a Roman-like chariot. Bella, at the height of his Parisian
fame, portrayed the harnessed pair of armadillos pulling the chariot on a
playing card designed to teach the young Louis XIV (1638–1715, r. 1643–1715)
geography and history. Bella reworked the De Vos iconography, but the
armadillos in Amerique still perform the function of horses.
Bella’s and De Vos’s allegorical images of the armadillo as horse were
visual demonstrations of how Europe represented itself as domesticating
the American space. The allegory of America either rides or is pulled in a
chariot by an armadillo. The armadillo is domesticated like a horse. Both
images were also literally incorporated into the visual landscape of the
European home. De Vos’s America was cast on all sorts of domestic material
objects and Bella’s Amerique was copied on other decks of playing cards sold
throughout France. A copy of Bella’s Amerique also appeared on a massive
silver dish made in Augsburg (Honour 1976, 89). Demonstrating the wide
range of the use of steel from armor to everyday objects in the home, instead
of making a bard, seventeenth-century blacksmiths in Augsburg cast Bella’s
Amerique on a silver dish.
As America and Amerique were found on material objects in the private
space of the home, so too the armadillo became an important image in
paintings of curiosity cabinets as symbol of America. The painting America
by Jan van Kessel (1626–79) shows fifteen framed animals that encircle a
cluttered curiosity cabinet. All of the animals in the painting are supposedly
unique to America. Showing off its status as a chief collectable exemplary of
America, the armadillo is the topmost, centerpiece animal in the collection
(Bleichmar 2012, 157).
The armadillo as allegory of America was not just found in the private
space of the home, but also as spectacle in the urban landscape. By the 1590s,
most artists used Dürer’s Rhinoceros as a standard iconographic image to
represent the East Indies and, in contrast, used the armadillo as a standard
iconographic image of the West Indies. The engraver Pieter van der Borcht
designed a royal victory arch for Antwerp in 1593. The ephemeral structure
Fig. 21. Amerique (1644). King of clubs playing card from “Game of Geography” by Stefano della
Bella (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).
celebrated the spectacle of Archduke Ernst of Austria as Governor of the

Spanish Netherlands. In Borcht’s version of the “four parts of the world”
dominated by the Iberian Empire, he depicted four allegorical women riding
exotic animals. The female figure of Brazil, representing the West Indies
or America, rides an armadillo and India, representing the East Indies or
Asia, rides a rhinoceros. Aside from the East and the West, Borcht divides
Africa into two parts. A female figure riding a lion represents Maghreb and
one riding an elephant represents Ethiopia (Lach 1970, 192).
In contrast to the transitory Borcht sculpture, another armadillo as
allegory of America was sculpted into the cityscape of Rome. The most
spectacular resurrection of Monardes’s evocation of the armadillo as water
animal can be seen in the Fountain with Four Rivers (1651) by Gian Lorenzo
Bernini (1598–1680). Commissioned by Pope Innocent X, Fountain with Four
Rivers—a sculptural masterpiece of Europe’s mapping of the world—has
an allegorical schema that shows an armadillo as an alligator-type water
creature at the base of the corner of the fountain that represents the Ameri-
can continent (fig. 23). Simon Schama writes how the sculpture functions
as spectacle:
For the fountain of the Four Rivers is a masterpiece in the same way that
Bernini’s other great works of sacred theater, like the Cornaro Chapel or
the braccia of St. Peter’s, are masterpieces: in demanding the suspension
of the beholder’s disbelief, the surrender to a vision of the world in which
profound cosmic mysteries are given visible, sensuous expression. And
it is also the place where all the currents of river mythology, Eastern and
Western, Egyptian and Roman, pagan and Christian, flowed toward one
great sacred stream. (1995, 292–3)
Representing the Río de la Plata, Bernini’s armadillo, at the base of the

Fountain with Four Rivers, is an armored godlike figure with two human
arms that spills forth coins to represent America’s riches. Fuleco, once a
six-banded armadillo, a relatively small animal typically measuring about
18 inches long and weighing 10 pounds, took on a role as one of the four
icons in Bernini’s theatrical vision of the planet.
The lowly museum specimen in Argote’s collection was transformed into
a massive sea creature whose body contained a continent. The placement of
an armadillo in the center of the iconic city of the Christian West constituted
a form of American domestication in which the iconic animal is integrated
as spectacle, not in the home, but as a permanent sculpture that forms part
of the plaza the cityscape of Rome. In the early modern period, Europeans
Fig. 22. Armadillo as America (Río de la Plata). Detail of Fountain with Four Rivers (1651) by Gian
Lorenzo Bernini (photo by Jonathan Rome).
depicted the Americas as evil, in the sense that Satan left an imprint on
American fauna (Cañizares Esquerra 2006, 155). Monardes’s association of
the armadillo as a demonic animal took on sculptural shape in Bernini’s
Fountain. The simple specimen in Argote’s home, thereby, shaped a notion
that America’s iconic animal was an aquatic and demonizing beast, all the
while serving to market a scientific treatise on the medicinal quality of
America’s plants.
Did Fuleco as Specimen Influence How Philip II Valued Armor

and Horses?
After observing Fuleco in Argote’s home, Monardes diligently drew an image

that was then set to a woodcut for the 1571 and 1574 editions of his book on
plants. How did King Philip II observe Fuleco in Argote’s home? In 1570, the
same year that Argote acquired Fuleco and Monardes visited, King Philip II
made the one and only visit that he took to Seville in his lifetime. Fighting
on behalf of Philip II, Argote had put down the morisco rebellion in the
Alpujarras in 1569, and Philip II was holding court in Córdoba to celebrate.
At this time, Philip received an invitation to visit the city of Seville from
Francisco Duarte Cerón (ca. 1550–1616), the head negotiating officer of the
Casa de la Contratación, who acted as city representative under the auspices
of cathedral. The King accepted Duarte Cerón’s invitation. On May 1, 1570
Philip II arrived in Seville in a show of triumph and fanfare, as the humanist
Juan de Mal Lara and others have described the event (Mal Lara 1992).
During this time, Philip II was amassing every relic (human remains)
and categorically significant natural and artificial object in the center of
Spain in his own collection or theater of the world. What sort of interest
would Philip II had in observing Fuleco as specimen? No historical record
describes the King’s reaction to Fuleco, but he was interested in his kingdom’s
fauna. Philip II placed great value on portraits of many sorts of animals. He
was an avid collector of animal images and the artistic model for the image
of the animals was influenced by Dürer’s ad vivum style. Although it has
been lost, the inventory from El Escorial monastery indicates that Philip
II commissioned a rhino portrait—possibly based on Dürer’s Rhinoceros
or even Abada—that hung in his private quarters (Pérez de Tudela and
Jordan Gschwend 2007, 443n. 86). Philip ordered the creation of an image
of a sea turtle, which records indicate was caught in fishermen’s nets in the
Basque Country. Following Dürer’s watercolor Wing of a European Roller
(ca. 1512), a study of a bird’s wing removed from its body, Philip II added
an American inflection with his own version of a bird wing, the oil Wing
of a Green Amazon Parrot (ca. 1566), probably executed by an anonymous
Flemish painter active in his court (Jordan Gschwend 2010, 53).
Philip II also had at least two images of armadillos in the collection in
the Escorial. One is now lost and the other survives. Philip had received an
armadillo image from Francisco de Hernández (1514–87). Philip had ordered
Hernández on a seven-year comprehensive scientific expedition to the New
World from 1570 to 1577 to gain knowledge primarily about American plant
life. In the massive album, Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus (The Natural History
of New Spain), Hernández included an armadillo image and sent it to Spain
from Mexico in 1576.28 The Hernández armadillo is now lost because the
album was destroyed in a fire.
The second armadillo image in Philip’s collection is found in the Pomar
codex (today, at the University of Valencia) (Bleichmar 2017). Philip II had
ordered that the plants and the few animals originally drawn during the
expedition be copied from the Hernández album. Philip’s chief gardener
28 For a history of the publication of Hernández’s work in the seventeenth century, see Freedberg
2002, 450n.22.
and professor of medicine, Jaime Honorato Pomar (ca. 1550–1606), copied the
images and created the Pomar codex. Pomar did not copy all of the images
directly from Hernández. The image of the armadillo is an embellished
version of the armadillo that originated from Gesner’s book on animals
(1551–7). Gesner’s image was like the three- and nine-banded armadillo
from Lombard’s album in that it was used as a model and was copied by
printers and artists throughout the early modern era. Inspired by Dürer’s
Rhinoceros, Pomar slightly altered the image of the armadillo in Gesner’s
original by adding rivets in the belly, evoking the cult to armor by suggesting
the armadillo had been naturally fitted with armor lames.
Aside from at least two armadillo images, Philip II had at least one
armadillo carapace in his collection. One document records that Philip II
purchased “a carapace of an animal they call an ‘armadillo’ all covered in
shells.”29 The armadillo in his collection formed part of the naturalia col-
lectibles, but also exhibited the characteristics of his most prized artificialia.
In terms of artificialia, Philip II had objects that showed off naturalia, such
as an ornate silver base specially crafted for a rhino horn. In the case of the
silver base, the artifice was crafted for the natural object. But the armadillo
carapace did not have any material or artificial additions because it was
considered, as scientific authorities like Monardes confirmed, an animal
that naturally had armor.
Even though no written document describes how Philip II valued the
armadillo in Argote’s collection, we do know that he placed the highest value
on horses and armor. He valued living horses over and above all collectible
naturalia, whether they be plants or animals, and he valued armor over
and above all collectible artificialia. In 1553, Philip II erected a building
that served as the Royal Stables and Royal Armory next to his royal palace,
the Alcázar. Philip’s last will and testament testified to the importance of
the contents in the Royal Armory and Stables. Attesting to how much he
esteemed the living horses in the Royal Stables, Philip bequeathed horse
trappings and saddles to all future Spanish Crowns, stating that they could
not be sold or separated by future inheritors (Godoy 1991). If Philip II could
have defied mortality, his living purebreds would have been bequeathed with
their trappings and saddles to the patrimonio nacional (“legacy collection”).
In the same codicil that willed horse trappings to future generations,
Philip II also expressly ordered that the armor in his collection never be
sold. After his death, much of Philip’s collection, like his priceless paintings,
29 “pellejo de animal que llaman armadillo, cubierto todo de conchas” (qtd. in Morán Turina
and Checa Cremades 1985, 107).
tapestries, animals, and animal paintings, were dispersed to help pay Crown
debts. Abada’s bones, for instance, were sent to Rudolf. The contents found
in the Royal Armory and Stables by the Madrid palace—horses and their
trappings, as well as his armor—however, remained entities inalienable
from the Spanish Crown and became Spain’s patrimonio nacional.
Armor is made out of steel, generally processed into strips and shaped.
To make armor, iron is first smelted in a bloomery to create steel bars. The
bars are hammered out, cut into a flattened plate, and then fitted. Armor
has to fit perfectly, with no gaps in the overlapping parts, and also has to
be comfortable so movement can be fluid. All flaws are corrected with
repeated filing and hammering to reach a perfect fit. The best steel is put
under the fire for a long duration so that its colors change and it appears
blackish-blue. The dark blue steel is then engraved and embossed with rich
damascened decoration, which consists of gild areas with strips of beaten
gold or silver leaf (Schroth 2004, 123–5).
Just as Philip wanted his massive collection to be a theater of the world,
so he wanted to create the planet’s most impressive form of live theater
through royal pageants. He was the central image of the pageant, fashioning
a self-image in armor riding on a horse. Philip II used a prize horse as a prop
and dark blue steel armor as a costume for the starring role as planetary
monarch. Wearing a special suit of armor was the physical sign of having been
crowned King as imperial heir to Charles V. Philip II accompanied his father
for nearly a year (July 1550–May 1551) to Augsburg, the neighboring city to
Nuremberg and also a major armor production center. Charles V brought his
son Philip to Augsburg for the meeting of the Imperial Diet, which addressed
imperial succession, the fundamentally important decision that determined
Philip’s legacy. For the meeting, Charles ordered a specially constructed coat
of armor since it was propitious for Philip’s leading role in taking over the
Crown and for his naming as the new Habsburg monarch (Godoy 1991, 156).
When Philip II put on armor for a pageant, he put on a costume in which he
dressed as protagonist in a show of imperial power over the entire planet. For
spectacles in the age of Philip, art historian Victor I. Stoichita writes: “armor
is the agent image par excellance. It is an image in movement, an inhabited
statue, a full emptiness and an empty fullness” (Stoichita 2016, 236). The fullness
that Stoichita describes can be characterized through how Philip augmented
his own skin. On one hand, he was a man underneath with penetrable skin,
but, on the other, armor made him superhuman. Philip II was a superman
or ironman. As Stoichita writes, armor was a new “second skin” (Stoichita
2012)—Phillip II artificially augmented his skin as physically impenetrable
against human weapons and metaphorically impenetrable against heresy.
Fig. 23. Philip II in Parade Armor (ca. 1570) by Alonso Sánchez Coello (Glasgow Museum of Art).
Philip’s armor costume was not just any set of armor, but it was dark blue
and had the special mark of the Golden Fleece. Philip II’s parade armor has
an engraving of the pendant of the Golden Fleece depicted on the metallic
lame in the center of the chest, just above the heart. Indeed, Coello’s official
portrait of Philip II (fig. 23) depicts two Golden Fleeces: One is engraved on
the parade armor and the other is the actual Golden Fleece pendant that
Philip II wore and which rests upon the surface of the armor. The Golden
Fleece pendant is literally a flayed ram’s skin representing royal power,
evoking Jason, the classical hero, who recovers the Fleece. The Golden Fleece
also evokes the Empire’s control over Merino wool—a product from the
sheep that provided Spain the wealth for imperial expansion.
Philip II played the role of a new Hercules for the planet. When Philip
wore his costume of armor, he symbolically wore the skin of the Nemean
lion, whose legendary hide Hercules wore to make his skin impenetrable.
Philip II’s parade armor, as well as other sets of his armor, has lion heads
embossed on the elbow and knee joints. In another set of armor in Philip’s
collection that originally belonged to his father, the entire surface of the
parade shield is an embossed and resplendent lion’s head. The mane on the
shield consists of two circling superimposed layers of curly lion locks. The
lion shield is part of a complete set with accompanying helmet. The helmet
is shaped in the form of a human head with lips, a mustache, beard, and
sideburns embossed on the lower-face defense or buffe. The upper part of
the helmet contains flowing locks of curly hair just like the flowing locks
of the lion’s mane. The embossed images on the shield and helmet dialogue
with each other, making its bearer a man-lion, evoking Hercules who wore
the lion skin for protection.
Philip II’s parade costume was not fully complete unless he was riding a
horse and unless that horse also had on an armor costume—a bard or horse
armor.30 Gaspar Sensi y Baldachi (1794–1880) sketched an image in which
he imagined the monarch riding a horse wearing the Tournament Armor
of Charles V (fig. 24). Sensi y Baldach’s image is an example of how Philip
II looked when he rode in full parade armor in a pageant. Philip II bought
his father’s armor collection and the actual bard depicted in Tournament
Armor of Charles V (1520) existed in Philip II’s collection (and can still be
seen today in the Royal Armory). The bard includes a lion in a removable
boss in the shape of a lion’s head placed on both sides of the horse’s chest
defense or peytral. Moreover, it includes ram horn ear plates that jut out of
the horse’s head defense or chanfron (Godoy 1991, 118).
In pageants, Philip II rode a horse, and both were dressed in armor. The
composite of man and horse was an inhabited statue in movement, an image
of artifice and nature constructed to instill wonder for the performance of
power. Armor designers artistically transformed the monarch as monster
hybrid when they fabricated the armor. Sometimes they engraved images of
centaurs or even Dürer’s Rhinoceros on armor garniture. The Duke of Medici
had an image of Dürer’s Rhinoceros engraved on the peytral—the breast
30 Horse armor or bards could only be purchased by the most elite of elites. Bards fascinated
curators of the first museums in the nineteenth century. In the course of writing this book, I
examined fifteenth- and sixteenth-century horse armor with articulated lames in displays at
the Detroit Institute of Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City, Alcázar de Colón in Santo Domingo, Alcázar in Segovia, and
the Royal Armory in Madrid.
Fig. 24. Tournament Armor of Charles V. Armeria real, ou Collection des principales pièces de la galerie
d’armes anciennes de Madrid, 2 vols. and supplement (1839), by Achille Jubinal and Gaspard Sensi (Paris:
Bureau des Anciennes Tapisseries Historiées) (Armería Real, Madrid, Copyright Patrimonio Nacional).
plate—of his famous racing horse (Chapter 1). Evoking a rhinoceros or unicorn,
other nobles had horns sticking out of the headplate of horse garniture.31
31 Crispijn van de Passe the Elder (ca. 1564–1637) depicted a horse with a horn in the head
garniture in Equestrian Portrait of Maurits, Prince of Orange (1600).
Philip II in armor, as agent image, transformed himself into a monster

hybrid, evoking the ram through the Golden Fleece pendant, the lion
through the Herculean lion skin, and the centaur because his body fused
with that of the horse. Philip II’s parade armor contains an engraving
of the Golden Fleece and embossed lions and his horse’s armor often
contained more embossed lions and other animal body parts. Another
bard in Philip’s collection included images of a lion and a water beast.
Horse Armor of Maximilian I includes engravings of the various trials of
Hercules, including Hercules breaking the Nemean lion’s jaw (in the lower
and upper registers on the crupper). The artist depicts the Nemean lion
twice: Hercules defeats the animal while wearing its skin. The artist also
evokes the transformation of the horse into a hybrid sea beast by engraving
two marine centaurs on the saddle garniture and making a tail piece in
the form of a dolphin that juts out of the piece that fits over the horse’s
hind quarters (Godoy 1991, 132).32
What would Philip II, a man who so valued horses and armor, have
thought about Fuleco as specimen in Argote’s museum? Might he have
thought that the armadillo was also a hybrid sea creature who had armor?
Oviedo had first classified the armadillo as a sea creature and Monardes
also suggested that the armadillo might be an animal that lived in the sea by
including a description of sharks and alligators in the chapter “Concerning
the Armadillo.”
If Philip II had visited the museum with Monardes, he may have experi-
enced a groundbreaking moment in the history of armadillo nomenclature.
Monardes was the first person to coin the word ‘armadillo.’ The first ap-
pearance of “armadillo” in the Spanish lexicon is when Monardes writes, in
Medicinal History of the Things Brought from Our West Indies, that Fuleco is
“completely covered in little shells down to his feet like an armored horse.
For that reason, they call him an ‘armadillo.’”33
“Armadillo” quickly entered the English lexicon. John Frampton translated
this passage to English in 1577 by describing the animal in Argote’s collection
as “like a horse is covered with armor, whereby he is called the Armadillo,
that is to say a beast armed” (Monardes 1925, 151). Frampton also translated
32 Aside from its appearance on Philip’s bard, dolphins appear as part of spectacles for Philip
II. His royal archer, Cock, describes a float in one royal procession with “a silver dolphin full
of f ire inside that spat out the flames when it passed in front of his majesty” (“un dolphin
plateado lleno de fuego de dentro, y hacía su efecto viniendo delante de su Magestad”) (Cock
1879, 28).
33 “Está todo encubertado con chicas, hasta los pies, como un caballo, que está encubertado
de armas: por do le llaman, el armadillo” (Monardes 1574, 81).
Monardes’s report from Bishop Simancas about the armadillos living in

Brazil that were called encubertados: “There be of these beasts in the India
of Portugal, they be called armed beasts for that they are as I have said
armed with scales and shells” (Monardes 1925, 151–2).
In actuality, an armadillo’s armor does not provide much defense. A
jaguar, ocelot, or even a dog can bite through an armadillo shell—a better
armadillo defense is jumping. When startled or cornered, the armadillo
will jump straight up, as much as three feet into the air or more. Jumping
in the air can prove lifesaving by startling, scaring, or even breaking the
jaw of a predator (Stross 2007). Monardes was not concerned with such facts
from the natural world when he evoked the armadillo as bard in Medicinal
History of the Things Brought from Our West Indies. Monardes performed
literary taxidermy when he described Fuleco. “Taxidermy,” from the Greek,
means “the arrangement of skin.” With Rhinoceros, Dürer had previously
arranged the rhino’s skin with steel armor garniture in an image. Monardes
also printed an image, but he persuaded—in contrast to Dürer—through
literary taxidermy, that is, he arranged the meaning of the armadillo through
prose. He newly minted the name “armadillo” and disseminated a supposed
scientific truth about an equine beast naturally encased in armor.
When he called Fuleco “a little armored horse,” Monardes repeated the
extremely appealing armadillo descriptions from three previous Spanish
authorities: Enciso, Oviedo, and Gómara. Navigator and geographer Martín
Fernández de Enciso (1470–1528), led a gold-searching expedition along
the coast of Venezuela from 1510 to 1513. In Sum of All Geography, Enciso
described the odd features of this strange new animal: “It is covered with a
shell from ears to tail, so that it looks like an armored horse” (qtd. in Asúa
and French 2005, 18).34
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, a contemporary of Enciso and one of the
most influential writers to describe America and its naturalia, returned to
Europe in 1523 after serving in the Indies. The monarch Charles V asked
Oviedo to write a history and description of the territory, so Oviedo produced
the landmark Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias (Summary of the
Natural History of the Indies, Toledo, 1526). Like Enciso, Oviedo described the
most spectacular animal in the Indies as identical to a bard. In Summary of
the Natural History of the Indies, Oviedo writes the following: “Its physical
appearance and shape reminds one of a caparisoned horse […] from which
the tail, feet, neck and ears protrude in the right place” (qtd. in Capanna
34 “está todo cubierto de una concha; desde las orejas fasta a la cola, que parece caballo
encubertado” (Fernández de Enciso 1948, 224).
2009, 43).35 Oviedo concludes: “If these animals had been seen where the
first caparisoned horses originated, one would conclude that the sight of
these animals had given the idea to create armor for war horses” (qtd. in
Capanna 2009, 43).36 Oviedo brought back armadillo carapaces, writing that
he took to Spain some shells of armored horses (Gerbi 1985, 390n.39). The
nature of the American animal that Oviedo describes is that it has never
been previously described in authoritative sources on animals. Oviedo
describes the armadillo in this manner: “Armadillos look very strange. They
look new and different from the animals so far described or seen in Spain
or other parts” (qtd. in Capanna 2009, 43).37
In coining the neologism “armadillo,” aside from the influence of Enciso
and Oviedo, Monardes slightly amended the description found in López de
Gómara’s General History of the Indies (1552). Gómara compares the armadillo
to a variety of animals and emphasizes its connection to the caparisoned
horse: “it is covered with armored scales […] and they seem a lot like those on
an armored horse […] it is in the end neither more than nor less than a horse
and because of that the Spanish call it the ‘horse with armor.’”38 Gómara
uses the two most popular words in Spanish to describe the animal before
Monardes coins “armadillo.” Gómara called it a horse that is encubertado or
armado, words that describe the Spanish armored horse guard and regally
armored horses. Monardes took armado, as found in Gómara’s description,
and added the diminutive suffix “-illo.” Monardes also followed Gómara
description of the armadillo as a hybrid beast. Gómara wrote that “the little
armored horse” was “in size like a little pig. Its snout also looks like a little
pig. It has a long, thick tail like a lizard and it lives inside the earth like a
mole.”39 In contrast to the monarch’s body augmented into a centaur-like
spectacle of a composite lion-ram hybrid, the armadillo was inherently
small and similar to a mole, lizard, and little pig.
35 “[…] y a ninguno se pueden comparar sino a los caballos encubertados…salen las piernas e
la cola, e en su lugar sale la cabeza y el pescuezo” (Fernández de Oviedo 1853, 411).
36 “si aqueste animal se hubiera visto donde los primeros caballos encubertados hubieron
origen, sino que de la vista de estos animales se había aprendido la forma de las cubiertas para
los caballos de armas” (Fernández de Oviedo 1853, 412).
37 “Los encubertados son animales mucho de ver y muy extraños a la vista de los cristianos y
muy diferentes de todos los que se han visto en otras partes del mundo” (Fernández de Oviedo
1853, 411).
38 “está cubierto de conchas […] y que parecen mucho cubiertas de caballo […] Es, en fin, ni
mas ni menos que caballo encubertado y por eso lo llaman los españoles el encubertado o el
armado” (López de Gómara 1877, 312). Also see Podgorny 2012.
39 “es del tamaño de un lechón, y en el hocico parece a él, tiene una cola larga, y gruesa, como
de lagarto, habita la tierra, como topo” (Monardes 1574, 81).
During his only visit to Seville, Philip II made a special visit to Argote’s
museum. Philip II chose to visit Argote’s house upon the recommendation
of one of his trusted advisors—the Master of the King’s Horse, an important
imperial post. He no doubt wanted to see the trophy heads from the hunt at
the Pardo Palace and the portraits that celebrated his reign. The purebred
live horses, as well as the armor, were also of noteworthy appeal for the King.
What did Philip think of the armadillo specimen? With respect to those
originally found in his own collections, one of the armadillo images was
destroyed by fire; the other image is no longer in the Escorial; and no record
exists as to what happened to the armadillo carapace. But when he visited
Argote’s museum, Philip II, perhaps, would have been bemusedly interested
in Fuleco, who Monardes described as combining horselike and armor
qualities. The shiny armor and purebred horses in Argote’s museum were
a foil to the noticeably puny Fuleco, an example of how material culture in
the sixteenth century perpetuated American belittlement.
While visiting Argote’s museum, Philip may have also thought of the
first image that Seville used to receive him as victorious monarch when
he arrived to the city—a victorious Hercules wearing the Nemean lion
skin and stepping on a dragon (Mal Lara 1992, 97). Holding the eyeless
carapace of Fuleco in his hands, he may have thought of how the exist-
ence of the animal carapace confirmed his command over the Indies and
nature’s chain of being. The skin and armor of the armadillo, a symbol of
the Indies, assured Philip of the supremacy of Spanish horses and armor.
Fuleco as armor spectacle validated Philip II as the planet’s Hercules, a
truly powerful monster, the one that wore the most splendorous armor
with truly impenetrable skin.
The L’Écluse Animal Specimen
When Philip II wore parade armor and rode a prize horse adorned with
a bard, he became the protagonist of the most splendorous spectacle of
sixteenth-century pageantry. Fuleco, an imperfect image of the armored
horse, was also a spectacle. He was not a wonderfully grand and monstrous
human, but a small and monstrous animal specimen. Despite his small size,
Fuleco as specimen in Argote’s museum sparked a new type of interest in
animals as museum specimens.
Argote’s museum in Seville contained an animal that the English transla-
tion of Monardes calls an “armed beast.” The dissemination of Medicinal His-
tory of the Things Brought from Our West Indies not only brought commercial
success to Monardes, but also achieved the goal of providing commercial

value to an easily portable and profitable American animal. Was the ar-
madillo an armored beast or like a shark or a man-eating alligator? Future
collectors would have to purchase the carapace to find out. One collector
from the period noted upon receiving a new object: “I experience more
pleasure than if he had given me cash” (qtd. Findlen 2002, 300). Monardes,
through description, and Argote, through collection, gave the armadillo
specimen cultural currency by translating its body into a pleasure-giving
collectible commodity.
Nicolás Monardes, first and foremost a businessman, made Fuleco into a
specimen with the hopes of improving his economic status. He, like Dürer,
took advantage of new economic networks and the printing press to establish
his own emblematic animal from the Indies. In turn, Argote was first and
foremost a man of arms, and his inclusion of Fuleco’s specimen in his col-
lection served to show off his noble reputation.
Argote’s museum in Seville, as well as sixteenth-century Spain more
generally, is an especially important arena for studying the history of science
like the development of the modern museum. Maria M. Portuondo notes
that early modern Spain’s scientific enterprise encompassed both natural
philosophy and scientific practice. Portuondo explains:
Spain’s scientif ic enterprise wrestled with fundamentally the same

philosophical concerns that drive the development of science elsewhere
in Europe, but, by having tested the bounds of empiricism early on and
having identified its shortcoming, sought—perhaps longer than most—
a cohesive and comprehensive natural philosophy through which to
interpret the natural world. (2017, 195)
Argote’s museum, for instance, is a historical example of how scientific

enterprise shifted away from the Church and ancient sources in the inter-
pretation of the significance of animals.
Argote used his home in lieu of the church by displaying the animal speci-
men. Formerly, examples of animal specimens could be found in churches
throughout sixteenth-century Spain. A bear claw was posted on the door of
the church in Navacepeda de Tormes. Álvaro de Bazán (1526–88), Marquess
of Santa Cruz and commander-in-chief of the Spanish naval forces in the
Mediterranean under Philip II, acquired a crocodile from the Nile and placed
the desiccated specimen in the church Nuestra Señora de la Asunción in Viso
in the province of Ciudad Real. Another crocodile hung in the cathedral in
Seville. Argote observed the crocodile and a giraffe jawbone, which hung
next to the crocodile: “[an animal] called a giraffe whose jaw can be seen
in the principal church in Seville in the Crocodile Nave.”40
By including the armadillo, which Monardes described in the same
chapter as man-eating crocodiles, Argote used the space of a private home
for a specimen, contributing to the creation of an emerging secularized
space for natural specimens. 41 The Church connected animal specimens to
religious doctrine through innumerable sculptures and painted images of
saints stepping on or defeating animals in the form of threatening demons.
Physical animal specimens from the natural world served a similar purpose,
symbolizing how the Church defeated its allegorical enemies like heresy.
The crocodile in Seville’s cathedral, for instance, represented the Church’s
conquest of the Moors. Fuleco as specimen in Argote’s museum, in turn,
represented a moment of transition. The specimen connected to the interests
of two humanists rather than to religious doctrine.
The space of the museum in the private collection became the theater
of the world, replacing the church in sowing truths about the animal body.
Monardes, by writing about Fuleco in a book about plants, took advantage
of its unique American origin. He did not recur to animal descriptions
from religious or classic authorities like Pliny. Monardes thereby signifi-
cantly contributed to a generation of natural historians who defined animal
specimens based on firsthand observation. In short, the description of
the Seville armadillo specimen was affected by a humanist-soldier and
a humanist-businessman who reflected Spain’s economic and military
interests.
Most directly, Argote’s museum influenced the creation of a new zoo-
logical category, the “exotic” animal, as described by Charles L’Écluse. The
seventeenth-century natural historian and botanist Charles L’Écluse wrote
Exoticorum libri decem (Ten Books of Exotica, 1605), an account of plant and
animal specimens that symbolically replaced Spanish interests with those of
the Dutch. In the growing global economic port center of Amsterdam, L’Écluse,
40 “uno llamado jirafa, cuyo freno se ve en la iglesia mayor de Sevilla, en la Nave del Lagarto”
(Argote 1582, III: 10). The giraffe jaw to which Argote refers was from a live giraffe that was
originally a gift from the Kutuz, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt (1259–60) to Alphonso the Wise
(1221–84). Aside from a live giraffe, Alphonso received an elephant, a camel, a zebra, an ostrich,
an Egyptian ibis, and a flamingo. A beautiful image of the giraffe and the other animals that
Alphonso received appear in miniature in the manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa María (Songs
of Holy Mary, 13th century) (Keller 1972 and Wagschal 2018, 35–36).
41 In the sixteenth century, wealthy elites, like Argote, included animal specimens in their
homes, rather than donating them for display in churches. The Duchesse Eleonora de Medici
(1519–62) in the Palazzo Vecchio in Italy had a stuffed crocodile suspended from the ceiling next
to an elephant’s jawbone, fish skeletons, and the skull of a “monstrous” calf (Groom 2019, 209).
a new European authority of the most important observable specimens,

translated Nicolás Monardes’s work into Latin in 1575 and updated the Mo-
nardes translation in 1605, which he included as part of Ten Books of Exotica.
Considered by scholars to be one of Europe’s first botanical treatises,
Ten Books of Exotica is also a virtual museum of exotic animal specimens.
Many animals that L’Écluse describes as exotic were also found in sixteenth-
century museums such as Argote’s. L’Écluse dedicates Book V of Ten Books of
Exotica to animals and begins with a description of an enormous bat. Dürer
had painted two different bats with outstretched wings (1522; Ashmolean
Museum) and Philip II had an image of a bat (ca. 1560), by Ludgar Tom
Ring the Younger (1522–84), hanging in his private sleeping quarters in his
residence at the Escorial. 42
L’Écluse’s choice of the bat as exotic evoked the religious iconographic
tradition just as Dürer’s Rhinoceros and Monardes’s Fuleco image evoked the
tradition of the dragon. The bat—including in Dürer’s own work—had long
been linked to demons, darkness, and hell. But L’Écluse wrote in the prose
of a dispassionate scientist. The description of the bat begins with the word
“massive” (ingens) and an image that shows off the bat’s prominent penis.
L’Écluse bought the bat specimen when he was in Amsterdam in 1603. It had
been preserved in the market for five years, since it originally arrived as a
shipment from Batavi, the capital of the Dutch East Indies in 1598. The bat, a
Malaysian flying fox or Mauritian fruit bat, was from one of the islands around
New Guinea that L’Écluse describes as uninhabited. He coined a species name
verpertilio ingens (“massive bat”). L’Écluse describes it size, teeth, body, and
color, and emphasizes its non-European origins; L’Écluse writes that the bat
was “absolutely different from ours in size and color” (L’Écluse 1605, 5:94).
The catalogue of exotic animals in L’Écluse also includes bird specimens.
L’Écluse describes a dried hummingbird that he witnessed in the curiosity
collection of his colleague Jacob Plateau in Tournai (located in present-day
Belgium). He describes the hummingbird’s origin from Brazil and, as with
the bat, he includes a woodcut image of a hummingbird. Like Monardes,
L’Écluse refers to a religious authority by reporting a firsthand account of
the hummingbird from a Jesuit that lived in Brazil.
Monardes does not name which birds where in Argote’s museum, just
that it contained “many types of animals and birds and other curious things
brought from the East and West Indies.”43 L’Écluse’s description of the hum-
42 I am the first to identify the painter of Philip II’s bat portrait.

43 “Muchos generos de animales y aves, y otras cosas curiosas, traídos asi de la India Oriental,
como Occidental” (Monardes 1574, 17).
mingbird suggests that Argote probably had a hummingbird among the

unnamed bird specimens in his museum. L’Écluse also describes a bird
of paradise; it is almost certain that Argote also had a bird of paradise
specimen in his museum.
Primarily found in Papua New Guinea, there are some forty-two species
of this bird, and hunters in Papua New Guinea rendered these birds by
removing their legs and disemboweling them (Lawrence 2014). The altered
bodies of birds of paradise as specimens reached Spain as early as 1522.
Tomé Pires (1465–1540) visited the Aru Islands between 1512 and 1515 and
his Suma Oriental (Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China, written in
Malacca and India in 1512-1515) was published in abridged form in Venice in
1557. In this publication, he describes: “birds which they bring over dead,
called birds of paradise, and they say they come from heaven and that
they do not know how they are bred” (qtd. in George 1980, 83). While in
New Spain, Francisco de Hernández handled legless specimens of the bird
that arrived via the Manila trading route. Hernández provided Philip II
an image of the bird (also found in the Pomar codex) and writes “that they
absolutely lack legs.”44
In Seville in 1565, Mal Lara described a specimen of a bird of paradise that
he examined firsthand. He writes that the birds are born without legs and
refers to a bird of paradise that Gessner had in his Nuremberg collection,
which he charged people a fee to see. Mal Lara, a contemporary of Argote
also had a museum and had a bird of paradise specimen. Mal Lara stimulated
the legendary European fascination with birds of paradise by explaining
that they supposedly lived in heaven, as described in Islam: “they say that
this bird is born in paradise—the one described by Mohammed—as is told
by the Moors from those islands.”45
L’Écluse includes an armadillo in his exotic animal catalogue. L’Écluse
describes the armadillo and includes its image, under the heading “armadillo
or tatou” (L’Écluse 1605). Tatú is the common name for armadillo in Uruguay
and Argentina, as well as in Paraguay and Bolivia. This became the standard
name in French for the animal. L’Écluse based his observations on three
armadillo images that Plateau had drawn and sent to him (Mason 2007).
L’Écluse followed Monardes by describing the armadillo through firsthand
observation of its armor, particularly the number of lames that it contained.
He borrowed from the lexicon of armor in which lames are narrow, movable
44 “desprovistas absolutamente de los pies mismos” (López Piñero 1991, 40).

45 “dicen que esta ave nace en el Paraíso, el de Mahoma, según la relación que de los moros de
aquellas islas se toma” (Mal Lara 2015, 1663).
strips of plate used to provide articulation in the full suit of armor. L’Écluse
argues that three species of armadillo exist, basing the conclusion on “animals
classified with breastplates” (qtd. in de Asúa and French 2005, 167).
Argote’s sixteenth century museum and its animal specimens, most
especially Fuleco, form an important trajectory for L’Écluse and in scientific
practices associated with modern museums. A standard eighteenth-century
German lexicon states that museums were connected to the muses—they
contained art and most properly were a building in which scholars lived,
dined, and studied together (Ziolkowski 1990, 313). As Argote and Monardes
(and perhaps Philip II) discussed the meaning of the armadillo as specimen,
so too did L’Écluse and Plateau. The act of counting lames in L’Écluse was
innovative for faunal taxonomy because, instead of only typecasting from
previous classical zoological descriptions of old-world fauna or Church
doctrine, naturalists created a specimen for display in one’s home and
defined animal categories through first hand observation. The observer
was supposed to better understand the armadillo through the self-evident
visual experience of its most striking feature, armor.
Different unnamed armadillo specimens appeared in early humanist
collections like those of Argote in Spain, as well as others like that of Conrad
Gessner and Ulisse Aldrovandi. As many of those collections converted
into early natural history museums, those unnamed armadillos stayed.
When Gresham College London first opened in 1666, the museum was the
result of the Royal Society’s conversion of Robert Hubert’s private cabinet,
a curio collection that contained armadillos. The catalogue in the museum
describes three armadillo specimens: a great shelled hedgehog, a pigheaded
armadillo, and a weasel-headed armadillo (Asúa and French 2005, 219-220).
Fuleco’s carapace in Argote’s private collections played a crucial role, along
with objects, plants, and other animals considered unique to America, in
igniting an intellectual discussion about animal taxonomy and the emerg-
ing institution of the natural history museum. By defining it based on its
self-evident features, the armadillo played a role in a growing discipline of
zoological visualization based on empiricism, shaping the epistemology of
modern taxonomy. The armadillo in the frontispiece of the groundbreaking
Experiments on the Generation of Insects (1668) by Francesco Redi (1626–97)
represents America and scientific observation. The man in the frontispiece
represents the New World, holding an armadillo under his arm, with the god-
dess Minerva pointing her finger at a microscope and some natural history
drawings. The Redi frontispiece uses the image of the armadillo to herald
Europe’s experience with the New World and to signal the dispassionate
visualization of self-evident features of an era of experimental procedure
based on systematizing empirical observation (Findlen 1994, 194–8 and de

Asúa and French 2005, 212).
The armadillo was not only a part of emerging natural history, but mu-
seum collections in general. It did not lose its appeal as a showcase item in
later collections. In Still-life with Rarities by Jan van der Heyden (1637–1712),
which is now in Budapest, all the objects are artificial, including two globes,
two books, a painting, Chinese silk, a Chinese ceramic bowl, and oriental
weapons (Sutton 2007, 208). The artificial and exotic objects in Still-life with
Rarities are examples of extracted nature crafted into artifice. But, the one
and only naturalia specimen is an animal and it is an armadillo carapace
that hangs from the ceiling.
Armadillos, especially Fuleco, sparked an interest in collectible specimens.
By the eighteenth century, animal specimens had become part of museum
institutional culture. The Spanish Crown, for instance, sent bureaucrats
throughout the Empire and made over 335 shipments of natural specimens
to Madrid over the course of seven decades (De Vos 2009). Armadillos also
played a role in sparking a European narrative about American faunal
degeneration and subordination. Scientific ideas of climate from the period
created a notion that American animals were inferior, which was used
to make an argument that American people were bound as politically
subordinate to Europeans (Wey Gómez 2008, 341). Developing sixteenth-
century climate theory, the highly influential French naturalist Georges
Buffon (1707–88) categorically defined fauna from the Americas as radically
inferior because it suffered from degeneration vis-à-vis old-world varieties.
Monardes inherently belittled the iconic American animal with the simple
suffix -illo. Later, of course, in the nineteenth century, armadillos were not
all small—at that time, naturalists began to excavate and study the bones
of giant armadillos (glyptodon), confounding Buffon’s claims about the
inferiority of new-world fauna.
Conclusion
Scholars are increasingly considering how viewing subjects culturally

constructed animal objects on display in museums (Thorsen, Rader, and
Dodd 2013). The sixteenth century began the Age of the Specimen, and
Fuleco the armadillo was one of the greats of the Age. His body as specimen
celebrated the Spanish domination of America and provided the Habsburg
monarch Philip II’s collection heightened legitimacy through its association
with armor and horses.
Monardes gave Fuleco armor and creatively turned him into a preposter-
ously small version of a horselike animal. Fuleco was both small—a puny
horse—and monstrous—naturally fitted with armor. These categories were
sometimes juxtaposed for comic effect, such as in the “smallest monstrous
mouse” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c.1595) by William Shakespeare
(1564-1616). Just as Cervantes’s readers would have comically recognized Don
Quixote’s golden helmet as not truly an example of shining armor, but simply
a barber’s basin, so too Europeans would have perceived Fuleco’s armor as
misplaced. He was not a noble armed European breed that augmented the
king’s body, but a diminutive animal. Indeed, Cervantes begins Don Quixote
by joking about Philip II’s penchant for the armoire.46 The epitome of Philip’s
masculine pride were his horses and massive armoire (cabinet), the Royal
Armory where he kept costly and spectacular armor. In radical contrast,
Cervantes describes the corner of the old knight’s room: “some armor that
had belonged to his great-grandfathers and, stained with rust and covered
with mildew, had spent many long years stored and forgotten in a corner”
(Cervantes 2003, 22). 47
Ursula Heise, in the first chapter of her book on culture and extinction,
suggests that comedy emphasizes modes of survival over extinction and,
in so doing, opens up different cognitive and emotional attachments to the
“lives of other humans as well as nonhuman species” (2016, 14). The comedy
in Fuleco’s story should not be overlooked. Finely crafted armor was the
zenith of Philip’s artificialia, the maximum expression of sixteenth-century
human ingenuity and craftsmanship, which comically contrasted with
Fuleco, a horselike hybrid with armor and the zenith of American naturalia.
I have taken Fuleco out of museum storage. While filled with failures and
limitations, the reconstruction of his life has been filled with laughter and
regeneration. Some species of armadillo, like the nine-banded variety that
became the state mammal of Texas in 1995, defy the Anthropocene’s fifth
extinction. James Michener underscores armadillo defiance: “An armadillo
is not one whit more beautiful or mysterious than a butterfly or a pine cone,
but it’s more fun. And what gave him the warmest satisfaction: All the other
sizable animals of the world seem to be having their living areas reduced.
Only the armadillo is stubbornly enlarging his” (2002, 928).
46 Signif icantly, the word armoire (armario, or guardarropa in Spanish) means “cabinet,”
demonstrating that the etymology of the cabinet, or “the place for storing objects,” has, at its
roots, the storing of one’s arms and armor. For a description of the Pilatos, another Seville
collection from the early sixteenth century, that was called guardarropa, see Lleó Cañal 2017.
47 “unas armas que habían sido de sus bisabuelos, que tomadas de orín y llenas de moho,
luengos siglos había que estaban puestas y olvidadas en un rincón” (Cervantes 1992, 37).
Fig. 25. The Monkey Painter (1660) by David Teniers the Younger (Copyright Photographic Archive
Museo Nacional del Prado).
In conclusion, the invention of a fanciful name for an armadillo invites

the consideration a specimen’s former sentience. Fuleco was not a dead
shell observed by men in Seville, but an animal who once had eyes. The
Monkey Painter (f ig. 25) by David Teniers (1610–90) can be interpreted
as inspiring future art projects that take animal sentience as a point of
departure. Ostensibly, The Monkey Painter satirizes the human-based visual
experience. Two monkeys are surrounded by the typical objects found in
the early modern museum—a collection of paintings, sculptures, and other
objects. They observe and take part in the creation of a new aesthetic object.
One monkey, nobly dressed with a feather hat, intently observes the other
monkey in the act of painting.
Belonging to the genre of singerie or “monkey trick” paintings, The Monkey
Painter mocks the humanist museum tradition by portraying nobles and
its early visitors as animals. But, does the painting only use the animal as
a prop for the human? That is, should the painting only be interpreted as
Teniers calling the bad human artist or humanist a “monkey”? I suggest that
we may use the painting to pose questions that not only look to the past,
but to Deleuze and Guatarri’s assertion that art begins with the animal.
How can the artist and the animal collaborate and see each other’s eyes as
powerful, individual, and inspiring?
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3. Jarama the Bull and Maghreb the Lion
Abstract
Chapter 3 provides a biogeography of Maghreb the lion and Jarama the bull.
The collection of poems in The Amphitheater of Philip the Great describes
a day of animal spectacle, focusing on the staged combat between Jarama
and Maghreb. The poems celebrate the bull as classical hero and Philip IV
as imperial hunter. After Jarama killed Maghreb, the poets in the collection
depict the fighting bull as Spain’s own species and as the only wild animal
in the world that was still to be dominated. They describe Philip IV’s final
execution of the bull before the public as the spectacle’s glorious climax.
The group of poets in The Amphitheater of Philip the Great represent the
imperial literary elite who sought to forge collective identities of Europe
and Spain, as well as in terms of race.
Keywords: history of the bullf ight, staged animal combats, Maghreb

the lion (ca. 1621–1631), Jarama the bull (ca. 1626–31), Philip IV of Spain
(1605–65), Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip the
Great, 1632)
Performance practice should never make animals the exclusive object of

the human gaze. Instead, sites of animal performance need to be ones of
bodily experimentation in which animals and humans are simultaneously
both performers and audience members. Human singers, for instance, listen
to whales and then alter their song and, at the same time, whales listen to
the humans and alter theirs.
In an essay in Performing Animality: Animals in Performance Practices
(2015), Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca points to the possibility of spontaneous, emo-
tive, and transformational mutual human-animal interaction.1 Interspecies
collaboration as a performance model helps humans develop strategies for
solving future environmental problems by becoming sensitive to nonhuman
1 Also see Cull Ó Maoilearca 2012.
doi 10.5117/9789463720441_ch03
animals as companions, who, even before humans existed, adapted to the

arrival of other living organisms and environmental disruption.
As in the last two chapters, the first half of the following chapter examines
the lives of its two protagonists: Jarama, the bull, born on the banks of a river
about thirty-six miles south of Madrid with other bulls bred for fighting,
and Maghreb, the lion, born in a cave in the Atlas Mountains in northern
Africa. Both animals were transported to Madrid and, as described in
Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip the Great, 1632)
by José Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar (1602–79), they fought each other and died
in a staged animal combat in 1631. After providing context for the life and
death of each animal, the second half of the chapter argues that Pellicer’s
description of the staged animal combat established the centrality of the
bull and marginality of the lion in Spanish spectacle.
Aside from providing a material and cultural description of the life and
journey of Jarama and Maghreb, the chapter examines each animal’s cultural
afterlife. Bulls were not part of traditional commercial plays, nor were they
typically represented in material culture in early modern Spain. But, as
the publication of The Amphitheater of Philip the Great attests, the bull had
become the star performer of an officially sanctioned staged animal combat.
Poets in The Amphitheater of Philip the Great described the bull as the only
wild animal left in the world for the monarch to dominate and established
the bull’s body as central to ideas of nation and race.
The corral was the common name in early modern Spain for a theater.
Bruce Burningham examines how the emergence of commercial theater or
corral in Spain took away the gaze of actors who had previously interacted
with their publics in a spontaneous way. Burningham laments the loss of
an intimate dialogue between the actor and spectator as a result of the
commodif ied packaged performance that put an end to the unbridled
performative impulse and, in turn, the transformative power of theater
(2007, 169–70). Burningham uses the notion of corral to make a metaphorical
argument: Just as the taming and domestication of the animal took place in
the animal corral, so too did a taming or domestication of its actors stifle
the transformative power of the theater or the corral (2007, 169–70).
The following chapter takes Burningham’s description of the corral
literally. The lives of Jarama the bull and Maghreb the lion as described in
The Amphitheater of Philip the Great show how theatrical spectacle corralled
animals and disregarded the possibility of mutual human-animal interac-
tion. I call attention to the destructive practice of making animal performers
for the human gaze so as to conceptualize an end to the figurative and
material corralling of animals in performance. The chapter historicizes the
Jar ama the Bull and Maghreb the Lion 175
staged animal combat that celebrated the human gaze over the animal to
discredit the cultural logic of similar performance practices. It concludes
by mentioning the interpretation of a graphic novel version of the play
El retablo de las maravillas (The Marvelous Puppet Show, 1615) by Miguel
de Cervantes (1547-1616) as a way to stimulate reciprocal animal-human
performance models.
Jarama the Bull (ca. 1626–1631)
Authors have given Spanish bulls names for different purposes. Fernando
the bull is a popular character in children’s literature and film. Caramelo
the bull was a symbol of Spanish national pride in the nineteenth century.
The bull described in the following pages had no name. I have chosen the
name Jarama to refer to the Jarama River, because the most famous bulls
in early modern Spain were said to get their ferociousness from drinking
the water and grazing from the grasses along the Jarama’s banks. I also call
the bull Jarama in bittersweet mockery of the way that he is described as
performer and protagonist in the staged animal combat described in The
Amphitheater of Philip the Great.
The etymology of town names around Madrid reflects the region’s deep
connection to cattle breeding: Boalo etymologically connects to the bovine;
Becerril refers to a young calf; Buitrago has an ox in its coat of arms and is
an old form of the word buey (“ox”); and, finally, Torote, from the word toro
(“bull”), is both a small river tributary and a town. The act of controlling
bulls in displays of courage and ingenuity is one of Europe’s oldest spectacles,
as evidenced in archeological finds of the Minoan culture in Bronze Age
Crete, most especially at the palace compound of Cnossos (Shelton 2014).
Even though the popularity of the bull spectacle existed for thousands of
years across locations in Europe, the Habsburgs officially sanctioned the
Jarama River region as the planet’s most important site for bull breeding.
The Jarama River flows north to south, passing east of Madrid. It is the
main waterway in the area of Madrid, forming the tributary Manzanares
that flows through Madrid, connecting with the Tagus River in Aranjuez.
Charles I began to breed wild bulls along the Jarama River near Aranjuez
and, by the end of the sixteenth century, the fields around Aranjuez were
the designated breeding ground for Spain’s bulls. One source from 1602
describes the region of Aranjuez at the confluence of the Jarama and Tagus
Rivers and specifies the age and type of 500 cattle that were bred as part of
the royal herd of fighting bulls (López Izquierdo 1975).
Jarama the bull was born along the banks of the Jarama River around
1626. He lived close to his mother for about eight to nine months. After about
a year, breeders would have placed him in an area along the river reserved
for males. Shortly thereafter, at the age of about 16 months, Jarama reached
full sexual maturity. Living with the group of males, Jarama soon became
the mandón, that is, the chief bull that kept the other bulls in line. Fully
grown and at the height of his physical power, breeders captured Jarama,
who had spent his first five years of life in relative peace grazing along the
banks of the river and eating its grasses. To capture Jarama alive, they would
have used lassos and special horses similar to the way modern-day rodeo
performers take down and rope calves.
Images of the capture of Spanish f ighting bulls began to circulate in
Europe after Cosimo I de Medici (1519–74) employed Jan van der Straet
(Stradanus) (1523–1605) to make a series of representations in the form of
tapestries depicting hunting, fowling, and f ishing for the adornment of
rooms in the Palace of Peggio-a-Cajano (from 1553 to 1571). In Antwerp,
the publisher Philip Galle—the f irst and only man to circulate Abada’s
image in printed form—published forty-three of Straet’s images. Galle
employed the engraver Jan Cooaert (1566–1628) to copy and create cop-
per engravings of hunting scenes based on the Medici tapestries that
Stradanus had designed. Galle originally published forty-four images
with short Latin descriptions in Venationes Ferarum, Auium, Piscium:
Pugnae bestiariorum: & mutuae bestiarum (Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds
and Fishes, n.d.). Galle later added more images, increasing the total
number of images in Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds and Fishes to sixty-one.
Galle’s book had numerous printings in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and widely circulated throughout Europe. One artist, Antonio
Tempesta (1555–1630), copied one of the most popular images from Galle’s
Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds and Fishes. Tempesta circulated the image
independently as a printed broadsheet. It shows the hunting of a bull
on horseback with a lasso in a scene that shows how Jarama may have
been captured.
In the countryside around Lubbock, Texas, there are many roads called
“FM,” originally farm-to-market roads. In early modern Spain, men walked
cattle by foot, including unruly bulls, along a vía pecunaria (“cattle-to-market
road”). Economic historian Antonio Luis López Martínez (2002; 2006) notes
that toros bravos (“bulls bred for fighting”) were regularly moved to Pamplona
from as far away as Salamanca and Zamora in the early modern period. Even
more suppliers transported fighting bulls to Madrid. The transport of Jarama
from Aranjuez to Madrid would have been a relatively short distance (36
miles). Early modern Madrid had upwards of forty suppliers. Records for
festivities in Madrid in the seventeenth century record five fighting bull
suppliers from Toledo (60 miles) and eleven from Ciudad Real (100 miles)
(López Martínez 2002, 245).
In 1631, Jarama was captured and brought to Madrid. He would have been
brought along an established supply route on a cattle-to-market road for
toros bravos following the century-old practice known as the encierro. The
encierro is a typical feast day custom in towns across central Spain, most
famously Pamplona. A group of men on horses and on foot lead a small herd
of fighting bulls to an enclosed area—the encierro—in the center of town.
Most town feast days only celebrate the last leg of the encierro, that is, the
arrival of the herd of bulls to town. One town, however, Cuéllar, in Segovia,
still celebrates the complete encierro, in which men typically lead the bulls
from the breeding ranch for four miles along a designated farm-to-market
route to the center of town.
Although different places across Europe bred and watched wild bull
spectacles for centuries, by 1513, Spain had a distinct reputation in Europe
as having its own toro bravo. If he were still living when Jarama was born,
the foremost sixteenth-century authority on breeding, the humanist Gabriel
Alonso de Herrera (1470–1539), would have been vehemently critical of the
way in which Jarama was bred.2 Herrera published Obra de Agricultura
(Treatise on Agriculture, 1513, 1524, and 1584) in the early sixteenth century.
The immensely popular book on breeding was published in twenty-eight
editions in Spain through the nineteenth century.3
Aside from agricultural advice, Herrera discusses animal husbandry
and describes the best ways to breed and care for cattle. For instance,
he describes the proper procedure for castration for good oxen. Oxen, or
castrated bulls, were the primary source of draught power for plowing from
ancient times until the nineteenth century. Although bulls, in contrast
to oxen, roamed free and uncastrated, they also, like oxen, needed good
husbandry. Herrera described how to control young bulls, how to choose
the best shape and size of bull for breeding, and when and how they should
be allowed to mate.
Gabriel Alonso de Herrera attacks bovine husbandry practices for breed-
ing toros bravos. He praises Italy, France, and “even” Aragón over Spain
because they do not breed toros bravos. Herrera complains that he cannot
2 For more anti-bullfighting attitudes from Lope de Vega’s plays, see Martínez Novillo 1998.
3 One English translation underscores how Herrera gave practical advice for the contemporary
practice of sustainable farming (2006).
understand how an animal can be killed for the sake of killing. He asks,
“what pleasure could be gained in watching such a spectacle’ and ‘what
enjoyment is there in killing?”4 He concludes: “In our Spain they kill bulls
with dangerous pleasure, piercing them with spears and rejones as if these
animals were evil doers when they are blameless. And the most atrocious
wrong is that the act celebrates the feast day of a saint.”5
Despite protests from Herrera, anti-bullfighting ideas remained on the
margins and the corrida became a royally sanctioned event for Habsburg
royalty in sixteenth-century Spain. As Herrera writes, corridas formed
part of Spanish religious spectacle. Towns primarily celebrated corridas
in honor of saints on religious holidays. During Charles V’s rule, Valladolid
regularly celebrated bull-fighting feasts on Corpus Christi and on saint
days, including those celebrating Saint John and Saint James or Santiago.
The only variant among the different celebrations was the number of bulls
killed during the day’s feast, which was between four and nineteen during
the course of the sixteenth century (Bennassar 1989).
Philip II (scholars debate how great a great fan he was) inherited the
corrida as a popular animal spectacle from his father. Enrique Cock (ca.
1540–98), Philip II’s chief archer, describes how, at one corrida in Valladolid,
a bull ran off through the crowd and that he and Philip’s other archers shot
down the animal.
then the bullfights began which is not worth comment. One bull, however,
came out after the juego de cañas (“game of canes”) adorned with trappings
and fireworks sticking out of its body. After they burned out, the bull
became so unruly that it killed some people. It ran around until evening.
When His Majesty decided to retire, he ordered that the archers kill the
bull. We chased it, but it escaped running by us four or six times. Finally,
it arrived to our barracks where we had encamped. At this point, it ran
between all of us and we were able to finish it off.6
4 “a saber que placer se puede haber de matar” (Herrera 1513, 160; Herrera 1524, 153; Herrera
1584, 176).
5 “en nuestra España matan los toros con peligroso placer, echando las lanças y garrochas
como si fuesen malhechores no teniendo culpa. Y lo que es mayor error hacerse en honor de
santos y en sus fiestas” (Herrera 1513, 160; Herrera 1524, 153; Herrera 1584, 176).
6 “comenzaron los toros, que fueron de poca importancia, hasta uno que salió después del
juego de caña, todo enalbardado, lleno de cohetes, el cual, en acabando el fuego, fue tan bravo
que mató alguna gente, y corrió tanto que vino anochecer, de suerte que queriendo retirarse Su
Majestad, hubo de mandar a los dos guardas de albarderos que los matasen. Los cuales andando
tras él, por cuatro o seis veces salió y pasó por entre ello, y al fin llegó al cuartel, donde estaba
nuestra guarda de archeros, y cogiendo en medio de todos, fue allí muerto” (Cock 1879, 29).
Cock’s description indicates that Philip II enjoyed the spectacle during the
day—including the bull running through the crowds and killing people—until
the evening arrived and he grew tired. Philip II valued the bull spectacle so
much that he disregarded the Pope’s desire to end it. When the Papacy issued
an injunction to excommunicate nobles who were bullfighters and, in 1572,
forbade clergy to attend bullfights on holy days, Philip did not heed the edict. In
fact, he wrote to the Pope to have the decision reversed (Defourneaux 1970, 133).
Under Philip II’s successor, Philip III, the use of the fighting bull in royally
sanctioned spectacles expanded. During the years 1599 to 1614, Philip III’s
court visited Alcalá, Burgos, Cuenca, Gumiel, Guadalajara, Lerma, Madrid,
Melgar, Palencia, Salamanca, Segovia, and Valladolid. In all of these places,
the towns celebrated the King’s visit with a corrida. When King Philip III
arrived to a city or locale, townspeople sometimes organized parades, dances,
plays, and even the occasional animal fight. But the spectacle of the bullfight
was a constant. The highlight of each royal visit was a corrida. The case of
Alcalá was typical: They were there two days, they held a corrida, and then,
with the bull spectacle finished, the Court departed (Cabrera 1997, 438).
Under Philip III, the bullfight became a regular part of Madrid’s culture of
spectacle. Regarding the allure of the event, one contemporary notes: “And
though these fetes are usually fairly commonplace, and in Madrid there
are three or four each year, there is not a man in the town who would not
pawn his furniture rather than miss one because he lacked the entrance
fee” (qtd. in Defourneaux 1970, 134). Francisco Santos (1617–98) writes in Día
y noche de Madrid (Madrid at Day and Night, 1663) how the Plaza Mayor
overflowed with people: “so many people come in the morning to watch
them bring in the bulls that there is not any open space. Four or six bulls
are fought and when the feast finishes the crowded people watching from
the stands climb over each other and cover the Plaza.”7
After the toreador quitted the Plaza Mayor, common folk would come
out and strike dying bulls with cutlasses, and kill and butcher the animals.
As in Roman times, the end result provided commoners a rare opportunity
to supplement their grain-based diet with meat. A French visitor from the
period described this moment in disparaging terms:
As soon as it begins to totter or to stand only on three legs, the wretched

bull is hacked to pieces by cuts from short swords called cuchilladas. This
7 “Viene por la mañana tanta gente al encierro de los toros que no queda lugar que no se
ocupe. Córrense cuatro o seis delos y acábase la fiesta, y la gente que ocupaba los tablados se
apea para cubrir la plaza” (Santos 2010, 671).
is where the common people reveal their lust for blood; for one can see that
they do not consider themselves good mother’s sons unless they plunge
their knives into the blood of the bull. (qtd. in Defourneaux 1970, 135)
The French author makes incendiary comments about Spanish bloodlust

and reveals more about his own lack of knowledge about the provenance of
meat. The author is unfamiliar with animal butchery, a practice common
in cities and towns across early modern Europe. Animals, even exotic ones,
were butchered and eaten well into the modern period. When Chunee the
elephant died in England in the nineteenth century, hundreds came to
“pay their respects” until the stench of his rotting cadaver chased them
away. It took nine butchers twelve hours to flay the hide before Chunee
was dissected by surgeons—one of whom ate the flesh (Grigson 2016, 212).
The Jarama region supplied the bulls for the new capital and they became
symbolically associated with Spain. In the sixteenth century, Spanish authors
shaped an emerging national character by celebrating Madrid as urban center.
They contrasted Madrid with the wild region of the neighboring Jarama River
region. Authors promoted the legendary origins of Madrid and, in so doing,
highlighted the importance of the Jarama region in the popular mindset as
a wild region in contrast to the concomitant urban space of Madrid. Lope
de Vega wrote three plays that celebrated Madrid’s patron saint, Isidro, and
Lope stated that Isidro’s wife was from Jarama. Isidro’s wife walked on top of
the raging Jarama River like Jesus by putting down her shawl and crossing
before she reached Madrid (Mayo 2008, 82). Authors of fiction throughout
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries described the banks of the Jarama
River as creating Spain’s most ferocious bulls. The picaresque novel La vida y
hechos de Estebanillo González (Life and Deeds of Estebanillo Gonzalez, 1646),
plays like Marta la piadosa (Marta the Pious) by Tirso de Molina (1584–1648),
and Don Quixote mention the commonplace that no bull in all the land could
match the fury and wild nature of a bull bred in Jarama.8
Jarama the bull came from a stock of fighting bulls who were bred to be
wild. Garry Marvin’s contemporary description of breeding fighting Spanish
bulls is also true for early modern Spain. Marvin describes how wildness is
part of the bull’s domesticity: “What is more complex in breeding fighting
bulls is that breeders are not seeking docility and manageability. Here the
8 Full quotes from each work are as follows: “los bravos conocidos que se criaban en las riberas
de Jarama” from La vida y hechos de Estebanillo González; “Los toros de Jarama eran tenidos por
los más bravos” from Marta la piadosa; and “no hay toros que valgan, aunque sean de los más
bravos que cría Jarama en sus riberas” from Don Quijote, Part II.58.
desire is for these animals to be imbued with a certain temperament of

wildness that will be expressed when they are in the plaza” (Marvin 2015,
43). Jarama bulls were bred for ferocity in staged animal combats as early
as the fifteenth century. One fifteenth-century nobleman, who collected
wolves, tigers, and lions, organized a special animal fight with a palisade on
his grounds that featured a fight between a lion and bull from the Jarama
region (López Rinconada 1999, 286).
Popular poetry from the early modern period provides a window on what
people expected a bull from the Jarama river region to look like and how they
expected him to behave. The nineteenth-century scholar Agustín Durán
included the anonymous poem “Zulema” in his edited collection of romances,
poems from the Spanish ballad tradition. Durán writes that “Zulema” was of
unsurpassed poetic composition of beauty and perfection (“Zulema” 1851, 78).
“Zulema” describes a celebrated bull from Jarama let loose in the plaza with
a wild and ferocious demeanor

An angry and prideful glare
A wide nose, a short neck
An offensive horn, and black skin.9
Jarama the bull’s reputation preceded him before he was released in Philip
IV’s amphitheater and fought Maghreb the lion. For a hundred years before
he appeared as a protagonist in Pellicer’s The Amphitheater of Philip the
Great, the most famous seventeenth-century Spanish bull, with a prideful
glare, had been bred as having a short neck, a wide snout, and black skin.
Maghreb the Lion (ca. 1621–1631)
The Arabic al-magrib translates to “west” or the “place where the sun sets”
and it is also the name for Morocco (Naylor 2009, 253 n. 3). Referred to as the
“Barbary Coast” and the “Land of Atlas,” the Maghreb today is the northern
region of Africa that includes the modern states of Morocco, as well as
Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania. It also includes disputed territory
in the Western Sahara and the cities of Melilla and Ceuta, controlled by
Spain and claimed by Morocco. In early modern Europe, Maghrebis, or the
Muslim Berbers, were known as moros (“Moors”).
9 “aspecto bravo y feroz / vista enojosa y soberbia / ancha nariz, corto cuello / cuerno ofensible,
piel negra” (“Zulema” 1851, 78).
Pellicer describes a lion in The Amphitheater of Philip the Great who

died as a performer. Just as Jarama is the region where Jarama the bull
was born, so my choice of the name Maghreb is to evoke the region where
he was born. Maghreb the lion’s life began away from the rest of the lions
in his mother’s pride in a place far from human settlements in the Atlas
Mountains. He most likely had one or two siblings. His mother reared him
and his cub siblings hidden away in a lair in a cave for about eight weeks.
Often, she had to leave the litter unprotected when she went to hunt. At
about two years, Maghreb was independent from his mother and lucky to
have survived into adulthood. Some estimates suggest that 80% of lions
die before reaching adulthood due to starvation, predators, and infanticide
(when male lions take over a pride of lionesses).
Not only was Maghreb lucky to have survived into adulthood, but his
entire species is lucky to have survived, although only in captivity. Those
who have seen lions in animal documentaries in the wild have never seen
Maghreb’s species. In 1925, the last visual record of a living Barbary, or
Altas lion, in the wild was taken when Marcelin Flandrin flew overhead
on the Casablanca–Dakar route (Black et al. 2013). Barbary lions survived
in the deserts and mountains of northern Africa, ranging from Morocco
to Egypt, until their nineteenth-century decimation in the wild. After
surviving human hunters for centuries, the nineteenth-century extraction
by hunters for circuses and public zoos in Europe and North America in the
1800 and 1900s ended the last “big-maned Barbary” lions found in the wild
(Barnett et al. 2008). No Barbary lion survives in the wild in the twenty-first
century because they were hunted to extinction. Some specimens, though,
were saved when the Sultan moved them to Royal Palace in Rabat in 1899.
Today, the only living Barbary lions are in captivity in the Rabat Zoo in
Temara, Morocco (Black et al. 2013). As of 2019, the Maghreb region had a
human population of over 100 million and perhaps ninety Barbary lions
living in captivity.
Morphological and genetic differences separate the Barbary lion (as well
as the Indian) from the sub-Saharan species. The Barbary is the largest living
lion subspecies. Male human potentates in Eurasia admired the Barbary
lion’s size and dark mane for over a millennium. Thousands of Barbary lions
were killed for Roman emperors in the Coliseum by gladiators and in animal
fights. Thousands more were captured in the medieval and early modern
period for Ottoman menageries in Cairo and Istanbul and for Christian
elites in Europe, especially for Florence, a city that collected wild lions
starting in the thirteenth century to represent its pride and independence
as city-state (Groom 2019).
The Habsburgs also kept Barbary lions. Philip II, upon assuming the
Spanish throne in 1556, named a lion-keeper for his father’s collection
in Ghent (Loisel 1915: I, 227–8). Philip also named Archduke Albert and
Archduchess Isabella, the Spanish governors of the Southern Netherlands,
to take over the Ghent lion menagerie (Faber Kolb 2005; Logan and Plomp
2004, 168). Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), as court painter, witnessed the
lions in the Ghent menagerie and painted Daniel in the Den of Lions (1609,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), one of the best studies of live
Barbary lions from the early modern period.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Istanbul had a healthy stock
of lions, often used in staged combats, kept at the Imperial Lion House
(Ben-Ami 2017, 19). Ottoman potentates regularly borrowed from their
reserves to supply Barbary lions to European potentates. The Medici family
was Europe’s most famous Barbary lion collectors. In 1569, when Cosimo I
de Medici was awarded the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany by Pope Pius
V (1504–72), he received a lion as part of a diplomatic gift package from a
captain of Algiers, which also included a monkey, an ostrich, a black Arabian
stallion, a brown mare, and a leopard (Groom 2019, 48). In 1637, Mehmed
Pasha Saqizli (r. 1632–49) sent an envoy and gifts from Tripoli to the Grand
Duke Ferndinado II (1610–70), which included another lion, along with
ostriches, leopards, civet cats, and horses (Groom 2019, 49).
Barbary lions were used as diplomatic pawns among the Medici family
and the Habsburgs. For instance, the Spaniard Juan Alonso Pimentel de
Herrera (ca. 1550–1621), governor of the Duchy of Milan (r. 1572–3), asked
Cosimo I de Medici for a young lion to mate with his lioness. In a gesture
that showed Medici power and the willingness to establish ties, Cosimo
eagerly responded to Pimentel’s request but did not comply (Groom 2019).
Even though some early modern Europeans, like Pimentel de Herrera, tried
to mate Barbary lions in captivity, the overwhelming majority arrived as
gifts from diplomatic missions or as captured booty from North Africa.
Juan de Austria (1545–78) had a live lion, captured as booty from a North
African campaign. The lion supposedly accompanied him wherever he
went. Argote writes in Libro de la Montería (The Book on Hunting, 1582): “the
lion of the unconquerable lord Don Juan, called Austria, was so tame that it
lived with him and slept in his bedroom. The lion was taken from the Tunis
castle when the lord Don Juan entered there. We all know about [his lion].”10
10 “el león del invictísimo el señor Don Juan, llamado Austria, tan manso, que residía y dormía
en su aposento qu fue hallado dentro del alcazaba de Túnez cuando el señor Don Juan entró en
ella, todos le conocimos” (Argote de Molina 1582, III: 10v).
Lions were sent to the Habsburgs to show friendship in diplomacy, but Ot-
toman rulers also sent lions to Habsburg enemies to leverage power against
them. In 1533, in a display of power, Khair-ed-Din (1475–1546), the famed
Red Beard, sent a messenger with an African lion and a group of French
captives in chains to Puy-en-Velay (Baghdiatz McCabe 2008, 38). Upon
the arrival of the captive lion and humans to Puy-en-Velay, Khair-ed-Din
ordered the release of all in a show of power. Khair-ed-Din’s diplomatic
intention was to strengthen an alliance with the French in hopes of curbing
Charles V’s power.
Throughout the early modern period, live animals were part of diplomatic
gift packages, and Maghreb the lion was a diplomatic gift like Abada the
rhinoceros and Hawa’i the elephant. The ambassadorial envoy that sent
Maghreb, however, was not from the Mughal Empire, but the Ottoman
Empire. An appointed Ottoman governor in the north of Africa probably
sent Maghreb the lion to Philip IV.
Maghreb the lion was most likely caught by a local Berber tribe in the
Atlas Mountains and sold to an elite working for an Ottoman governor in
North Africa. I suspect that Maghreb was caught using a method employed
by Berber hunters since classical times. Pliny says that horsemen chased
the animals into a purpose-built pit. Once trapped, hunters would lower
down a compact cage baited with meat. The lion would jump in willingly
and the cage would be closed and lifted out of the pit.
Because of its centuries-long contact with Islam and the north of Africa,
Spain had a thriving network for extracting lions. Elites across the Iberian
Peninsula in the medieval period possessed Barbary lions, most famously
Henry IV, who kept six lions in the Alcázar in Segovia. Attesting to their
regular arrival to Europe in the sixteenth century, Argote, in addition to Juan
of Austria’s lion, describes a catalogue of Spanish elites who kept captive
lions and mentions that “everyone” has seen lions enter the port in Lisbon:
“we have always seen lions arrive to Lisbon.”11
Around 1630, Maghreb the lion would have been put in an Ottoman
vessel and shipped to Seville or Cadiz as part of the ambassadorial envoy.
Despite the bitter enmity between the Ottomans and Habsburgs, diplomacy
continued in the early modern period. One ambassador from north Africa,
for instance, lived in the Puerto of Santa María in southern Spain in 1609–10
when seeking diplomatic help from Philip III (Zhiri 2016). Moreover, Spain
was forced to fight and negotiate with the Turks constantly. Despite major
defeats of Turkish forces like at Lepanto, Ottoman fleets continued military
11 “en Lisbona, hemos visto siempre leones” (Argote de Molina 1582, III: 10v).
and economic operations in the western Mediterranean in the seventeenth

century, as well as expanding well out into the Atlantic Ocean, as far as
Madeira and the west coasts of England, Denmark, and Sweden.
Maghreb the lion probably had a special handler and, during transporta-
tion by boat, may have been tied up around the haunches like the lion in the
image on the sixteenth-century Tournai tapestry, Arrival of Vasco da Gama
to Calicut or Cochin (discussed in Chapter 1). The shipment of Maghreb to
Spain was relatively uneventful compared to the other transoceanic felines.
Four jaguars were sent as gifts to King Philip IV from the Viceroy of Peru in
1635. Philip IV surely would have been excited to receive these animals, as
he could add them to his collection of lions and other animals in his newly
opened lion patio in the Buen Retiro.
Like the journey of Hawa’i and Abada, the journey experienced by the
four jaguars from America was perilous. They had multiple stops along
the way and often waited weeks at a time in the ports along the way from
Veracruz to Spain. The return trip from Veracruz in America to Cadiz in
Spain included stops in La Habana and the Azores Islands (Gómez-Centurión
Jiménez 2011, 64). Live animals often had to wait in port for weeks because
of fleet delays in leaving the Indies. Gómez-Centurión Jiménez estimates
that the average time spent at sea was around four months. The four jaguars
had at least six port stops before arriving to Cadiz. One of the four jaguars
died during the journey. Upon arriving to dry land, forty-eight black slaves
carried the surviving three jaguars in cages on their shoulders to Madrid
(Gómez-Centurión Jiménez 2011, 64). Philip, nonetheless, ensured them a
good supply of food and water. For the journey from Cadiz to Madrid, he
supplied thirty pigs and thirty fanegas of corn, and he added a supplement
of three more pigs and a ram at one stop along the way. A container of 500
liters of water for each animal was also transported.
In contrast to the jaguars, Maghreb had a relatively short sea journey.
Ottoman rulers regularly transferred the animals to the menageries of their
own potentates across much larger distances to Cairo and Istanbul. They
also made regular Barbary lion tributes to other European elites across
distances much farther than Spain (Groom 2019, 256). When brought from
southern Spain to Madrid, it is most likely that Maghreb was taken on a route
that avoided passing through populated regions and towns. A document
from the eighteenth century indicates that a live lion was taken to Madrid
through a route that bypassed towns in order to avoid curious onlookers
(Gómez-Centurión Jiménez 2011, 69).
A lion-tamer was also probably assigned to Maghreb in Orán to handle
him from Africa to Madrid. In the play Lo fingido verdadero (Acting is
Believing, 1607–8), Lope de Vega provides one common name for a lion-
tamer from the period: “the handlers that control lions are leontocomos.”12
In Don Quixote, the lion-tamer is called a leonero. The lion episode in Don
Quixote, although fictional, provides a description of how Maghreb may
have been transported over land to Madrid. In Part II of Don Quixote, Don
Quixote and Sancho observe a wagon in the distance pulled by mules
and adorned with waving royal banners. The banners were a sign that
the contents of the wagon belonged to the King. When the wagon draws
close, the man driving the wagon tells Quixote: “inside are two fierce lions
that the General of Orán is sending to court as a present for His Majesty”
(Cervantes 2003, 560).13
Cervantes’s Don Quixote f ictionalizes an authentic lion transport
that occurred in the sixteenth century. The Ottoman ruler Süleyman
gave Philip II four lions with gold leashes and collars engraved with the
Habsburg coat of arms (Pérez de Tudela and Jordan Gschwend 2007,
434; Amezúa y Mayo 1949). Süleyman, who handled a steady supply of
Barbary lions from North Africa to Istanbul, also ordered Barbary lions
sent directly to Philip II. In this case, he sent lions that left from the port
city of Orán; the Spanish governor of Orán, Martín Alfonso de Córdoba
y Velasco (1520–1604), would have been in charge of sending them to
Philip II. Like the lion gifts to Philip II that Cervantes f ictionalizes in
the episode with Quixote and Sancho, Maghreb was likely an Ottoman
gift for Philip IV.
Prior to the reference to the lion transported to the king in Don Quixote,
Argote, in The Book on Hunting, disseminated two Barbary lion stereotypes:
the European monarch was its hunter and the lion was man-eating. One of
the lionesses that Philip II received as a gift from the governor from Orán
escaped from her pen in the Alcázar in Madrid, and Argote describes how
the dogs that belonged to Philip II’s wife Isabel de Valois hunted and killed
the lioness:
having penetrated the thicket, the hunting party, most especially a mass
of bloodhounds, closed in on the lioness […] [three Spanish greyhounds]
grabbed her from the front by the ears. The dogs were then helped by all
the others and took the bleeding lion down on all sides. Because they
had badly injured the lioness’s back, it stopped its ferocious attack, and
12 “leontocomos son […] los maestros que gobiernan los leones” (Lope de Vega 1986, 68).
13 “lo que va en él son dos bravos leones enjaulados, que el general de Orán envía a la corte,
presentados a su Majestad” (Cervantes 1992, 678).
Fig. 26. “About Lion Hunting” (1582) by Juan de Arfe. Argote de Molina’s Libro de la Montería
(Chapter 30, page 10r) (Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla).
gave itself up to the dogs. The hunters then moved in with their spears
and killed the animal.14
Steven Wagschal argues that literature from early modern Spain depicts
animals as having greater cognitive capacity when they are described as
either captive or domestic. The description of the lioness in Argote is a
good case in point. The dog that captures him is given a name, Lionel, and
is described as a thinking tool in the human hunt. In turn, the lioness has
neither a mind nor a name, but is simply endowed with the stereotypical
trait of ferocity (Wagschal 2018, 170).
Argote’s The Book on Hunting includes the chapter “De la montería de
leones” (“On Lion Hunting”). Argote describes the lion as a man-eater. He
includes a woodcut created by Juan de Arfe to show a ferocious lion in
action (fig. 26). Argote writes that, when Philip II sent Don Juan de Austria
to hand over Tunisia to his Spanish ally Muley, a lion jumped on the back
of a Moor on horseback who was part of the retinue, ripping him to shreds
14 “allegándose los monteros a la zarza, y el primero que agarró en ella fue un lebrel […] agarrado
dela o delante y por las orejas, fueron ayudados de los demás haciendo presa en ella por muchas
partes; y como la leona estuviese desangrada de la herida del espada, perdida mucha de su furia,
se acabó de rendir a los lebreles. Y a este tiempo los monteros la acometieron con los venablos
y la mataron” (Argote de Molina 1582, III: 10v).
in the area of his hips and tearing open his horse (61). Arfe probably used
the image from Galle’s Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds and Fishes that depicts
the same scene of the Barbary lion eating the Moor. Aside from Galle, Arfe’s
image may have impacted future representations of the Barbary lion as a
man-eating beast in visual culture, most especially Peter Paul Rubens’s A
Lion Hunt (National Gallery, London, ca. 1614–5).
The Quixote lion episode jokingly pokes fun at the value that elites placed
upon the Barbary’s large size, ferocity, and association with the African wild.
Quixote asks the man driving the cart if the lions that he is escorting are big.
The lion-keeper responds that they are “so big … that no lions bigger, or even as
big, have ever been brought over from Africa to Spain; I’m the lion keeper and
I’ve brought over other lions, but none like these” (Cervantes 2003, 560).15 Cide
Hamete Benegeli, the fictional Arabic author of the Don Quixote, interrupts the
conversation to tell the reader that the author of “this true history” originally
set the scene for the reader in this way: “you stand waiting and anticipating the
two most savage lions ever born in the African jungle” (Cervantes 2003, 563).16
Quixote wants to engage the lion in combat like a gladiator, but the lion simply
turns it back and refuses to leave the cage. Historic cases of lions that refuse to
fight can be found across the early modern world. Elites, like the Medici family
and the Habsburgs used lions in staged animal combats. In 1459, the Medicis
organized a staged animal combat in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence for
an international delegation that discussed funding a papal crusade against the
Turks. In the spectacle, lions were pitted against bulls, as well as goats, cows,
boars, wolves, foxes, and a calf. The fight did not go as planned because the lions
refused to attack (Groom 2019, 136). Elites in the land of the Turks also staged
animal combats and, in one combat in Istanbul in 1582, the lion, described as
the most ferocious and dreadful to have ever entered into combat, refused to
perform and instead returned to the lion house (Ben-Ami 2017, 19).
In Don Quixote, the male lion—this time fictional—shows an unwilling-
ness to fight, like his historic counterparts in Italy and Turkey. Cervantes
builds up the reader’s anticipation when the lion cage is open right in front
of Don Quixote:
The first thing the lion did was to turn around in the cage where he had
been lying and unsheathe his claws and stretch his entire body; then
15 “tan grandes […] que no han pasado mayores, ni tan grandes, de África a España jamás; y
yo soy el leonero, y he pasado otros; pero como éstos, ninguno” (Cervantes 1992, 678).
16 “estás aguardando y atendiendo los dos más fieros leones que jamás criaron las africanas
selvas” (Cervantes 1992, 681).
he opened his mouth, and yawned very slowly, and extended a tongue
almost two spans long, and cleaned the dust from his eyes and washed his
face; when this was finished, he put his head out of the cage and looked
all around with eyes like coals, a sight and a vision that could frighten
temerity itself. (Cervantes 2003, 563)17
After looking in both directions, the lion “showed his hindquarters to Don
Quixote, and with great placidity and calm went back inside the cage”
(Cervantes 2003, 563).18
Choosing the name Maghreb for a lion that was never given a proper
name is not reductive anthropocentrism. The Cervantine lion, like Maghreb
and the other four animals that I study in this book, made choices with
intentional agency. Similarly, Cervantes’s Don Quixote mocks how elites and
humanists like Argote depicted the lion as man-eating, ferocious, and as an
object deserving to be hunted. Cervantes depicts the lion as sentient. The
lion looked at his combatant and refused to fight. Instead, the lion turned
and showed his ass to Don Quixote.
The description of the lion in Don Quixote anticipates pictorial treatments
of lions that appear centuries later, such as that of Théodore Géricault, whose
Head of a Lioness in the early nineteenth century challenges the human-
centered generic boundaries of portraiture by depicting the particularity
of a lion as perceptive and communicative subject (Hornstein 2019).19 In his
assessment of the lion episode in Cervantes, Wagschal points out that the
lion that faces Don Quixote possesses rich “mental processes of reflection,
intention, and emotion” (2018, 210). Wagshal concludes that, in contrast to
the description of the mindless lion in Argote, Cervantes demonstrates,
through subtle, constructive anthropomorphism, the complexity of the
lion’s mind.
17 “Lo primero que hizo fue revolverse en la jaula, donde venía echado, y tender la garra, y
desperezarse todo; abrió luego la boca y bostezó muy despacio, y con casi dos palmos de lengua
que sacó fuera se despolvoreó los ojos y se lavó el rostro; hecho esto, sacó la cabeza fuera de la
jaula y miró a todas partes con los ojos hechos brasas, vista y ademán para poner espanto a la
misma temeridad” (Cervantes 1992, 681–2).
18 “volvió las espaldas y enseñó sus traseras partes a don Quijote, y con gran flema y remanso
se volvió a echar en la jaula” (Cervantes 1992, 682).
19 Also compare the Cervantes lion with the treatment that the press gave two lions in a
staged combat in nineteenth-century England in Warwick. Each of the combat lions had a
name and, in their fight against dogs, each demonstrated a different attitude. Wallace the lion
ferociously attacked the dogs and Nero the lion ignored them, to his detriment. See Cowie
2017.
The Makeshift Theater
On October 16, 1631, Jarama the bull killed Maghreb the lion. King Philip
IV subsequently killed Jarama before a live audience. Pellicer’s title, The
Amphitheater of Philip the Great, and his description of the staged animal
combat give the impression that the event took place in a great Roman-type
coliseum. Pellicer evoked Rome because of the fame of its animal combat
events. In a single event in Rome, thousands of animals were systematically
slaughtered before the public.20 The emperor sometimes actively participated
as model of the hunter in the animal spectacle. The emperor Commodus
fashioned himself as a second Hercules, like Habsburg rulers did centuries
later, and is recorded as having killed prize animals in the games, including
ostriches, bears, hippopotamuses, elephants, lions, a tiger, a giraffe, and a
rhinoceros (Shelton 2014).
Spanish Habsburg monarchs aspired to follow the Roman precedent.
Philip III made himself the human protagonist in animal spectacles. Luis
Cabrera de Córdoba not only wrote a history of Philip II, but also of Philip III.
In one spectacle in Valladolid in 1603, Cabrera writes that Philip III shot a
bull as part of the bullfighting ceremony: “last week they held a bullfight in
the Plaza behind the Palace. The fiercest of all the bulls was spared for the
following day at which time the King from his window fired four shots from
a harquebus and with the last he hit the animal squarely in the forehead
and felled it.”21 Cabrera writes that, for another spectacle held in Valladolid
in 1607, Philip III set a lion on a bull:
Before leaving Valladolid, His Majesty wanted to fight a lion with a bull.
They enclosed both animals in the Plaza behind the Palace that was
fenced with scaffolding. The lion was young and became afraid. In its
20 Jo-Ann Shelton also notes that, in 107 CE, the emperor Trajan celebrated his military victory
in Dacia with a 120-day-long spectacle during which 11,000 animals were killed. Suetonius
reports that, on one day alone, 5,000 large animals died in the course of the spectacles staged
in the Colosseum. The majority were common domestic animals while others were captured
wild animals from the region around Rome. In fact, even though many scholars focus on the
exotic animals in discussing the Roman games, the most common animals included in the
animal spectacle in Roman times were pigs and cattle, which included bulls. In smaller towns,
the mainstay of animal spectacles were the animals that were not yet driven into extinction
like bears and wild herbivores (Shelton 2014, 469).
21 “y la semana pasada hubo toros en la plazuela que se ha hecho tras de Palacio, y se guardó
uno por ser el más bravo para el día siguiente que le corrieron allí mesmo, y el Rey desde la
ventana le tiró cuatro arcabuzazos, y con el postrero le derribó con haberle acertado en la frente”
(Cabrera 1997, 184).
first approach the bull threw the lion up in the air and afterwards he
kept running away although men would prod him with a pike. Nothing
would make him approach the bull.22
Philip III then shot his long bow at the bull: “all three arrows from His
Majesty’s long bow aimed at the bull hit their mark.”23
At the end of the staged animal combat in Madrid on October 16, 1631,
Philip IV followed his father’s precedent and shot Jarama. As evidence of his
fascination with the Roman games, he placed the massive Perspectival View
of a Roman Amphitheater (ca. 1638) in his newly constructed Buen Retiro
Palace. Perspectival View of a Roman Amphitheater forms part of a cycle of
paintings of ancient Rome that Philip IV commissioned for the new Buen
Retiro palace. Viviano Codazzi (ca. 1606–1670) painted the architecture of
the Roman amphitheater, and Domenico Gargiulo (ca. 1610–ca. 1675) painted
the animals and other figures. This painting (in the Museo del Prado today)
depicts hundreds of people observing a series of animal fights simultaneously
taking place inside a Roman amphitheater, including a man fighting a bear,
an elephant tossing another elephant, and a bull butting a barrel.
In hyperbolic fashion, in The Amphitheater of Philip the Great, Pellicer
nods to classical tradition by stating that “Rome had never seen the likes
of such a contest.”24 Pellicer uses the Roman imperial model to celebrate
Philip IV’s epic imperial moment. The frontispiece of The Amphitheater of
Philip the Great also conjures up classical Greek tradition. In the extended
title, Pellicer calls the event an “agonic feast.” The Greek word agon suggests
competition, particularly in warfare and hunting, and Pellicer suggests
that Philip IV, when he killed Jarama, became a classical hero and the star
of the show.
Philip IV was extremely interested in attending grand spectacles. Philip
IV went to jousts, games of canes, staged naval battles, and plays. In 1622,
Philip IV, an aspiring playwright, wanted to build a larger theater in the
A lcázar palace (to replace a small-scale one in the second floor of the
Treasury). The city of Madrid rejected his plan for a new corral in the palace
because it would have hurt the revenue stream for city hospitals: Plays “would
22 “el día antes que su majestad partiese de Valladolid, quiso ver pelear el león con un toro.
Encerráronlos en la plazuela detrás de Palacio, que estaba cercada de tablas. El león es muy
nuevo y luego se acobardó, y a la primera suerte le volteó el toro, con lo cual siempre anduvo
huyendo, y aunque le picaban con un garrochón nada aprovechó para que acometiese al toro”
(Cabrera 1997, 308).
23 “Su Majestad tiró tres jaras con una ballesta al toro y todas le acertaron” (Cabrera 1997, 308).
24 “Jámas vio Roma mayor ni más lucido concurso” (Pellicer 1632, 7)
not be able to generate the 60,000 annual ducats to the hospitals.”25 Philip IV
responded and ordered that a theater for plays be built in the Buen Retiro
Park. The city ordered that the theater, like previous ones, provide revenue
for the city’s hospitals: “Plays are now premiering in the theater built in the
Buen Retiro. Money should be collected for the producers as well as a portion
of proceeds for the hospitals following the model of Cruz and Príncipe.”26
The Buen Retiro gardens, if they had been completed in 1631, could have
served as a place for staged animal combat with Jarama the bull. Originally
known as the Gallinero (Chicken Coop) because it contained caged exotic
birds, the lands of the Buen Retiro were shortly thereafter converted into
a royal palace and gardens, with horse stables, a corral for cattle, a field for
hunting rabbits, a large pond, and the new theater. Philip IV also ordered the
construction of a new viewing area for staged animal combats in the Buen
Retiro. In 1633, he opened the Patio de la Leonera (Lion Patio), which was
used for nearly a century. In the Lion Patio, Philip IV, for instance, staged
fights between a bull and a lion (1633), a bear and hunting dogs (1633); a bull,
bear, and lion (1636); and lions, tigers, and bears (for the baptism of Princess
María Teresa in 1638). Lion and dog fights were organized in the Buen Retiro
Palace as late as 1720 for the Prince of Asturias (Gómez-Centurión Jiménez
2011, 85). One source describes how the animals and staged combats in the
patio delighted the Prince Balthasar Carlos (1629–46):
there is a beautiful Lion Patio following the Florence model, although it is

not as big. Here the animals do not fight but are kept separate from each
other. When the gates of their cages are opened, though, the beasts are
forced to fight each other. Iron balusters topped by railing lines the top
of the patio for viewing. The Lion Patio holds three lions, a tiger, a bear,
and some wolves, all in their respective caves […]. The King and Queen
regularly visit since it greatly pleases the Prince.27
25 “los daños que la villa tendría con la instalación del nuevo corral de comedias, pues no
podría dar a los hospitales los 60.000 anuales que les da” (Libro de acuerdos del ayuntamiento
de Madrid, qtd. in Albrecht 2001, 63).
26 “Hase empezado a representar en el teatro de las comedias que se ha fabricado dentro [del
Buen Retiro] y concurre la gente en la misma forma que a los de la Cruz y el Príncipe; cobrándose
para los Hospitales, y autores de la Farsa” (qtd. Albrecht 2001, 64–65).
27 “[…] hay una Hermosa leonera fabricada al modo de la de Florencia, aunque no es tan grande,
advertidos que aquella por serlo no pelean los animales porque están muy apartado los unos de
los otros, y en abriendo en esta las puertas se ven las fieras forzadas a pelear. Tiene por la parte
de arriba las vistas con su barandilla de balaustres de hierro. Hay en ella tres leones, un tigre,
un oso y algunos lobos, metidos todos en sus cuevas […]. Van sus Majestades de ordinario a esta
recreación y le gusta mucho el Príncipe” (qtd. in Gómez-Centurión Jiménez 2011, 84).
When Philip IV held what Pellicer celebrated in The Amphitheater of Philip

the Great, he had no great amphitheater because the Lion Patio had not yet
been completed.
Philip IV’s favorite advisor, Gaspar de Guzmán, the Count Duke of Olivares
(1587–1645), was instrumental in shaping Philip IV’s notion of the importance
of the animal spectacle. Olivares kept Philip IV entertained as the palace
and gardens in the Buen Retiro were constructed. The staged animal combat
in 1631 was one such entertainment event for the King, and the Duke of
Olivares was inspired by his father’s experience with the Medici family
in Florence from the previous century. Olivares’s father, Don Enrique de
Guzmán y Ribera (1540–1607), served as Philip II’s ambassador to Rome
(1582–92) and, during this time, also visited the Grand Duke Ferdinando I
of Medici. Ferdinando built an amphitheater in Florence and, when the
Count Duke was only a one year old, his father attended a staged animal
combat of bears, bulls, and lions in the recently completed amphitheater
in Florence (Groom 2019, 145).
Philip IV would have loved to have had Jarama and Maghreb fight in a
massive Roman Coliseum before innumerable spectators on October 16,
1631. He wanted to celebrate his son Crown Prince Balthasar Carlos’s second
birthday. In contrast to the massive space depicted in works like Perspectival
View of a Roman Amphitheater, all Philip IV had was an open-air arena in the
Parque (Park) near the Manzanares River down from the Alcázar Palace.
He ordered the construction of a makeshift theater because it was the best
available place for the spectacle.
According to Pellicer, the logical place for the staged combat would have
been the Plaza Mayor, Philip IV’s favorite space for presenting spectacles
for the public at-large. The Plaza Mayor was designed to show off regal
power through spectacle, with public religious ceremonies, theatrical bat-
tles against the Moors, and bullfights. The entire area of the Plaza Mayor
was fully equipped to transform into a theatrical stage for bullfights. It had
regularly converted into a bullring beginning with his father, Philip III. One
contemporary describes how high society of Madrid and guilds had special
balconies in velvet and damask with their coats of arms in the Plaza Mayor in
Madrid. The King’s balcony was decorated in gold and covered by a canopy.
The queen and children sat by the King’s side for the event, and another
spacious balcony was reserved for the ladies of the court. A typical bull event
included fanfare and pomp. The spectacle began with the men who fought
wearing short capes, swords and daggers, and hats with plumes of many
colors. These men saluted the King or the local dignitary. The general public
crowded on temporary scaffoldings and, like theater in the corrales, paid a fee.
If he could have, Philip IV would have ordered balconies and scaffolding

set up in the Plaza Mayor. The Amphitheater of Philip the Great, however,
reports that back-to-back disasters had taken place in the Plaza Mayor just
a few days before the scheduled animal combat and made it an unfeasible
option. During a bullfight in celebration of Saint Claudius the Martyr in the
Plaza Mayor, a fire broke out that destroyed the façades of the surrounding
buildings. Despite damages, on the very next day, a mock battle between
Moors and Christians was performed in a game of canes for the feast day
celebration of Saint Louis of France (1214–70). Pandemonium broke out
during the game of canes and a great many people died (Pellicer 1632, 4–5).
With conditions impossible at the Plaza Mayor, Philip IV and the Count
Duke of Olivares decided on a new venue for the Prince’s birthday celebra-
tion. The temporary structure was constructed in the “Park,” the open space
between the Alcázar and the banks of the Manzanares River. Like the bull
spectacles in the Plaza Mayor, the amphitheater included the upper echelons
of Madrid society, residents of Madrid, and visitors. Pellicer writes: “the
novel idea for the event roused foreign visitors and native-born spectators
to unite and satisfy their curiosity.”28
The physical space of The Amphitheater of Philip the Great was no great
Roman amphitheater or coliseum. The improvised viewing area in the “Park”
was at the location of the present-day Campo de Moro, extending along the
shore of the Manzanares through the Campo de la Tela (Atenas Park) until
the Segovia Bridge (an area of about 22 hectares). King Philip IV ordered
a space closed off and bleachers set up for the event in a similar way that
bullfights were typically set up in the Plaza Mayor. This forest-rich area
was a favorite place for walks along the river, and city dwellers would have
accessed the spectacle from open public walkways near the river.
Philip IV and distinguished members of the Royal Court arrived to the
amphitheater from a historic walkway that Charles V had constructed the
previous century. In order to open up the northern façade of the Alcázar
palace to the forest area that went down to the river, Charles had created
a two-story open-air walkway. King Philip IV and his retinue would have
walked down to see the staged animal combat from the Alcázar through the
walkway in a forest that some writers said still contained the legendary ravens
that Charles V had brought down from the Netherlands (Guerra Esetena 2014).
In the century before Philip IV used the Parque for the staged animal
combat, the space between the Alcázar Palace and the Manzanares in
28 “La novedad de la fiesta llamó la curiosidad y convocó así forasteros como naturales” (Pellicer
1632, 5).
Madrid was often converted into a temporary performance space for other
spectacles. As early as 1495, the Duke of Britain’s ambassadors watched
a theatrical performance in a makeshift theater on the terrain between
the Alcázar and the Manzanares River. The makeshift theater for the
performance—which included actors, costumes, and sets—had “a cloth
draped over wooden stakes with doors.”29 During the course of the sixteenth
century, courtly entertainment such as jousts and bullfights were held in
the same area, and it became known as the “finca de la Tela” (the terrain of
the Cloth), a name that evokes the curtains used in spectacles.
Four years before Philip IV constructed the arena for the fight between
Jarama and Maghreb, Cosme Lotti (1571–1643), the landscape designer and
scenographer, had used the wooded space near the Manzanares for the
performance of the opera La selva sin amor (The Forest without Love, 1627),
a collaborative work by Lope de Vega and Filippo Piccinini. Lope de Vega
writes that Lotti converted the space itself into an outdoor stage: “artificial
light flooded the area, although no one could see the three hundred torches
that created that artificial day […] the forest grove bordering the Manzanares
was transformed into a stage [for the opera].”30
Lope de Vega later attended the staged animal combat held near the
Manzanares in 1631. Although a radically different form of entertainment
than the refined style of the opera, Lope also considered the staged animal
combat as theater. Philip IV modeled the event after similar events held
in Italy the previous century. The sixteenth-century Medicis held mas-
sive animal massacres in staged events in public squares. For one event to
celebrate the feast of Saint John in Florence in 1513, sets were constructed,
including dens for the animals and a fountain for drinking. A wooden turtle
and a porcupine automaton were made with wheels so that men hidden
inside could use lances to prod animals unwilling to fight (Groom 2019, 137).
Attesting to the impact of the Medici model, men were covered up in wooden
shell casings in Philip IV’s Madrid spectacle in 1631. Pellicer describes them
in the same way as they had been described in the Florence spectacle: Men
were “covered up with an artificial wooden turtle that moved on wheels.”31
The men in the wooden casings stood among the animals and egged
them on to fight, like the picador in the modern-day bullfight. With respect
29 “una tela barreada en derredor, de madera con sus puertas” (qtd. in García Ferrero 2018, 105).
30 “Todo con luz artificial, sin que se viese ninguna, siendo más de trescientas las que formaban
aquel fingido día […] Transformóse en selva, que represenataba el soto del Manzanares” (qtd.
in García Ferrero 2018, 107).
31 “Unos hombres cubiertos de una artificiosa tortuga de madera que movían ciertas ruedas
iban dentro para instigar los animales con picarles a que se embistiesen” (Pellicer 1632, 6).
to the order of events, the Madrid spectacle found another precedent from
Medici Florence. In 1566, Cosimo I held a staged animal spectacle in which
several huntsmen with dogs emerged from an artificial wood set up inside
the arena and they proceeded to slaughter wild animals, beginning with
the small ones, including rabbits, hares, roebuck, foxes, porcupines, badgers,
stags, bears, and a wild boar. For the final and most noble act of the animal
“play,” a bull and lion were urged to fight each other. Two men inside the
wooden vehicles—one in the shape of a turtle and the other a monstrous
mask—incited the animals into action. Like in the fictional Quixote episode,
in this 1566 staged animal combat, the lion refused to fight. The hunters—in
the mode of the classic Roman venationes who were simultaneously actors
and killers—finished the Medici show by killing both the lion and the bull.
Aside from Jarama and Maghreb, many other animals died before the
public in Madrid on October 16, 1631. The public may have been given the
opportunity to process and consume the meat of the massacred animals,
following the model of other spectacles of hunts. During the reign of Philip
II, commoners actively played a role as hunters in live animal performances.
Enrique Cock, Philip II’s archer, described the royal pageant in Valladolid
that preceded the bull spectacle. Cock stated that he observed a float with
hunters dressed in green holding onto a silver handrail. The float had wolves,
foxes, rabbits, hares, and other animals, and, when it passed by Philip II,
the animals were set free.32 Although Cock does not describe the following
scene, one can only imagine how the spectators pursued the fleeing animals
in the hopes of a meal of fresh meat.
The best visual representation of the makeshift theater described in
The Amphitheater of Philip the Great can be seen in the Vista del Alcázar
Real y entorno del Puente de Segovia (The View of the Royal Alcázar and the
Environs of the Segovia Bridge, ca. 1670), an anonymous painting found in the
Soumaya Musem in Mexico City. The painting shows an afternoon corrida
event held between the Alcázar and Manzanares Rivers. Spectators sit on
scaffolding set up along the slope leading down from the bridge and La
Cuesta de Vega, the street that leads up into the city. People also watch the
corrida from the bridge and on the banks of the river; others even stand in
the middle of the river.
A tarp may have been put around posts and an arena would have been
set up, probably similar to the one used for the simulacrum of the hunt
32 “vestidos de verde con pasamanos de plata, traían en su carro lobos, zorros, conejos, liebres
y otras suertes de animales, y estando delante de Su Majestad, dejaron ir muchos dellos” (Cock
1879, 28).
depicted in Velazquez’s Philip IV Hunting Wild Boar. It is, however, certain

that Philip IV would have had a prominent seat at the event. Two editions of
Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds and Fishes show different images of a Barbary
lion in staged combat. The same lion woodcut is copied for both images: A
lion on hind legs attacks wolves, a bear, and a bull. The 1585 edition shows
how the audience may have observed the staged animal combat in the
Florence amphitheater. Nobles observe the event in an interior patio through
viewing windows (Groom 2019). The other lion image, from a 1634 edition
of Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds and Fishes (found in the British Museum
and Metropolitan Museum of Art), shows the identical lion on hind legs
as in the 1585 edition, now attacking an elephant and a dog. Although the
1634 image is intended to depict Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) and
his famous dog, its depiction of Alexander on a raised throne around the
other spectators is likely a closer approximation to how Philip IV viewed the
staged animal combat as described in The Amphitheater of Philip the Great.
Arfe and Argote Establish the Spanish Primacy of the Bull
Despite his desire to celebrate his son’s second birthday in a great “amphi-
theater,” a place of grandeur with pomp and great fanfare from classical times,
Philip IV was not able to hold the event in the Plaza Mayor, nor in the Buen
Retiro, which was still under construction. In Culture of the Baroque: Analysis
of a Historical Structure, José Antonio Maravall explains that Spanish spectacle
was “destined not for reflection but to disseminate ideals that were intended
as collective ideals” (Maravall 1986, 234). Maravall argues that spectacles in
Spain served the monarch’s desire to establish a collective consciousness
that supported society’s traditional hierarchy. Pellicer’s publication, The
Amphitheater of Philip the Great, a collection of poetry by a wide range of
members of the Royal Court who celebrated the primacy of Philip IV, confirms
Maravall’s thesis. The King killed Jarama in an act that showed the primacy
of the bull and, in turn, Philip IV’s power as the Empire’s foremost hunter.
Scholars have not examined how the bull came to supersede the eagle
or the lion as visual icon in the Spanish context. The image of the bull
as icon took shape in the sixteenth century through the dissemination
of images produced by artists outside of Spain. In the sixteenth century,
commissioned artists used lions and eagles to represent the Habsburgs. They
did not associate the fighting bull with the Spanish monarch. The first to
describe the bull as the consolidation of Spanish identity were the French
at an event that seeded the European notion of the corrida as distinctly
Spanish.33 After Charles V defeated King Frances I of France, Charles brought

the French King to Guadalajara as prisoner. In honor of the victory, Íñigo
López de Mendoza y Pimentel (1493–1566) held a corrida. The spectacle
featured bulls from Jarama: “a brilliant corrida was held in the Santa María
plaza in which bulls from Jarama were fought by nobles on horseback.”34 The
source calls attention to the eyes of the captive French King Frances I and
his entourage: “the spectacle was enjoyed to the utmost by the foreigners.”35
With respect to material culture, only two relatively obscure images
survive that portray the conventional sixteenth-century Spanish bullfight.
Jacob van Laethem (1470–1528), a Flemish painter, made a number of trips
to Spain, most notably accompanying Charles V and his court (Zalama
and Domínguez Casas 1995). Based on his experiences in Spain, Laethem
depicted a game of canes in Valladolid and a bullfight in Benavente. Jacob van
Laethem’s depiction of the bullfighting spectacle for Charles V in Benavente
in the northwest region of Spain shows how the corrida was practiced in
sixteenth-century Spain. The word corrida, from the Spanish verb correr
(“to run”), principally referred to the running of the bulls, but also the
actions that took place when men confronted the bull. They dodged the
bull, ran at the bull, and ran from the bull. Van Laethem shows men that
run away from the bull. One man lies injured under its body and another
man pursues the animal on horseback. At least 10 rejones (“metal spears”)
are broken and lodged in the bull’s body.
The corrida generally began with bulls paraded around the town’s central
plaza and then the bulls were released and men on specially trained mounts
attacked the bulls. The objective was to ride up close to the bull, pierce it
with a rejón, and break off a piece of the rejón, leaving the steel point in
the bull’s body. The man then rode away holding the broken piece of the
wooden shaft in his hand. The winner of the corrida did not kill the bull,
as in modern times. The corrida consisted of a competition to insert the
maximum number of rejones. The one who had the most broken rejones
lodged in the bull was declared winner. It was a public spectacle of bull
mutilation, not death (Defourneaux 1970, 134).
Like Jacob van Laethem, the publisher Galle, also Flemish, sought to
represent Spanish bullfighting. As mentioned, Galle mass marketed an
33 For the consolidation of identity around the French creation of the Spanish dog or spaniel,
see Beusterien 2012.
34 “presenció una brillante corrida de toros jamameños lidiados por caballeros montados, en
la plaza de Santa María ricamente adornada” (qtd. in López Rinconada 1999, 286).
35 “espectáculo que agradó en extremo al extranjero” (qtd. in López Rinconada 1999, 286).
image of Abada and the enormously popular Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds
and Fishes. He was the only sixteenth-century publisher to circulate a printed
image of a Spanish bullfight. The image of the Spanish bullfight is one of the
many illustrations based on Cooaert’s copper engravings in Hunts of Wild
Animals, Birds and Fishes.36 Galle’s image in Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds
and Fishes shows a bull corralled in a large open plaza with people on the
fringes watching. The central image is a bull—impaled with four broken
plumed rejones—with its horn in butting position and three dogs attacking it
(two at its face and one at its rear). The dogs run around the bull, one pulling
on its tail. The caption to the image reads: “the wild bull flares around this
way in the open plaza / with anger from its terrifying little horns.”37 As in
Jacob van Laethem’s painting, a man lies injured or dead under the bull’s
torso. The sword next to his body indicates that he is of aristocratic stock.
Another person in the background has been injured and is carried out of
the plaza. Another man on horse aims a rejón over the animal’s head and
may give it the final death blow through the shoulder blades.
Nothing about the bull spectacle as depicted in Galle overtly connected
the bull spectacle to the Spanish or to the Habsburgs. As the sixteenth
century advanced, however, one important armor designer decided to
depict the Spanish fighting bull as indirectly associated with the Habsburg
monarch. A representation of a bull is found in a rather obscure place on
Philip II’s parade armor. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the lion is the prominent
animal featured on Philip II’s parade armor—embossed lion heads are found
on the elbow and knee garniture. Although not as visually pronounced, a
bull is found in a hunting scene on the shield that accompanies the parade
armor. A man on horseback faces off with a Spanish fighting bull. He car-
ries a rejón and pursues a bull with two large dogs wearing gold collars.
Desiderius Helmschmid (1513–79), the Augsburg armorer that designed
Philip II’s parade armor, uses the bull as a self-reference. The bull butts his
head against the man whose shield has the name “Negrol,” a reference to
the Negroli family, Helmschmid’s Milanese armor-producing competitors.
Helmschmid therefore used the bull scene on the edge of the shield to show
that he, not the Milanese, had won Philip II’s commission, and a Spanish
fighting bull manifests Helmschmid’s superiority of his craft by winning
the bid over his competitor-rival in crafting Philip II’s parade armor.
36 Aside from the image for the copper engraving for Galle’s Hunts of Wild Animals, Birds and
Fishes, Straet also made a sketch and an oil painting of a corrida.
37 “Sic ferus exardet in circo Taurus aperto. / Cum sua terribili petit iritamina cornu” (Venationes
Ferarum n.d., n.p.).
No Spanish artist or writer established the primacy of the bull as icon

until the end of the sixteenth century when the humanists Gonzalo de
Argote and Juan de Arfe consolidated the iconography of the bull into the
Spanish mainstream with the publication of Book on Hunting. Following
Helmschmid, Argote and Arfe depicted the corrida as a spectacle uniquely
tied to Habsburg Spain. Indeed, Argote and Arfe established the centrality
of the image of the bull as Spain for the version of bread and circuses as
described in The Amphitheater of Philip the Great.
One of the woodcuts that Juan de Arfe created for Argote’s Book on Hunting
shows a man facing a bull, another thrown into the air, and dogs attacking
the bull (fig. 27). Argote states that bullbaiting was an age-old custom across
cultures, but had special significance for Spain. He describes specific Spanish
manifestations of bullbaiting, like the boys in the city of Bacca who waited
for the bull to arrive and then killed the animal and pulled it into the ring.
For Argote, the spectacle of the bull was the most pleasurable spectacular
experience for Spaniards: “no other celebration provides as much a peace
of mind as the corrida. No one in Spain could experience true pleasure
without it because it provides such a variety of possibility.”38
Aside from the engraving for Argote’s Book on Hunting, Juan de Arfe
also created his own engraved images of Spanish fighting bulls. Chapter 1
describes how the animal images on Arfe’s ewer served as propaganda for
Philip II’s claim of dominion over the planet. Abada the rhinoceros and
Hawa’i the elephant form part of Scipio Africanus’s victory procession. Arfe
also included three bulls in the procession of wild and exotic animals on the
Scipio Africanus ewer. One bull leads the procession, another bull walks in
between a female and male lion, and another bull finishes off the procession
(see cover image and fig. 12 in Chapter 2). Arfe depicts the world’s ferocious
wild beasts, including bulls—representing Spain’s enemies—as walking
together side by side in Orphic harmony, led by the Scipio Africanus, who
symbolizes Philip II.
Arfe’s ewer is designed to sit on top of an accompanying basin.39 In
its detail and sheer number of representations, the basin, like the ewer,
38 “es la más apacible f iesta que en España se usa: tanto que sin ella ninguna se tiene por
regocijo y con mucha razón por la variedad de acontecimientos que en ella hay” (Argote de
Molina 1582, III:9r).
39 The basin, which also belongs to Metropolitan Museum of Art, is not kept with the ewer,
nor is it on display. It, like the ewer, was struck with a later Roman mark (crossed keys and lance
in an oval). Following Hayward, I attribute the basin, like the ewer, to Juan de Arfe. The biblical
and classical scenes on the border of the basin resemble the style and themes from Arfe’s Seville
monstrance.
Fig. 27. “Hunting Bulls in the Arena” (1582) by Juan de Arfe. Argote de Molina’s Libro de la Montería
(Chapter 38, page 16v) (Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla).
magnificently demonstrates the hand of Arfe. The top of the basin upon
which the ewer sits includes a series of classical and biblical scenes. The
underside of the basin, the bottom side that cannot be seen, depicts Spanish
fighting bulls. The circular band around the central boss of the basin depicts
a detailed engraved frieze of one bull lying down and another in fighting
position. Hunters and dogs populate the scene. A river also flows behind
the image of the butting bull.
As opposed to the three peaceful bulls in the procession on the ewer,
the prominent Spanish fighting bull on the basin raises its front two legs,
and a man and two dogs retreat. Arfe created a scene that depicts the wild
forest near the Jarama River. In so doing, he raises the bull’s status in the
iconography of propaganda for Philip II. Arfe creates a dialogue between the
ewer—representing the civilized planet under Philip II—and the underside
of the basin—representing the wild and undomesticated part of the world.
Arfe’s fighting bull from the Jarama, at the center and heart of Spain, was
the only beast who still needed to be controlled and the only wild animal
left to defeat.
The desire to put animals in a corral underpins emerging notions of
nationalism and race in the sixteenth century, the period when Spain
crafted itself in an image of dominating a planetary empire. Many critics
of the early modern period do not discuss nationalism and race, but the
sixteenth-century Spanish depiction of the bull in Argote and Arfe is crucial
for understanding the Spanish propaganda of a planetary imperial project
that served as precedent for future developments in the emerging logic that
informed each. Arfe’s basin celebrated the fighting bull from Jarama as
the only animal left to conquer and his collaborative project with Argote,
Book on Hunting, sowed a message about nationalism and race into social
consciousness by celebrating the spectacle of the hunt of the bull as a unique
pleasurable experience for the Spanish.
By 1631, the Spanish monarchy propagated a powerful marketing cam-
paign in which Jarama was a bull of a truly Spanish essence, connected
to the foundational logic of an emerging racial consciousness. A growing
body of scholarship has noted the importance of medieval and early
modern Spain in the formation of the modern construct of race. 40 For
instance, in sixteenth-century Spanish, the human classif icatory term
cimarrón appears for the first time, a word that comes from the Spanish
attempt to corral wild animals in the Americas. The French author of
the Histoire naturelle des Indes (The Natural History of the Indies, Drake
Manuscript, ca. 1586), who uses cimarrón for wild dogs, also uses the same
word for escaped slaves: “In this port arrive gold and silver from Peru to
be traded for merchandise with the Spaniards, gold and Reales being
given in exchange for merchandise. They are afraid to have the gold and
silver transported […] because of the runaway Negro slaves [simarrones]
who steal and plunder everything they find on the road belonging to the
Spaniards” (1586, 97v).
Argote crucially distinguished the cimarrón from the Spanish fighting bull.
In his discussion of cimarrones in The Book on Hunting, Argote perpetuates a
notion that they are available for the hunt and need domestication and brand-
ing like chattel. Immediately preceding the section “About Hunting Bulls in
the Arena,” Argote writes a commentary on hunting in the Americas: “De la
montería de los toros cimarrones en las Indias Occidentales” (“About Hunting
Cimarrones in the West Indies”). 41 He also includes a Juan de Arfe woodcut
that shows men hunting cimarrones (fig. 28). Argote defines cimarrón as “the
common word in the Indies for those animals gone wild and that escape to
40 For the fluidity between Spanish notions of animal razas as transferred to racial categories,
see Nirenberg 2007 and 2009; Beusterien 2006, 111–122; and Hill 2014. For the fluidity between
Spanish notions of plant razas as transferred to racial categories, see Hartigan 2013 and Bleichmar
2012, 169. For the importance of Spain in establishing the construct of whiteness as a social
construct that opposed Islam, see Beusterien 2018 and Beusterien 2006, 14.
41 Compare Argote’s description of wild bulls in Spain and the Americas with the variety of cattle
that “gloried in their wildness” and connected to race and myths of origin in eighteenth-century
England. On Chillingham cattle as ancient Britons and genetic capital, see Ritvo 2010.
Fig. 28. “About Hunting Cimarrones in the West Indies” (1582) by Juan de Arfe. Argote de Molina’s
Libro de la Montería (Chapter 37, page 14r) (Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla).
the wild regions and mountains.”42 As opposed to the author of the Drake
Manuscript, who mentions dogs and people, Argote only mentions wild
cattle as cimarrones and describes how ships that return to Spain are filled
with the hides of cimarrones. Argote’s omission is also an evocation. The
word cimarrón is the Spanish conflation of African people with animals,
both of which fill the hulls of ships as merchandise, both living and dead.
The Theatrical Centrality of Jarama and Marginality of Maghreb
The Amphitheater of Philip the Great is a seventeenth-century collection of

poetry that celebrates the events that took place the day Jarama and Maghreb
died. The collection of poetry evokes the genre of an epic in which the image
depicts Philip IV as Roman champion in animal games and superior hunter
of the Spanish bull. Pellicer, the official historian of the Kingdom of Castile
and Leon for Philip IV, published the commemorative volume a year after
the event took place. The censor who approved the volume was Lope de
Vega. The book includes over 100 poems by eighty-five distinguished literati
that attended the event.
42 “Es nombre común en la Indias de todos lo animales silvestres los cuales al tiempo que
bajan de las montañas y sierras” (Argote de Molina 1582, III: 9r).
In early modern Spain, an ideological bridge existed between the space

of animal performance in commercial theaters and that of staged combats.
The corral, or newly constructed commercial theater, was reserved for human
actors and the animals that they could control, largely domestic animals. By the
time that Philip IV held the staged animal combat described in the makeshift
theater, the design of Spain’s commercial theater or corral was established. It
had a stage with special trap doors, a dressing room, and spaces for different
spectators, including balcony viewing (Ruano de la Haza and Allen 1994; Allen
1998). Live bulls and lions did not appear on the stages designed for traditional
plays written by playwrights. Corrales as theaters, though, sometimes recruited
domestic animals such as horses, dogs, and birds as performers.
Ever since the earliest theater in Spain, audiences saw live animals,
such as a live donkey and ox in the classic Nativity scene play. 43 With the
construction of permanent stages in the sixteenth century, the presence of
domestic animals such as horses, dogs, and birds appeared on Spain’s first
commercial stages. Live horses, along with donkeys, were the most common
animals in stage performances. Agustín de Rojas Villandrando (1572–1618)
describes theater in 1603 as “a show of pomp never seen until then / they
brought out horses then / out on stage.”44 J. M. Ruano de la Haza notes that
live horses and donkeys were performers in fourteen plays. 45 In one of the
earliest corrales in sixteenth-century Seville, a play about King Don Sancho
II of Castile and León (1036–72) included a number of live horses (Shergold
1967, 191). When Cervantes published his book of short comic plays in 1614,
43 Aside from Nativity plays, animals appeared in plays prior to the creation of the commercial
theaters in Spain. In one case, a ram appears about to be butchered. In Tragedia Josephina (The
Josephine Tragedy, ca.1520) by Micael de Carvajal (ca. 1475–1578), a character states: “and so let
me bring out the ram / I am holding it here without waiting / because I am going to cut its throat
/ you’ve already seen how well I’ve done it before / now hold it firmly by this rope” (“trayase
luego el cabrón / hele aquí sin dilación / pues yo le degollaré / vistes que bien acerté / tened bien
dessa ropeta”) (Carvajal 1965, 52–53).
44 “sacabanse ya caballos / a los teatros, grandes / nunca vista hasta este tiempo” (qtd. in Ruano
de la Haza 1994, 492).
45 Horses appear in: Velez de Guevara’s Los hijos de la Barbuda (The Bearded Woman’s Children);
Rodrigo de Herrera’s Del cielo viene el buen rey (The Good King Comes from Heaven); Guillén de
Castro’s Las mocedades del Cid (The Cid’s Childhood); Agustín de la Granja’s Verdores del Parnaso
(The Green Fields of Parnassus); Enríquez de Gómez’s La conquista de México (The Mexican
Conquest); Ana Caro’s El conde Partinuplés (Count Partinuples); Tirso de Molina’s La ninfa del
cielo and La elección por la virtud (Heavenly Nymph and Choosing Virtue); and Lope de Vega’s
Las mujeres sin hombre, La hermosa Ester, El animal de Hungría, Los torneos de Aragón (Women
without a Man, Beautiful Esther, The Animal from Hungary, and The Aragonese Tournaments).
Donkeys appear in Guillén de Castro’s El mejor esposo (The Best Husband); Tirso’s Choosing
Virtue; and Lope’s Pobreza no es villeza (Poverty Is Not Plebeian) (Ruano de la Haza 1994, 504).
he indicates that, unlike the theater from the previous generation, the public
theater of the corrales used horses as performers with relative frequency. In
one of Cervantes’s plays, La casa de los celos (The House of Jealousy), a female
character enters “on stage riding a palfrey,” and a duenna rides behind her
“on a mule draped with a blanket.”46
The design of the commercial theaters—the enclosed patios—generally
allowed for the entrance of horses. Horses and donkeys would have walked
through the main door—walking right by the groundlings standing around
the stage. Horses did not appear on the actual stage, but rode from the door
of the corral to the patio, whereupon the actor or actress dismounted and
then got up on the stage. A passageway was generally roped or fenced off
where the audience could not stand so that animals and actors could pass
by from the outside door (Ruano de la Haza 1994, 497–9).
Horses and mules could enter and leave through the front door of the
corral since the height of the front door of the corral was over three meters,
easily allowing a man or woman on horseback to pass through. A character
in Calderón’s Judas Macabeo (Judas Maccabeus) enters on horseback into
the patio area, throws a lance, and then states “I am going to leave my horse
/ and then I’ll come back.”47 Luis Vélez de Guevara, the author of the novel
that described the assignment of “Don” to elephant handlers, also wrote the
play La serrana de la Vera (The Mountain Woman from La Vera), in which
he provides a particularly striking horse entrance. Stage directions state:
The whinnying of the horses should sound as the company of hunters

enters the corral singing […] one man carries a long stick that has the
skin of a wolf with its head; another a bear in a similar way and another a
wild boar. Gila, la Mountain Woman from la Vera, enters behind them on
horseback […]The singing continues until she gets to the stage, whereupon
she dismounts. 48
Although less frequent, live dogs also appeared in plays. Live hunting dogs
appear in full-length performances such as Lope de Vega’s El marqués de
46 “por el patio sobre un palafrén […] Una dueña sobre una mula con gualdrapa” (qtd. in Larsen
1984)
47 “Yo voy / solo a dejar el caballo, / que luego vuelvo” (qtd. in Ruano de la Haza 1994, 494)
48 “Suenen relinchos de labradores, y vayan entrando por el patio con toda la compañía […]
uno con un palo largo y en él metido un pellejo de un lobo con su cabeza, y otro con otro de oso
de la misma suerte, y otro con otro de jabalí […] Y luego, detrás, a caballo Gila, la Serrana de la
Vera […] y lo que cantan en esto hasta llegar al tablado donde se apea” (qtd. in Ruano de la Haza
1994, 492; Martín 2014, 130).
Mantua (Marquis from Mantua) and El animal de Hungría (The Animal from
Hungary), and Tirso de Molina’s La mujer que manda en casa (The Woman
Who Runs the House). Stage directions for Lope’s Los peligros de la ausencia
(The Dangers of Absence) indicate that a character disguises himself as a
blind man and appears onstage accompanied with either “a boy, or a little
dog tied to a leash.”49 Miguel de Cervantes insinuates that dogs were used
in popular theater for humorous purposes. In Cervantes’s El coloquio de
los perros (The Colloquy of the Dogs), Berganza, the talking dog character,
explains that, when he had a master who was a play producer, he had a
nonspeaking slapstick role in short comic plays in which he ran around
hitting and tripping everyone. Berganza explains that the audience loved
his role because he got them to laugh, and that his master profited greatly
(Martín 2014, 129).
Caged birds also appeared. “Four or six live birds” come out of a fountain
in Count Partinuples (El conde Partinuplés) by Ana Caro (1590–1652).50 Stage
directions describe live birds in Lope’s Adonis y Venus (Adonis and Venus),
which has a set with a painted sky and a cloud that parts. At the point in
the play when the cloud parts in half, it exposes an image of Venus with
painted Cupids out of which “many little birds fly.”51 Aside from dogs and
birds, references from other plays indicate the occasional appearance of
live chickens, such as Miguel de Cervantes’s comic play, Pedro de Urdemalas
(Pedro, the Great Pretender), in which they appear onstage for comic effect.
In Miguel de Cervantes’s La Numancia (The Siege of Numantia), a large ram
crowned with olive leaves and flowers is led onstage, with priests pulling
it by the horns; a devil figure removes the ram “through the trap door in
the middle of the floor.”52
As opposed to domestic animals, animals that were considered to be
wild, like bulls and lions, did not form part of theatrical performances
on the traditional corral stage. J.M. Ruano de la Haza indicates that, if a
lion or bull appeared as part of a play, an actor would instead playact the
animal. The most common animal costume was that of the lion, and many
troupes had a Barbary lion skin as part of their prop repertoire. Ruano de la
Haza discusses ten Spanish plays that include actors that came out onstage
dressed as lions. He also notes one list of costumes from a theatrical troupe
49 “disfrazado de ciego con un muchacho o perrillo atado en un cordel” (qtd. in Ruano de la

Haza 1994, 508).
50 “salen cuatro o seis pájaros vivos” (qtd. in Ruano de la Haza 1994, 509).
51 “baje del cielo que estará hecho, una nube cerrada y abrase a la mitad con música, saliendo
de ella muchos pajarillos” (qtd. in Ruano de la Haza 1994, 509).
52 “el hueco del tablado” (qtd. in Larsen 1984, 64).
that included a lion costume, as well as a porcupine costume and a tiger

costume (Ruano de la Haza 1994, 506).
Actors also playacted bulls in Calderón’s La pedidora (The Lady That Asks)
and in El toreador don Babilés (Don Babilés the Bullfighter), by Francisco
Antonio Bernaldo de Quirós (1675–1710). One bull prop—a bronze automaton
shooting out flames—appears in Tirso’s Santa Juana (Saint Joan). The bull
prop opens up and reveals an actor playing Saint George. Stage directions
state: “Saint George should be inside.”53 Some of the most critically celebrated
plays from the period, such as Lope de Vega’s El caballero de Olmedo (The
Gentleman from Olmedo), describe offstage bullfighting spectacles. Other
plays make references to troupes that would have fabricated props to playact
the bull experience, using inventive bull simulacra like a bull’s desiccated
head. Vélez de Guevara’s The Mountain Woman from La Vera includes a
scene in which the main character lifts up a bull’s head as if it is butting
forward. Stage directions state that, after shouts of “watch out for the bull,”
Gila appears with “only a bull’s head from in between the curtains that she
moves up and down.”54 One character describes Gila’s strength and valor:
“she just grabbed / the wild bull by the horns / and now she is putting it
down / as if it were a sheep.”55
By institutionalizing a staging of the live bull spectacle in the Plaza
Mayor, early modern Spain fashioned two types of theatrical events for a
distinctly Spanish audience, one in which actors playacted wild bulls in the
corrales and one in which people could watch live bulls. During the same
historical period, staged animal combats and theater in England and Turkey,
just as in ancient Rome, also served to mobilize communities, especially
with regard to emotions and social hierarchy, whether in relation to the
king, emperor, or sultan. In England, early modern staged animal combats
were performed near commercial theaters. Scholars have underlined the
centrality of staged animal combats in the early modern English context
by connecting the convergence of blood sports, especially bearbaiting, with
the rise of drama (Scott-Warren 2003; Boehrer 2018; Höfele 2011).
A similar conflation of theater and staged combat also took place in
Istanbul, in the heart of the Ottoman Empire. In 1582, audiences enjoyed a
festival with live animals, the same year that Philip II first exhibited Abada
53 “abrese por un costado el toro y este dentro don Jorge” (qtd. in Ruano de la Haza 1994, 510).
54 “Descúbrese agora entre los paños la cabeza del toro solamente, y ella echándole patas
arriba” (qtd. in Martín 2014, 134).
55 “Por los cuernos asió ya / al toro feroz, y agora / le rinde como si fuera / una oveja” (qtd.
Ruano de la Haza 1994, 510).
and Hawa’i. The Imperial Book of Festival, a manuscript that describes the
royal Ottoman festival, details the events of a staged battle between a lion
and a boar. This staged animal combat also included performances by a
cat and bears, snake charmers, and a dog named Kitmir—the dog’s story
appealed to the sense of wonder at God’s creation because Kitmir was
one of the few animals who gained entry to paradise for Muslim believers
(Ben-Ami 2017, 25).
The Amphitheater of Philip the Great describes the staged animal event
that took place in central Madrid near other commercial theaters as if
it were the city’s monumental theatrical production. Pellicer opens the
poetry anthology with a prologue in which he connects the theatricality
of the event with great spectacles from the Roman world. In overstate-
ment and embellishment, the historian Pellicer valued the spectacle
as one that bef itted the imperial Roman tradition. Pellicer evokes the
Roman Coliseum tradition, stating that the live animal spectacle was a
superior form of public entertainment over mere theater, and elevated
the Spanish version of the spectacle as surpassing all such spectacles
ever held in Rome.
Pellicer writes that the staged animal combat not only celebrated
the King as imperial power, but also served to “provoke laughter and
entertainment.”56 The first poem in the collection is a ditty by Francisco
de Quevedo (1580–1645). Quevedo, one of the most accomplished poets of
his day, attempted to recreate the humor of the opening acts of animal
cruelty. His poem, written the day after the event, employs the biting wit
of one of his specialty genres, burlesque poetry. He writes that the public:
Saw yesterday the entirety

Of Noah’s Arc jumping around
And Aesop’s Fables were
Seen alive yesterday.57
Quevedo’s poem, written in the meter of a romance, makes crude jokes

about the animals that people saw on the day of the event, including a
wild cat, a rabbit, a camel, and Jarama the bull. He describes a monkey that
was apparently hung to death before the crowd as object of a sardonic and
taunting dig. Another joke describes the rooster who, if it had only been
56 “para que sirviesen a la risa y al entretenimiento” (Pellicer 1632, 5).

57 “Vieron ayer juguetona / Toda la arca de Noe / y las fabulas de Hisoppo / Vivas las vieron
ayer” (Pellicer 1632, 56).
aware of its fate, would have gladly turned off its cockiness to be Maghreb’s
submissive hen and lay his eggs.
Quevedo’s poem starts the collection with a lighthearted tone—a com-
pletely alien perspective for present-day readers. The tone of the poems in
the collection quickly turns to an earnest celebration of the epic nature of
the event—something even more alien to the present-day reader.58 After
a short section of romances, the high-style poetry begins with eighty-two
serious-minded sonnets. For instance, Antonio Mira de Amescua (1577–1644),
the accomplished playwright and king’s chaplain, describes the bloodshed
in aesthetic terms—a perspective about the beauty of death that Federico
García Lorca (1898–1936) would seize upon centuries later:
The battle was but once,

Then mourning followed,
As the palace became
Spanish flowers.59
Amescua’s metaphor of the bloody body of the animals as Spain’s flowers is

not, though, a complex trope of agony and beauty in the terms described by
Lorca. It, along with the other sonnets, are paeans to Philip IV, the monarch
that heroically executed Jarama.
The poems based upon the real-life staged animal combat in The Amphi-
theater of Philip the Great celebrated the Habsburg monarch as dominating
the wild animals of the world through the execution of Jarama the bull,
supposedly the world’s wildest animal. When Jarama defeated Maghreb,
he was crowned champion. The applause from the public appreciated the
primacy of the bull’s Spanish origins:
Finding no resistance upon all that he looked,

Putting all the animals in shock,
Making them all frown, and all angered,
The bull triumphed over the entire theater,
With an applause from the admiring crowd […]
The victory revealed the truth that a Spanish bull was born first.60
58 For early forms of disgust and moral repugnance toward staged animal combat in nineteenth-
century England, see Cowie 2017.
59 “batalla fue una vez / otra fue duelo / quedando en el palacio / flores de España” (Pellicer
1632, 80).
60 “Triunfaba el toro del teatro entero, / Sin hallar resistencia en cuanto mira; / Todo horror,
todo ceño, todo ira, / Era aplauso del vulgo lisonjero. / Al Júpiter de España verdadero / (Mucho
The poetic voices in the collection set the origin of the great Spanish fighting
bull in the geographical region of Jarama. Pellicer, the editor of the collection,
includes two poems of his own that refer to “that monster from Jarama”
(Pellicer 1632, 133 and 135). Alonso de Oviedo states the “quick brute” is from
Jarama (Pellicer 1632, 113). Quevedo states that the bull received its power
from grazing in the Jarama region (Pellicer 1632, 120). Diego de León Pinelo
(1608–71), lawyer and administrator in Lima, Perú, describes the animal as
“the prodigious bull from Jarama” (Pellicer 1632, 107).
Antonio Rodríguez de León Pinelo (ca. 1595–1660), historian and legal
administrator (relator) for the Council of the Indies, begins his sonnet by
stating the “fields of Jarama gave birth [to him].”61 Antonio González de
Rosende, theology professor at the University of Alcalá, writes that “its
fury was grazed at Jarama,”62 and Pedro Méndez de Loyola (ca. 1555–1643)
calls the animal “the drinker of the Jarama.”63 Pedro de Valenzuela Fajardo,
nobleman in the court, writes that the King shot the animal in the nape of
the neck and “the nape of your neck gave great honor to Jarama.”64
By calling attention to the bull’s origins, the authors wished to marginalize
the symbolic importance of the lion. Gaspar Pimentel y Benavides, the
Fourth Marquis de Javalquinto, administrator (mayordomo) and gentleman
in Philip IV’s court, composed two infelicitous sonnets. In the first, he writes:
“It appeared, making the sounds of clanging metal, / The most ferocious
beast that Jarama has ever seen.”65 In the second, he connects the bull’s
victory to the defeat of the world’s formerly crowned wild animal from Africa:
The amphitheater keeps any measure

Of strength and valor from the dishonored
And crowned African animal, who witnesses its rival
From Jarama parade before the crowd self-satisfied.66
The most significant way in which the poets make Jarama a new Spanish lion
is by associating him with the Islamic emblem of the crescent moon. Gaspar
testigo para ser mentira) / La vitoria del bruto no le admira, / Pues que español nació supo
primero” (Pellicer 1632, 54).
61 “engendraron los campos de Jarama” (Pellicer 1632, 75).
62 “el coraje le pació a Jarama” (Pellicer 1632, 89).
63 “el sorbedor de Jarama” (Pellicer 1632, 154).
64 “honró a Jarama tu cerviz valiente” (Pellicer 1632, 104).
65 “Salió, dando señal metal sonoro / El bruto más feroz que vio Jarama” (Pellicer 1632).
66 “Cuando con deshonor del africano / Coronado animal, que el circo impide / La fuerza y el
valor, que el suyo mide, / El rival de Jarama ostenta ufano” (Pellicer 1632, 36).
de la Fuente (probably the son of Gaspar de la Fuente, royally appointed

Spanish administrator and tax collector of the New Kingdom of Galicia)
used the crescent moon trope to symbolize the bull:
Among the savage animals, you were

The valiant focus of attention, oh
Amazing crescent moon from Jarama.
Out upon the field of the theater, you took away
The glorious fame of the king of roaring Africa.67
The crescent shape that appeared on the standards of Ottoman ships was
a well-known emblem to Spaniards, who constantly fought battles in the
Mediterranean. The Spanish Navy Museum in Madrid holds two Ottoman
naval flags (dated 1613). Both are swallow-tailed, one green with a white
crescent and the other white with a red crescent (Karyasu and Martins 2006).
In The Amphitheater of Philip the Great, Gaspar de la Fuente adapted
the crescent moon emblem of the enemy—the Islamic Turks—as the
defining feature of the Spanish fighting bull. Gaspar de La Fuente argues
that Jarama is the place of origin of the bull, the world’s new king of the
beasts. He uses the synecdoche of the crescent moon for the bull, borrowing
the poetic trope first introduced by Luis de Góngora (1561–1627). Góngora
invented the crescent moon trope at the beginning of the long-form poem
Soledades (Solitudes, 1613) in which he uses “crescent moon” to refer to the
bull’s horns, a reference to Jupiter, the king of the gods. For Góngora, Jupiter,
whose “forehead weapons are the crescent moon,”68 rapes Europa after he
transforms into a bull that “grazes on stars in fields of sapphires.”69
The two most important Spanish writers in The Amphitheater of Philip
the Great are Luis Vélez de Guevara and Lope de Vega. Vélez de Guevara,
who authored over 400 plays, was Philip IV’s official playwright, employed
full-time by the Royal Court. Vélez de Guevara, as mentioned, wrote The
Mountain Woman from La Vera. Attesting to his acclaim as one of the best
poet-playwrights of the period, Vélez de Guevara wrote the starring role
of Gila from The Mountain Woman from La Vera for the foremost actress
of the day, Jusepa Vaca (1589–1653), who opened the play by riding into
the corral on horseback, draped with animal skins fresh from the hunt,
67 “De las fieras escandalo valiente / Fuiste, lunado asombro de Jarama, / Y en arena campal,
gloriosa fama / Quitaste al rey de la África rugiente” (Pellicer 1632, 73).
68 “media luna las armas de su frente” (Góngora).
69 “en campos de zafiro pace estrellas” (Góngora).
seeking revenge on the lover that scorned her. Other plays by Vélez de
Guevara were all the rage for over a century. El alba y el sol (The Dawn and
the Sun) depicted the reconquest of Spain by King Pelayo (685–737) at the
Battle of Covadonga (722) and was performed over 250 times in theaters
throughout Spain.70
In the play The Dawn and the Sun, the widely popular Vélez de Guevara
associated the crescent moon trope with Islam. The description of Moors in
battle is described by one character: “what amazing shields, crescent moons,
and flags!”71 Vélez de Guevara attended the staged animal combat in 1631 and
repeated the half-moon trope once again in a sonnet in The Amphitheater
of Philip the Great. Turning from the crescent moon as metaphor for Moors
in battle, Vélez de Guevara creates a Góngora-inspired synecdoche: “Let
that crescent-mooned beast […] graze now in fields of sapphire / because
it achieved such heights having drunk from Jarama.”72 Like Gaspar de la
Fuente, Vélez de Guevara eliminates the beautiful ambiguity of the loca-
tion of fields of sapphires as described in Góngora’s original by linking the
“crescent-mooned beast” to Jarama. He shatters the universality of the
image of a bull that “grazes on stars in fields of sapphires” by making the
bull’s origin contingent on the Jarama river region.
The group of Spanish intellectuals, wealthy elites, and authors in The
Amphitheater of Philip the Great form a unified voice of Spanish literary
authority that erases the importance of Maghreb the lion by making
Jarama the bull a new f igurative lion. They crown Jarama, the bull, as
victor over the world’s wild animals, transforming him into the king of
the beasts. They do not treat animals as sentient individuals. Instead, they
make each animal a synecdochical representations for its place of origin.
They describe how Jarama the place, not the animal, defeated Maghreb
the place, not the animal. The bull, then, is a Spanish self-image that
simultaneously and paradoxically maintains and rejects an essential image
of the Islamic enemy and that essentializes an animal as representative of
all Spain—and also of all Europe through its association with the myth
of Europa.
The poets from The Amphitheater of Philip the Great describe Jarama as
a lion from Spain and they celebrate his victory over the former king of the
70 George Peale has edited a number of Vélez de Guevara’s plays in recent years, with Juan de
la Cuesta-Hispanic Monographs. Also see Peale 1998.
71 “qué de adargas, de medias lunas, de banderas” (Vélez de Guevara 2012).
72 “Ese lunado bruto […] Campanas pazca de zafiro ahora, / Pues tan alta ambición bebió a
Jarama” (Pellicer 1632, 64).
beasts. They confirm the goal of Pellicer’s poetic anthology to transform the
bull into the planet’s new animal king. Pellicer describes the final scenes of
Jarama’s life as if they were the final moments of battle for a great classical
hero: “His Majesty regarded the bravery of that beast, and desirous that the
brute that had walked so boldly before his eyes not be denied a prize, he
wanted to grant it the maximum favor possible in the same way if it were a
creature possessed with reason.”73 King Philip IV, then, in Pellicer’s terms,
stood up and ended the life of the dignified enemy in war with a single shot
from his harquebus, the grand climax of the spectacle. Pellicer describes
the final scene in striking detail, calling attention to the visual image of the
final scene as if it were a captured screenshot. He states that all could see
Jarama’s bloody death even before the sound of the King’s gun: “the blood
of the now disfigured cadaver reddened the Plaza even before the wind
sounded with the explosion from the gun powder. The beautiful explosion
woke the people’s applause.”74
The event is described in terms of the highest form of dramatic entertain-
ment. One poet describes it as “theater in real life.”75 José de Valdivielso
(1565–1638), a playwright and court chaplain, asserts:
When the shot reached its mark

It found the animal dead
Because killing this animal
Was no different from loving it.
In all of theater
No one has ever seen
Actors play their parts
With such grace
And so true.76
For Valdivielso, Jarama the bull was an actor in a special theater; Jarama’s
only purpose was to die so as to provide the King an apotheosis.
73 “Miraba su Magestad la valentía de aquella fiera, y deseoso de que [el] bruto que a sus ojos
había andado tan intrépido no quedase sin premio, quiso hacerle el mayor favor que pudiera
desear a ser capaz de razón” (Pellicer 1632, 6).
74 “la sangre del ya cadáver disforme se vio primero enrojecer la Plaza que oyese el viento el
estallido de la pólvora” (Pellicer 1632, 7–8).
75 “teatro real” (Pellicer 1632, 20).
76 “Pues cuando llegó el tiro, le halló muerto / que para ejecutarle, / lo mismo fue quererlo, que
matarle. / No se vieron papeles ensayados / en teatro jamás, representados / con tanta dicha, ni
con tanto acierto” (Pellicer 1632, 77).
In this period of Spain’s history, playwrights wrote in verse, and were

also known as “poets.” These poets likened the event of Jarama’s death to
their own aspirations as successful authors of plays for the stage. Many of
the lesser-known playwrights included in the collection tried to pass their
plays off as “written by Lope,” Spain’s most celebrated dramatist. In light of
his enormous influence, it is especially notable that Lope de Vega read and
approved Pellicer’s volume about the animal spectacle for the Inquisition. In his
approval of the publication, Lope noted that “no human nor divine objection
for any reason” existed that should impede the publication of the book.77
Aside from reading The Amphitheater of Philip the Great, Lope de Vega
also employed the trope of the crescent moon in his work. In La Circe (Circe,
1624), a poetic miscellany dedicated to Philip IV’s favorite, the Count Duke
of Olivares, Lope portrays the enchantress from Homer’s Odyssey, who
converted Odysseus’s sailors into swine. In Lope’s version, Circe converts
the sailors into a rhinoceros, elephant, and a bull with “crescent moons on
its forehead.”78 Lope used Homer’s epic to praise the power of Philip IV and
Olivares by evoking the monarch’s power over a rhinoceros and an elephant,
a reference to the spectacle of Abada and Hawa’i. In symbolizing the Spanish
Empire’s ability to convert wild animals into domesticated pets, Lope also
celebrates Philip IV’s power over a bull by repeating the Góngora-inspired
synecdoche of the bull as half crescent moon.
Lope read The Amphitheater of Philip the Great and provided a literary
assessment of the work. Lope’s words about the event in the context of his
colossal stature as Spain’s preeminent playwright provide a stamp of author-
ity to the status of the event as high culture and the best that theater had to
offer. The poets, as well as the editor of the book The Amphitheater of Philip
the Great, consider the primary action that took place in the arena—the
ultimate killing of the victorious Jarama by King Philip IV—to be a theatrical
spectacle that surpassed Spain’s dramatic productions performed in the
corrales. Lope de Vega summarizes their conclusion in his approval of the
manuscript, stating that theater did not get any better than Philip IV’s
final death blow: “our Majesty’s action [of killing Jarama] was a theatrical
translation of his prowess in the hunt, lifted from the fields and to the
amphitheater, a translation from an act in the wilderness to the level of a
universal spectacle.”79
77 “No tiene objeción divina ni human en todo su discurso” (Pellicer 1632).

78 “las medias lunas de la frente” (qtd. in De Armas 2016, 5).
79 “Esta acción de su Majestad, que trasladó su singular destreza del campo al anfiteatro, y
del monte solo al espectáculo universal” (qtd. in Pellicer 1632, n.p.).
Conclusion
Staged animal combats were ubiquitous in Europe and increasingly wide-

spread and varied in form in the early modern period (Boehrer 2009, 25).
Animal combat structures were not only built in Spain in the following
centuries, but across Europe. Animals fought before the public well into the
eighteenth century. A bullfight with mastiffs was held on Sunday afternoons
and public holidays at an amphitheater in Paris, and bulls and lions fought
in combat arenas in the Hertz Theatre in Vienna and the Vauxhall in London
(Kalof 2007, 116). The Amphitheater of Philip the Great, however, underscores
how the seventeenth century characterized the bull as part of the collective
consciousness that linked to Spain’s image of itself as ruler over a planetary
empire.
In contrast to animal combats held across early modern Europe, Pellicer’s
The Amphitheater of Philip the Great distinguished the bull as uniquely
Spanish by uniting voices from the country’s cultural elite. It thereby set a
precedent for future permutations of nationalism in the Spanish collective
consciousness, including the inauguration of the Real Maestranza in Seville
(1740) and the Plaza in Madrid (1749), the description of the bullfighter as
“the essence of a national prototype” in Spanish Self Portraits (1843) by Tomás
Rodríguez Rubí (1817–90), and its label as “national sport” under Francisco
Franco (1892–1975).80
Chapter 1 showed how the animal spectacle in early modern Spain con-
nects to the growth of commercial theater because the Habsburg King Philip
II made a spectacle of an elephant and rhino in two hospitals in Madrid. This
chapter has shown that staged animal combats were not part of the corral
and commercial theater, but they were nonetheless a fundamental part of
early modern Spanish stagecraft. Chapter 1 also showed how Juan de Arfe
celebrated the Spanish spectacle of the elephant and rhino and Chapter 2
showed how his humanist colleague Argote celebrated the spectacle of the
armadillo, as well as that of armor and live horses. This chapter has shown
how both Arfe and Argote also raised the status of the bull spectacle and had
profound repercussions on the description of the bull as found in Pellicer
and, in turn, on the emergence of the modern bullfight.
By way of conclusion, in looking to the future, it is beneficial to examine
how early modern Spanish culture provided a model of animal spectacle
within the context of the Anthropocene. The seventeenth-century staged
80 “un tipo esencialmente nacional” (in Los españoles pintados por sí mismos as qtd. in Mi-
ralles 2016, 260).
performance of an imperial hunt—the spectacle of the King’s killing of a

bull—meant the death of Jarama and a great number of other animals.
Today, practices associated with human hunting are the greatest cause of
extinction of the world’s large animals. The authors of “Are We Eating the
World’s Megafauna to Extinction?,” published in Conservation Letters: A
Journal for the Society of Conservation Biology (Ripple et al. 2019), note that,
rather than climate change, human hunting for meat consumption and
alternative medicines is the biggest immediate threat to elephants, rhinos,
and the Earth’s large animals.
Animal biogeographies can spark a sense of accountability for the human
preservation of species. Some studies that examine the present day, such
as Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (2014) by Thomas van
Dooren, look to the particularities of real birds on the brink of extinction
for accountability for species preservation. Looking to Spain’s early modern
period also underscores human accountability in animal preservation. In the
twentieth century, people hunted the Barbary lion to near extinction and, in
the same period, the population of Spanish wild bulls soared because they were
used in modern corridas. Ironically, in a desire to capture the ferocious lion
and preserve the trait of ferocity in the Spanish bull for performances, humans
nearly eliminated one species and strengthened the population of another.
The model of the animal spectacle based on human observation as
described in Pellicer, by way of contrast, can inspire productive models of
animal and human collaboration. A historical text written in Spanish from
seventeenth-century New Mexico, for instance, describes the hunt as a
transformational human-animal event that radically contrasts Pellicer’s. The
text depicts how the Acoma people hunted a doe that, when alive, was not the
object of the hunter’s gaze. The doe sought out and found an Acoma woman.
The Acoma woman tells the deceased doe: “We are glad you have come to our
home and have not been ashamed of our people” (qtd. in Gutiérrez 1991, 31).
Some authors from early modern Spain sought to undermine the complicity
between the animal as object of spectacle as associated with the traditional
power of the king. The Marvelous Puppet Show by Miguel de Cervantes is a
good way to conclude, because it mocks the sense of collectivity that theatrical
staged animal combat sought to sow. The Marvelous Puppet Show depicts an
entire town as audience members of a play. The play within the play that the
town sees, however, is only a figment of its imagination. A man, Chanfalla,
tricks the audience into collectively believing the truth of fictional scenes as
he describes them to the audience. No one sees anything, but no one admits
to seeing nothing because all fear that, in doing so, they might be exposed as
not white, either externally or internally (Beusterien 2006).
Miguel EN Cervantes: El retablo de la maravillas (2015), a graphic novel of

The Marvelous Puppet Show written by David Rubín in collaboration with
artist Miguelanxo Prado, shows how Cervantes’s play critiques the role of
animals as theatrical spectacle in the celebration of the king. The fake play
that Chanfalla describes for the town includes a description of a bull. He
tells the townspeople that a raging bull before them is about to come close.
It is “the same bull that killed the handyman in Salamanca.”81 Chanfalla
describes the bull and none of the audience members admits that the bull
is not there in front of them. They cower in fright.
David Rubín and Miguelanxo Prado use the genre of graphic novel to depict
the moment from The Marvelous Puppet Show in which everyone admits to
seeing a bull that they cannot see. His graphic novel shows the bull as a shadowy
figure emerging from the periphery of the panels that frame each scene of the
comic. With the image of the bull, Rubín and Prado break the mechanical limits
of the graphic novel space because it breaks out of the frame of the individual
panel that contains the images of the “real” people, like Chanfalla, who are
depicted in the play (Haney 2019). The real audience member, the character in
Cervantes’s play who pretends to see the bull, holds up his hand to stop a bull
whose definition are the lines of the frame of the panel of the graphic novel.
Rubín and Prado use the drawing of the bull in the periphery of the
panel of the graphic novel to underscore how Cervantes critiqued audience
members who pretended to see the bull and who participated in the fake
spectacle. In so doing, Rubín and Prado show how Cervantes fervently
critiqued the refashioning of animal bodies into consumable objects of mass
collectivity for the purposes of spectacle. Rubín and Prado disassemble a
mode of mass collectivity in visualizing the staged bull spectacle and, in
turn, encourages the discovery of new forms of constructive interspecies
learning and enjoyment.
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Conclusion: Biogeography as a
Teaching Tool
Abstract
The conclusion examines how teachers can use the methodology of
biogeography—that is, teachers can guide students by having them name
a previously unnamed animal from early modern Spain. For instance,
students can name a quetzal whose feathers were used by an Amanteca
artisan to craft a shield that Philip II received as a gift and put in his
collection in the Royal Armory. The teaching methodology of bioge-
ography—creating names of animals in spectacles of animals in early
modern Spain—helps prepare students in the humanities to look beyond
the superficial interpretation of images and texts to better understand
landscapes of exclusion.
Keywords: biogeography in teaching, feather shield (adarga), Amanteca,

quetzal, Philip II of Spain (1527–98)
Many animals, especially dogs, were given proper names in early modern
Spain. When Gonzalo Argote de Molina describes how Philip II’s court
hunted down an escaped lion, he does not give a name for the lion, but
describes a Spanish dog who had a French name, Lionel (“Little Lion”). Argote
mentions many other proper names for dogs in his book on hunting. In the
chapter titled “De la fidelidad de los canes y diferencias de sus nombres”
(“Of Dog’s Faithfulness and Their Different Names”), Gonzalo Argote de
Molina writes that the dogs from England and Ireland had names whose
pronunciation was strange and, when those dogs arrived in Spain, Spanish
hunters butchered their names so badly that, although Argote knew their
names, he decided not to mention them. Argote does, however, mention
the names of Philip II’s well-known hunting dogs, such as Bocanegra and
Manchado (a dog name that Cervantes also used for a sheepherding dog in
doi 10.5117/9789463720441_concl
Galatea).1 Argote also mentions two other canines: Amadis, who belonged
to Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa (1345–1409), the legendary founder of the
Order of Santiago in Seville, and Mahoma (“Mahommed”), the famous dog
who earned a salary fighting Moors on behalf of his master Día Sánchez de
Carvajal (ca. 1380–ca. 1467).2
In contrast to Argote, who memorialized the names of famous historical
dogs, this book has named five animals that were never given proper names.
Abada the rhinoceros and Hawa’i the elephant were diplomatic gifts from the
Mughal Empire to the Habsburgs. Fuleco the armadillo was captured and
became a collectible and specimen in Argote’s curiosity cabinet. Maghreb
the lion was a diplomatic gift who ended his life fighting Jarama the bull,
who was bred with other fighting bulls near Madrid. Instead of calling the
description of each’s life a biography, I call them “biogeographies” in order
to call to mind the former habitats of each. Integrating the life story of each
animal, especially in the context of a new artificially created habitat in
early modern Spain, highlights a central tenet of the Anthropocene, that is,
the geological moment in which humanity determines the future impact
of the earth system.
After providing a history of each animal, each of the chapters in this
book has examined the cultural impact of each animal as spectacle in early
modern Spain. Abada and Hawa’i were integrated into the architecture
of the first permanent modern Spanish stage—the corral or innyard of a
hospital. The public had to pay a fee to see each animal and, because they
were part of the urban infrastructure of Madrid, Philip II’s newly created
imperial capital, their role as spectacle parallels the objective of zoos in
European capitals from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fuleco
was a relatively obscure object in Argote’s collection compared to the armor
and live horses that also filled his collection. Nonetheless, Fuleco was the
most significant animal specimen in the sense that the armadillo’s role
as spectacle parallels the objective of animal specimens in museums in
European capitals from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Finally,
Maghreb and Jarama fought in a staged combat in the center of Madrid that
1 Argote records other names of Philip II’s hunting dogs, including Brabonel, Mohino, Mayortes,
Barroso, and Barcino.
2 Amadis is sculpted in alabaster at Suárez de Figueroa’s feet. After a f ire, the alabaster
statue was moved to the University of Seville in 1810 (Bernales Ballesteros 2001, 77). Previously,
in Argote’s time, the sculpture was located in the Monasterio de Santiago de la Espada in the
barrio of Santo Lorenzo in Seville, in the place where the Iglesia de Santa Maria de la Asunción
is now located. Argote also notes that the inscription on the collar of his alabaster dog reads
“love Amadís” (“con una letra en el argolla que dice: ‘Amad Amadís’”) (Argote 1582).
Conclusion: Biogeogr aphy as a Teaching Tool 225
contributed to the nationally inflected formation of the modern Spanish

bullfight.
The decision to imagine a proper name for each animal from spectacle
culture is to encourage creativity in scholarship, all the while maintain-
ing rigorous attention to history and close reading of original texts. The
methodology in the writing of this book can also serve as a teaching
methodology, especially for raising student awareness of the relationship
between cultural practices and animal lives. By way of conclusion, I look
beyond the five animals studied in this book to offer examples of animal
individuals that can be used as points of departure for class projects that
focus on the methodology of the biogeography.
Secondary and postsecondary instructors looking for engaging exercises
and information for their Spanish language, culture, and history students
can ask students to create a biogeography to consider what aspects of early
modern Spanish culture impacted the environment and animal habitats.
One goal of the creative exercise of naming an animal in the biogeography
presentation is to stimulate the study of how humans and animals mutually
transform one another’s lives to find yet undiscovered solutions for the
survival of different species.
Aside from studying culture and the environment, another goal of the
biogeography project is to help students assess global social media and the
imaging of virtual selves that modulate forms of emotional subjectivity.
Today’s media world shares similarities with spectacle culture in early modern
Spain. As David R. Castillo and Bradley J. Nelson, in Spectacle and Topophilia:
Reading Early Modern and Postmodern Hispanic Cultures, argue, the na-
ture of collectivity in spectacle in early modern Spain can lead to “a better
understanding of the social and political configurations that continue to
structure our perception of the world in the age of global communications
and virtual selves” (2012, xii). Living in a social media culture so riddled
with a competition of images for the eyes, it is urgent for teachers to expose
students to the constructive forces at work in guiding a society’s optic regime.
As a sample of how to do a biogeography in teaching, Appendix 1 provides
the guidelines for the course project, “Naming an Early Modern Animal.”
Appendix 2 provides additional readings for other potential ideas for animal
biogeographies. The course project asks students to assign a proper name
to an early modern animal. The project can be included as part of a course
on Spanish-speaking cultures, especially those that include environmental
or animal studies themes. The course project consists of providing the life
story of the animal (30%) and the cultural significance of animal object
or spectacle (70%).
Aside from the five protagonists, many other animals mentioned in

this book could be studied through biogeography. For instance, Chapter 3
mentions four jaguars that were sent as gifts to King Philip IV from the
Viceroy of Peru. A student doing the biogeography project described in
Appendix 1 may wish to name one of the four jaguars sent as a gift to King
Philip IV. A student may also wish to do the biogeography project for a
whale, coyote, or quetzal.
Name Animal Species Birth: Death: Display:

Place, Date Place, Date Place, Date
? Whale Sperm whale (Physeter ? ? Escorial (Spain), ?

macrocephalus)
? Coyote Coyote prairie wolf Mexico Mexico Weltmuseum
(Canis latrans) (Vienna), ?
? Quetzal Resplendent quetzal Guatemala, Guatemala, Royal
(Pharomachrus c. 1576 c. 1580 Armory (Madrid),
mocinno) 1581-today
Table 2. The Lives of Three Animals for a Biogeography Class Project.
Philip II acquired the remains of a sperm whale’s massive jaw that washed
upon Spain’s eastern coastline, which can still be found in the Escorial (Sáenz
de Miera 1992, 272). The first part of the student presentation includes the
sperm whale’s life story and the creative exercise of inventing a name for
Philip’s whale. The second part of the presentation is the cultural significance
of the sperm whale as object and spectacle in the Escorial. The part of the
project that describes the cultural significance can connect whale hunting to
environmental history (Richards 2014). It could also study the nature of the
whale hunt in the Spanish mindset. Whale hunting in early modern Spain was
related to the bullfight. Preceding Moby Dick by centuries, Francisco Núñez
de Velasco’s Diálogos de contención entre la Milicia y la Ciencia (Contentious
Dialogues between the Military and Science, 1614) details an account of how
the Spanish killed a whale in the Cantabrian Sea. Núñez de Velasco describes:
“[Hunting a whale] is a dangerous bullfight in the spacious plaza of the fecund
sea.”3 Fusing the sea and the whale hunt in terms of the proto-nationalist
spectacle of killing a bull, the sea in Contentious Dialogues between the Military
and Science is the public square and the whale, like the bull, is impaled by a
great number of rejones (“metal spears”) (Núñez de Velasco 1614, 15).
3 “esta es una vistosa montería y un peligroso lidiar de toros en la espaciosa plaza del fructuoso
mar” (Núñez de Velasco 1614, 15).
Fig. 29. Chīmalli (early sixteenth century) (Weltmuseum, Vienna).
Aside from the whale, another student might create a biogeography for a
coyote depicted on a chīmalli (“shield”) on display at the Weltmusuem in
Vienna (fig. 29). In the first part of the presentation, the student invents a
name for the coyote and presents the coyote’s life story. The student also
presents an introduction to the coyote as a species, an animal increasing
its habitat in urban areas across the United States (Flores 2016). In Lubbock,
where I teach, the coyote survived the decimation of the bison, and its
survival is an example of an animal with an expanding habitat.
The second part of the presentation expounds upon the cultural sig-
nificance of the chīmalli. The shield was made in Mexico City by a special
guild of feather workers, the Amantecas (Riedler 2015). Before the Spanish
conquest, amantecayotl, or the practice of creating feather mosaics on shields,
was highly valued in Tenochtitlan. Although, today, relatively few feather
works survive—Alessandra Russo notes eighty-seven in the Americas,
seventy-two in Europe, and one in Asia— Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (ca.

1499–1590) writes in the Florentine codex that “whoever wants to see the
feather workers and understand their craft can do so with their own eyes
because they are everywhere in New Spain” (qtd. in Fane 2015, 115). Sahagún
provides information on the technique that went into crafting the shield:
Iridescent feathers were carefully trimmed and applied in layers using an
orchid-based glue onto amatl (“maguey paper”). The craftsmen accentuated
the soft texture of the feathers in their mosaics and shields because they
removed the quill and vane structure of the feather.
As mentioned in Chapter 2, Hernán Cortés sent Charles V war booty,
including the coyote chīmalli among the 125 captured Mexica feather
shields. Students can use the image on the shield to reconstruct a pre-
conquest moment. Before the Spanish arrived in the Americas, a coyote
was killed in a hunt, a man draped the coyote’s hide over his body, and
danced. The man probably celebrated a military victory by wearing a
coyote costume that included a coyote hide, and he may have also carried
the chīmalli.
The student can imagine why the Mexica warrior or shaman decided to
wear the coyote skin. For instance, the chīmalli contains glyphs that depict
speech coming from the mouth of the figure wearing the coyote figure.
What is the meaning of the glyphs? Warriors or shamans often wore the skin
of an apex animal predator and were believed to shape-shift into a being
with interchangeable godlike, animal, and human characteristics (Norton
2013, 64). In what sense did the man who wore the coyote skin become the
coyote? In what sense did he also become Huēhuecoyōtl, the auspicious
coyote god of music and dance?
In closing, I offer a more detailed discussion for a class exercise in which
students create the biogeography of a quetzal. The quetzal is the namesake
for the Guatemalan national currency and is also featured in the lyrics
of the national anthem. The student examines the transformation of the
quetzal’s feathers into Philip II’s feather shield found in the Royal Armory in
Madrid (fig. 30). The feather shield is ninety centimeters tall and eighty-six
centimeters wide. I suspect that the red color on the shield is from the bright
crimson breast and belly feathers of the quetzal, but, to date, the scientific
analysis has not been carried out.
The guidelines for the student project state that 30% of the presentation
grade consists of the creation of a life story for an individual quetzal with an
emphasis of how and why human cultural institutions impacted its habitat.
After students create a name for the quetzal, they may describe its habitat,
provide a description of its physical features, play YouTube clips of its song,
Fig. 30. Philip II’s Feather Shield (ca. 1581) (Armería Real, Madrid, Copyright Patrimonio Nacional).
and show how it is hunted. Students examine an individual quetzal and

reconstruct its life. Possibly, the student will choose a male since his colors
are more vibrant. The student will trace how the bird’s feathers arrived
from a specific region in southern Mexico or Guatemala to Mexico City
in the hands of an Amanteca. After rendering the feathers into the shield,
the object would have then been sent to Spain and would have arrived in
the hands of Philip II.
After studying the life story of the individual quetzal, the student spends
70% of the presentation time assessing the cultural significance of the
shield, interpreting how an Amanteca craftsman and King Philip II might
have perceived the object.
1. An Amanteca Craftsman’s Perspective of the Shield
By wearing a coyote costume, the Mixtec became a nagualli, a human who

emanated the life force of a coyote. By carrying the coyote feather shield, the
nagualli not only enveloped himself with the essence of the coyote, but also
of birds. Of the many species of birds used to make shields, the quetzal was
especially significant. As Marcy Norton notes, the “gleaming green feathers
of quetzal” were indispensable in the “instantiation of divinity” (2013, 69).
The central image on Philip II’s feather shield can be described as be-
longing to a page from an emblem book, one of the most popular genres
of sixteenth-century literature. Typical of the genre, the central image
is allegorical, with an accompanying motto or gloss. It shows two storks
protecting their nest from a flying snake. The Amanteca-missionary team
that created the shield would have had access to the source image from
Pierio Valeriano’s book of emblems, which includes an image of a stork
killing snakes with an accompanying motto. In the prose description of the
image and motto, Valeriano writes that storks live high up, close to God,
and wage perpetual warfare on snakes. The team added another stork and,
alongside it, included a snake and a toad, symbols of heresy and death. In
the context of the four surrounding scenes of Spanish battle victories, the
snake and toad signify Islam, and the crowns on the head of each stork
represent Philip II and his father.
But the propagandistic message may not have been necessarily taken
at face value by the Amanteca craftsman that made it. To what degree
did the Amanteca alter Spanish iconography for the purposes of his own
tradition? He could have used any number of hundreds of emblems from
Valeriano or another emblem book for the central motif for the shield. But the
image of the stork eating the snake intimately connects with Mesoamerican
iconography. The Amanteca added wings to the image of the serpent on
the shield, a detail not found in the original source, but which resonated
with the iconographic tradition of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. The
image harkens back to the production of an image of an eagle and snake on
Mexica shields. One Mexica feather shield that Cortés sent back to Spain for
the Lord Knight Hernando de Vega features a central design that depicts an
eagle with a snake in its beak (Fane 2015). A similar emblem was adopted
two centuries later as the sign of Mexico’s nationhood.
By adding the winged serpent, the Amanteca inserted a distinctly
American meaning to European emblem allegory tradition. What would
the Amanteca craftsman have thought of the form of the shield? Standard
preconquest Mexica shields, like standard European ones, were round. The
Spanish, however, used adargas (a word from Andalusian Arabic), a uniquely

shaped shield, formed by two united ellipses or ovals, in the conquest of
Mexico. The Lienzo de Tlaxcala depicts adargas as the only type of shield
that the Spanish carry because Hispanic-Moorish adargas proved more
useful against Aztec armament and tactics than heavier round shields
made of metal and wood. Was the creation of the adarga form for a shield
the Amanteca’s way of coopting the form of the Spanish shield?
Philip II practiced the European model of collecting, but might the
Amanteca who crafted the shield have made a collectible following a
native American collection practice and not the other way around? The
sixteenth-century writer Diego Durán notes that Amantecas had created
shields for the Mexica that showed the great deeds of their gods and past
rulers. Moreover, powerful Mexica families kept Amanteca shields in their
collections and took them out for battle and ceremonial dance spectacles,
even after the conquest. The Amanteca creator of the shield took advantage
of the familiar European form, the allegorical emblem, and inserted it into
his own traditional practice.
This book has examined the European notion of the exotic animal. How,
though, did the Amanteca craftsman incorporate something exotic in his
art? What was the signif icance of the image of the battle with strange
vessels on an unknown sea? How would the Amanteca have thought about
the individual quetzal and other innumerable birds that he rendered on the
shield? How would he have thought about the red quetzal breast feathers
transformed into feathers on Charles’s helm, the feather plume worn by his
horse, and the red background for Philip II sitting on a throne overlooking
the naval battle of Lepanto? Did the Amanteca transform the essence of
the Spanish monarch into the divine essence of the quetzal?
2. King Philip II’s Interpretation of the Shield
After the Spanish conquest, the Amantecas continued to produce shields

for local Mexica elites, but they stepped up their production for European
markets. They began to form teams with Spanish missionaries and used
the same artistic technique to create a vast number of material objects with
images from Christian iconography. The images were framed and collected
by elites across Europe. Sometimes, the actual bodies of birds accompanied
these framed feather mosaics in collections—the feather mosaic Saint Jerome
once had a dead hummingbird bird on its frame and two dead hummingbird
specimens once framed a feather mosaic in an Italian collection depicting
a female saint with a cross in her hand (Kern 2018).
The Amantecas did not just use hummingbird feathers, but also quetzal
feathers, for European elites. Sources indicate that, when the Amerindians
in Guatemala captured quetzals, they only plucked three or four of the
feathers and then let the bird go (López Medel 1990, 39–40; Norton 2013,
69n.92). Given the sheer quantity of feathers used to make their works, no
doubt other quetzals, especially after the arrival of the Spanish, were not
set free after the hunt, but killed so as to render the maximum number of
feathers. The Spanish conquistador Don Julián wrote, in his 1566 final will
and testimony, that he would sell off his valuable horse and cape, but “the
shield with 200 quetzal plumes” was to stay in the family (Fane 2015, 116 n.32).
When Amanteca featherwork was sent across the Atlantic, Europeans
disregarded its meaning in Mexica culture. They often treated featherworks
like other luxury commodities. Like many paintings by renowned artists,
King Philip II regifted many feather objects originally produced by the
Amantecas. Philip II sent a feather mosaic painting, Ecce Homo, as an ambas-
sadorial gift to Africa—he gave it to the Jesuits for their evangelical mission
to Mozambique (Cummins 2015, 273). Philip II kept others, such as a feather
miter, produced in 1576, in the Escorial, which had identical iconography
to two other surviving miters (O’Neill 2010, 261). But, like a vast quantity
of items in his original collections, the 1576 feather miter does not survive
today in the Spanish national patrimony collections. Even though Philip
II regifted priceless collectibles (aside from art, he, as stated in Chapter 1,
regifted three live elephants), he did not regift the one special feather shield
that remains in the Spanish national patrimony collection that was created
by the Amanteca craftsman. Philip II, like Don Julián, who did not want
to see his feather shield leave the family, had placed the American shield
alongside armor, the most valuable collectible in his vast collection.
Today, the colors on Philip’s shield have faded, but it is not hard to imagine
their former brilliance. José de Acosta, the Jesuit missionary to the New
World, wrote that feather mosaics were far superior to paintings (Kern 2018,
335). Pope Sixtus V (1521–90) had a feather mosaic in his possession and
touched the object to convince himself that it was really made of feathers
and not painted (Kern 2018, 319). When Philip II observed the shield, a
unique color sensation would have reached his eyes. His eyes experienced
xoxoctic color, a Nahuatl designation for the simultaneously optic experience
of emerald green and navy or turquoise blue. Certain iridescent feathers
changed from green to blue depending on their movement and position,
creating a sensation of pulsation and glittering light (Ségota 2015).
What of its texture, sensuously appealing light, and stunning iridescent
color never before created in the spectrum of European paint? What did
Philip II, an avid bird lover, think as he touched the feather object from the
other side of the ocean from the Indies, whose soil his feet would never touch?
What did he think of the image of himself seated on a throne overlooking
the Lepanto battle?
How would he have compared this shield to his many other shields in
the Royal Armory collection? Philip II collected round European shields
crafted by German armorers that celebrated his Habsburg legacy. Philip
also kept adargas as booty from Islamic forces in his Royal Armory. What
would Philip II have thought about the shield whose shape Spain adapted
from the Moors? One fifteenth-century adarga in his collection has an
inscribed motto from the Nasrid dynasty, written in Arabic—”There is no
victor but Allah” (Crooke y Navarrot 1898, 161). Not only did he have Moorish
adargas, but Philip II also had sixteenth-century Spanish adargas in his
collection that were used in battles against Islamic forces.
Moreover, what would Phillip II have thought of the iconography that
the Amanteca-missionary team chose for the shield? Images are placed in
four quadrants around a central image of crowned storks. The four images
show the major events that seem devised to satisfy Philip’s worldview. The
images show the history of victories over Islam as culminating in Philip
II’s reign: the battle of Navas de Tolosa (1212), the Catholic entrance and
Boabdil’s abandonment of Granada (1492), Charles V’s Battle of the Wells
victory in Tunis (1535), and Philip’s victory at Lepanto (1571).
The first quadrant shows Spanish forces with a lion image on a war stand-
ard at Navas de Tolosa. Philip would have been interested in the historical
allusion to the lion and its redeployment as image of his own propaganda
campaign against his enemies. The lion’s meaning in the medieval context
of Navas de Tolosa signifies the troops are from the early Spanish kingdom
of León. The shield then rejuvenates for Philip the medieval story of King
Alphonso VII (r. 1126–57), who borrowed the lion from Roman imperial
iconography and called himself Alphonso the Lion, later transferring the
same name to his Kingdom, León.
The third quadrant of the shield is a portrait of Charles V based on Titian’s
official portrait, in which the monarch is dressed in his pageant armor and
set to battle the Protestant lords at Mühlberg. The Amanteca-missionary
team in New Spain did not have Titian’s portrait to copy, but instead used
a copy made by Alonso Sánchez Coello. Coello’s copy of the Equestrian
Portrait of Carlos V arrived in New Spain in 1580, when Philip II commis-
sioned Coello to make a copy of the painting as a gift to Emperor Wanli of
the Ming dynasty. Coello’s copy of Charles V was never sent to China (so it
did not disappear in the shipwreck described in Chapter 1), but remained
in the viceroy’s collection, where it was then copied for Philip II’s shield by
the team who creatively readapted the setting from Mühlberg to that of the
Tunis campaign against Barbarossa (Cummins 2015, 275).
While Philip would have been extremely interested in the image of his
father in armor transformed (into feathers!) on the shield, he would have
been more interested in his own image. The fourth quadrant shows an
image of Philip II seated on a throne wearing a red sash around his neck,
holding the Golden Fleece. The quetzal, whose feathers were used for the
sash, probably would have been irrelevant to Philip. He would have been
more interested in the depiction of himself as monarch.
As opposed to the image of Charles V, the image of Philip II in armor
was not copied from his off icial portrait. In creating this image, the
Amanteca-missionary team would have consulted a broadsheet print (ca.
1580) by Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630) that shows the monarch seated on
a throne. The team would have also consulted a copy of an image of the
battle of Lepanto, such as the one depicted by Paolo Veronese (1528–88) in
the early 1570s. The team fused the two different scenes of Philip II that
circulated in print in America—that of Philip on the throne and of the Battle
of Lepanto—into a single image of the King. They created a new Philip II
image that shows him sitting on a throne overlooking the victorious naval
battle over the Ottoman Turks.
Finally, Philip II would have especially regarded the central image on
the shield with its accompanying Latin motto, serae spes una senectae (“a
hope for one in advanced old age”). The principal meaning of the central
allegorical image is Spain’s victory over Islam. The central motto in Latin
about old age was directed at Philip II, who was well over fifty when the
shield arrived to the Royal Armory in Madrid. It would have provoked
him to consider his legacy. Typically, the author of the emblem book, after
the image and motto, gives an interpretation of the image and motto in
prose of usually a page in length. In contrast, the team created a message
in four images around the motto to communicate religious propaganda
associated with Philip II. Perhaps the images might have soothed Philip II
as he looked at and touched the shield. The Latin motto suggests that he,
the great planetary monarch, protected Spain from the threat of Islam and
perhaps gave him hope that he was the one that would protect Spain from
Islam in the future.
“A hope for one in advanced old age,” with its accompanying image, works
in a similar way as a meme or tweet. Philip II looked at a motto and image
that pleased his eyes. The pedagogical exercise of naming the quetzal forms
part of an exercise in which students stop to examine an individual animal’s
role in creating an image and motto that were easily digested at a glance.
Taking time to examine the process of visually perceiving superficial images
on Philip II’s shield can lead to a critique of the monarch’s self-satisfaction
and the consideration of the complex way in which easily consumed images
led to landscapes of exclusion on a planetary scale.
Works Cited
Bernales Ballesteros, Jorge. 2001. Universidad de Sevilla: Patrimonio monumental
y artístico. Seville: University of Seville.
Castillo, David R. and Bradley J. Nelson, eds. 2012. Spectacle and Topophilia: Reading
Early Modern and Postmodern Hispanic Cultures. Nashville: Vanderbilt University
Press.
Crooke y Navarrot, Juan Bautista. 1898. Catálogo histórico-descriptivo de la Real
Armería de Madrid. Madrid: Fototipias de Hauser y Menet.
Cummins, Thomas B.F. 2015. “Adarga D-88 or the Wing of God.” In Russo et al., 270–81.
Fane, Diana. 2015. “Feathers, Jade, Turquoise, and Gold.” In Russo et al., 100–18.
Flores, Dan. 2016. Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History. New York:
Basic Books.
Kern, Margit. 2018. “Cultured Materiality in Early Modern Art: Feather Mosaics
in Sixteenth-Century Collections.” The Nomadic Object: The Challenge of World
for Early Modern Religious Art. Eds. Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuiki.
Leiden: Brill. 319–42.
López Medel, Tomás. 1990. De los tres elementos: Tratado sobre la naturaleza y el
hombre del nuevo mundo. Ed. Berta Ares Queija. Madrid: Alianza.
Norton, Marcy. 2013. “Going to the Birds: Animals as Things and Beings in Early
Modernity.” Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500-1800. Ed.
Paula Findlen. London: Routledge. 53–83.
Núñez de Velasco, Francisco. 1614. Diálogos de contención entre la Milicia y la
Ciencia. Valladolid: Juan Godínez de Millis.
O’Neill, John P. 2010. Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries. New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
Richards, John F. 2014. The World Hunt: An Environmental History of the Com-
modification of Animals. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Riedler, Renée. 2015. “Materials and Technique of the Feather Shield Preserved in
Vienna.” Russo et al., 330–41.
Russo, Alessandra, Gerhard Wolf, and Diana Fane, eds. 2015. Images Take Flight:
Feather Art in Mexico and Europe, 1400-1700. Munich: Hirmer Verlag.
Sáenz de Miera, Jesús. 1992. “Ciencia y estética en torno a Felipe II: Imágenes
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Nacional 29 (112): 50–60.
Ségota, Dúrdica. 2015. “The Radiance of Feathers.” Russo et al., 378–85.
Appendix 1
Biogeography Course Project: Naming an Early Modern
Animal
Description: This project is designed for an upper-level university course on

culture in the Spanish-speaking world. Students create a proper name for
an unnamed animal. They must show how the animal impacted culture
and how culture impacted the animal. The goal of the course project is to
enhance the appreciation of early modern Spanish culture.
Determination of grade:
1. Animal life story (30%): Invent a proper name. Describe the animal’s life.
Estimate the date and place of the animal’s birth and death. Describe
how social institutions affected the animal’s life.
2. Cultural significance of animal object or spectacle (70%): Examine the
impact of the animal as object or spectacle.
Appendix 2
Bibliography for the Study of Animals and Early Modern
Spain
Primary text
Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar, José. 1632. Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande. Madrid: Juan
González.
Secondary texts

——. 2020. “Domestication and Coevolution.” The Handbook of Historical Animal
Studies. Eds. Brett Mizelle, Mieke Roscher, and André Krebber. Oldenbourg:
De Gruyter.
Beusterien, John. 2012. Canines in Cervantes and Velázquez: An Animal Studies
Reading of Early Modern Spain. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
——. 2016. “Humor and a Political Future through Illustrations of Sancho Panza
and His Donkey.” Baroque Projections: Images and Texts in Dialogue with the
Early Modern Hispanic World. Eds. Michael J. Horswell and Frédéric Conrod.
Newark: Juan de la Cuesta. 191–208.
——. 2019. “Comedy and Environmental Cultural Studies: An Image of a Span-
ish Rhinoceros and Sancho with his Donkey.” Environmental Cultural Stud-
ies Through Time: The Luso-Hispanic World. Eds. Kata Beilin, Kathleen Connolly,
and Micah McKay. Hispanic Issues Online: University of Minnesota. 254–71.
——. 2020. “Madrigal in Miguel de Cervantes’s La gran sultana: An Animal Studies
Approach.” Romance Notes, forthcoming.
Brandner, Zachary. 2020. “El oso pardo en la obra de Góngora y Cervantes: Crisis
ecológica de la masculinidad.” Romance Notes, forthcoming.
Dopico Black, Georgina. 2010. “The Ban and the Bull: Cultural Studies, Animal
Studies, and Spain.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 11.3–4: 235–49.
Gómez Centurión, Carlos. 2011. Alhajas para soberanos. Los animales reales en
el siglo XVIII: de las leoneras a las mascotas de cámara. Valladolid: Junta de
Castilla y León.
Larsen, Kevin. 1984. “Observations on the Animals and Animal Imagery in Cer-
vantes’ Theater.” Modern Language Studies 14.4: 64–75.
Lawrence, Natalie. 2014. “Disembodied Birds: Crafting the Dodo and the Birds
of Paradise in L’Écluse’s Exoticorum libri decem.” Commodity Histories. Ac-
cessed December 29, 2019. http://www.commodityhistories.org/research/
disembodied-birds
Martín, Adrienne. 2012. “Zoopoética quijotesca: Cervantes y los Estudios de
Animales.” eHumanista/Cervantes 1: 448–64.
——. 2014. “Onstage/Offstage: Animals in the Golden Age Comedia.” A Companion
to Early Modern Hispanic Theater. Ed. Hilaire Kallendorf. Leiden: Brill. 127–44.
——. 2020. “Sexy Beasts: Women and Lapdogs in Baroque Satirical Verse.” Goodbye
Eros: Recasting Forms and Norms of Love in the Age of Cervantes. Eds. Ana María
Laguna and John Beusterien. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 157–76.
Norton, Marcy. 2013. “Animal (Spain).” Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic
Exchange and Transformation. Eds. Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills. Austin:
University of Texas Press. 17–19.
——. 2013. “Going to the Birds: Animals as Things and Beings in Early Modernity.”
Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500-1800. Ed. Paula Findlen.
London: Routledge. 53–83.
——. 2015. “The Chicken or the Iegue: Human-Animal Relationships and the
Columbian Exchange.” American Historical Review 120: 28–60.
and Other Exotica in Renaissance Portugal. Zurich, Pachyderm.
——. 2016. “Animals Fit for Emperors: Hans Khevenhuller and Habsburg Menageries
in Vienna and Prague.” En la corte del rey de España: Liber Amicorum en homenaje
a Carlos Gómez-Centurión Jiménez (1958-2011). 109–126.
Pimentel, Juan. 2017. The Rhinoceros and the Megatherieum: An Essay in Natural
History. Trans. Peter Mason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Ruano de la Haza, J.M. 1994. “Los animales en escena.” Los teatros comerciales del
siglo XVII y la escenificación de la comedia. Eds. J.M. Ruano de la Haza and John
J. Allen. Madrid: Castalia. 271–91.
Russo, Alessandra, Gerhard Wolf, and Diana Fane, eds. 2015. Images Take Flight:
Feather Art in Mexico and Europe, 1400-1700. Munich: Hirmer Verlag.
Index
Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

Abada 18-19, 26-27, 35-37, 39, 43-72, 74-89, Remedios específicos de la India Oriental y
91-92, 98, 100-03, 122, 140, 146, 148, 176, de la América (Specific Remedies from
184-85, 199-200, 207, 214, 224 East India and the Americas) 84
allusions to see also elephants
in anonymous Diálogos de la montería Acosta, José de 119-120
(Dialogues about Hunting) 69 Historia natural y moral de las
in Góngora poem 69 indias (Natural and Moral History of the
as gift 47, 49, 70, 71 Indies) 119-120
etymology of 44-45 adarga see feather shields
eyewitness descriptions Adonis y Venus (Adonis and Venus) see Vega,
as dangerous 57-58, 60 Lope de
as docile 59 African slaves 132
as taxidermy specimen 60-61 see also cimarrones
in the work of Martín Akbar, ruler of Mughal empire see menageries;
Sarmiento 39 n.8 elephants
descriptions of alba y Sol, El (The Dawn and the Sun) see Vélez
at Escorial 56 de Guevara, Luis
by Hans Khevenhüller 58, 61, 68 Albuquerque, Afonso de, first governor of
by Philip II 55 Portuguese empire in India 49
by Sebastián de Covarrubias 57-58, Alcalá de Henares see theatres in early modern
69-70 Spain
by visitors to Lisbon 55 Aldrovandi, Ulisse see curiosity cabinets
in General Hospital of Madrid 57, 68 Almagro see theaters in early modern Spain
of bones and rotted skin 61-62 Alphonso VII, king of León 233
of curative power 85 Alphonso the Wise, king of Spain 157 n.40
of food that she ate 55, 59 Cantigas de Santa María (Songs of Holy
of impenetrable skin 91-92 Mary) 157 n.40
record from locksmith for her Amadis see dogs
enclosure 55 Amantecas 227, 231-32
images by author and his students of amantecayotl (practice of creating feather
fused with Madrid cityscape 102 mosaics) 227
with mahout 54 America by Jan van Kessel see curiosity
with mother 103 cabinets
sixteenth-century images of Andrade Caminha, Pedro de see Abada
as printed by Philip Galle 43-44, 43 Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande (The Amphi-
n.9, 44 theater of Philip the Great) 27- 28, 173-75,
as watercolor in Adam Hochreiter’s 181-82, 190-97, 200, 208-15
diary 59 as hyperbolically comparing Philip IV to
in history of Portuguese kings by Pedro Roman emperors 191
Andrade Caminha 54 includes poems by
on anonymous oil paintings in Fuente, Gaspar de la 210-211
Vienna 59 González de Rosende, Antonio 210
on cover of Rudolf II’s collection León Pinelo, Diego de 210
inventory 62 Méndez de Loyola, Pedro 210
on Jacobo da Trezzo’s gem cameo 58 Mira de Amescua, Antonio 209
on Juan de Arfe’s ewer 98 Oviedo, Alonso de 210
spurious legend about 57 n.21 Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar, José 210
street name in Madrid 85, 85 n.79 Pimentel y Benavides, Gaspar 210
see also rhinos Quevedo, Francisco de 208-210
Acosta, Cristóbal Rodríguez de León Pinelo, Antonio 210
Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Valdivielso, José de 213
indias orientales (Treatise of the Drugs Valenzuela Fajardo, Pedro de 210
and Medicines of the East Indies) 84, 89 Vélez de Guevara, Luis 211
Lope de Vega as inquisitorial censor of 214 lynx 135

José Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar as edi- monkeys 131, 163, 183, 208
tor 210, 214 moose 85 n.78
animals mules 186, 205 see also theaters in
as connected to Orpheus 95 early modern Spain
as consumer goods like spices 53 oryx 85 n.78
as dead specimens 115-17, 155-61 oxen 47, 56, 177
in Argote’s museum 124, 126 panthers 47, 88
in the Wellcome Institute’s diorama of porcupines 83 n.74 (as source for
Argote’s museum 124 bezoar stones), 195 (as automaton
as gifts 17-18, 27, 36, 131, 140, 157 n.40, 183- with a human within), 196, 207 (as
86, 226, 232 see also Abada, elephants, costume for plays)
lions, rhinos rabbits (hares) 119, 135, 138, 192, 196,
from Mamluk Sultan of Egypt to 208
Alphonso the Wise 157 n.40 ram 149 (as Golden Fleece), 150 (as
from Philip II to emperor Wanli 74 Golden Fleece), 152 (as Golden
from Philip II to Toyotomi Hideyoshi Fleece), 154, 185, 204, 206,
from the Mughal Empire to Iberia 37- rooster 208-209
38; 45-49 sharks 136, 140, 152, 156
as living specimens in curiosity sheep 64 n.39, 67, 99, 149, 207
cabinets 130-32 snakes 123, 208, 230
exotic 15, 19-26, 28, 59, 63, 64 n.39, 78, 82, storks 135, 230, 233
116, 127 n.16, 130, 134, 138, 144, 157-59, 161, tapir 85 n.78
180, 190 n.20, 192, 200, 231 toads 230
hunting of see hunting turtles 146 (sea); 195-96 (as automaton
in the work of Albrecht Dürer 135 with a human within), see also
in tapestries designed by Giulio Ro- staged animal combats
mano 96-97 n.103 vicuña (bezoar stone from) 83 n.74
individual species of whales 135, 173, 226-27
alligators 123, 130, 136, 140, 144, 152, 156 walrus 135
ants 118 wolves 181, 188, 192, 196-97, 205, 226
baboon 135 worms 62, 118
bats 158 zebra 17 n.6, 157 n.40
bear 156 (claw of); 208 see also Abada, armadillos, birds, bulls,
boar 126, 130, 188, 196 dogs, elephants, lions, rhinos
camels 50, 59, 63, 64 n.39, 97, 157 n.40, Juan de Arfe’s interest in 95-100, 96 n.103
208 on ships 51-52, 122-23
cats 86 n.82, 208 Philip II’s interest in 146-47
cheetahs 88 sense of territory 27, 29, 101-03
chickens 67, 120,-21, 192, 206 see also see also bezoar stones; hunting; taxidermy
theaters in early modern Spain Albert VII, Archduke of Austria 131, see also
cochineal 74, 132 curiosity cabinets
coyotes 138, 226-28, 230 Anthropocene 15-18, 27, 29, 35, 100, 215, 224
crab 135 Aranjuez see menageries
crocodile 156-57 The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara
deer 126, 130 Visiting a Collector’s Cabinet see curiosity
donkeys 30, 60, 67, 164, 204, 204 n.45, cabinets
205, 239, see also theaters in early Arfe y Villafañe, Juan de 6, 26-27, 35-36, 92,
modern Spain 93, 94-99, 125-26, 187, 188, 197, 200-03, 215
elk 74, 85, 92 basin for Scipio Africanus ewer 92 n.93, 93
foxes 158, 188, 196 n.95, 94, 99, 200-02
giraffes 88, 157, 157 n.40 De varia commensuración para la Esculptura
hogs (pigs) 67, 83 n.74, 121, 154 y Architectura (Varying Proportion for
horses 67, 97, 116, 118-19, 131, 140, 142, Sculpture and Architecture) 93-96
147-48, 150 (palfrey), 151-55, 162 see Descripción de la traça y ornato de la
also theaters in early modern Spain custodia de plata de la Santa Yglesia
ibex 135 de Sevilla (Description of the Form and
jaguars 122, 226, 185 Decoration of the Silver Monstrance in
llama 64, 64 n.39 the Holy Church of Seville) 94 n.96
Index 243
illustrator (for Argote’s Libro de la in frontispiece for Francesco Redi’s

Montería (The Book on Hunting) and Experiments on the Generation of
Nobleza de Andalucía (Nobility of Insects 160
Andalucía) 125-26 in frontispiece for States, Empires, and
impact on Diego de Velázquez 94 n.97 Principalities of the World (1621) by
Orpheus ewer (for Philip III) 95-96 Pierre d’Avity 142
Quilatador de oro, plata y piedras (Assayer in Gesner 147
of Gold, Silver, and Precious Stones) 94 in Hernández’s Novae Hispaniae
n.96 Thesaurus (The Natural History of
Scipio Africanus ewer (for Philip II) 93 New Spain) 146
n.95, 94-95, 99, 126, 200 in Jan van der Heyden’s Still-life with
Argote de Molina, Gonzalo 19, 25, 27, 69 n.53, Rarities 161
115-16, 123-24, 125, 126-32, 134, 136-37, 145, in L’Écluse 159-60
156-57, 159-60, 183-84, 186, 187, 189, 197, 200, in Philip II’s collection 146
201, 202, 203, 215, 223-24 Histoire Naturelle des Indes (The
as a soldier 116, 126, 134 Natural History of the Indies, Drake
collaboration with Arfe y Villafañe, Juan Manuscript) 120
de 125-26 in Joris Hoefnagel 138-39
connection to slave trade 202-03 in Medicinal History of the Things
Libro de la Montería (The Book on Hunt- Brought from Our West Indies (1571
ing) 126, 130, 183, 186-87, 202 and 1574) 137, 136-38
Arias Montano, Benito see curiosity cabinets in Medicinal History of the Things
armadillos 13, 15-16, 18-19, 25, 27, 84, 115-20, 121, Brought from Our West Indies
122-24, 130-31, 134-36, 138-42, 144, 145, 146-47, (1580) 138
152-57, 159-63, 215, 224 on household objects 141-42
as armoured horse 153-54 on maps by Claes Janszoon Visscher,
as confused with rhinos 139-40 Diogo Ribeiro and Descelier 141,
as connected to European belittlement of 141 n.27
American fauna 161 in pre-Columbian America 118
as food source for indigenous people and nine-banded 117, 117 n.2, 138, 140-41, 147,
Europeans 119-21 162
as little pig with lizard tale 154 non-standard Spanish names for
as living specimens in menageries 122 ayotochli; aiotochtli (gourd rabbit) 118-
as museum specimens 123-24, 157, 160 19, 122
as symbol of cachicamo 118
agricultural fertility 118 chupa 120
America 140-44 (equine caricature); gurre, herre-herre (hairy-hairy) 118
144-45 (aquatic beast) jueche 119
how nature favors the weak 119 peludo 118
as threatening aquatic beast 136, 144-45, quirquinchos (kirkinchu) 118
152 siete carnes (seven meats) 119
diet of 118 tatú 159
etymology 152-54 toche 119
Fuleco 18-19, 26-27, 115-20, 122-29, 131-32, on ships 122-23
134, 136-39, 144-46, 152-53, 155-63, 224 other names for
geographical range 117 tatou (French) 159
giant (glyptodon) 161 tatu peba (Portuguese) 120
images tatovai (French) 120
America by Maarten de Vos 140-42, 141 six-banded (Euphractus sexcintus) 19, 138
Amerique by Stafano della Bella 142, tail as a cure 138-39
143 three-banded 147
as Dürer’s Rhinoceros 139-40 armor 22-28, 43, 56, 62, 71-72, 80-81, 89, 90,
as America in sculpture by Gian 91-92, 99, 115-16, 119, 124, 130-32, 135, 140, 142,
Lorenzo Bernini 144-45, 145 145, 147-50, 151, 152-55, 159-62, 199, 215, 224,
by Frans Post 120-21, 121 232-34
in Archduke Ernst of Austria’s royal as the hide of Rhinoceros by Dürer 23-25,
victory arch 143-44 147, 153
in A Book of Diverse Animals, Birds, and as image of the planet’s most spectacular
Reptiles 138-41, 139 form of live theater 148
as engraved with Rhinoceros by Dürer 151-52 parrots 59, 122-23, 140, 146
bards (horse armor) peacocks 59
as the inspiration for interest in quetzal birds 28, 223, 226, 228-32, 234
armadillos 152-55 stork 135
Horse Armor of Maximilian I 152 swallows 59
in the form of a unicorn or rhino 151 Boalo see bulls
Tournament Armor of Charles V 150, 151 A Book of Diverse Animals, Birds, and Reptiles
designs by Dürer 22, 24 see armadillos
designs by Hans Burgkmair 22-23, 51 The Book of Garments (Trachtenbuch) see
designs by Desiderius Weiditz, Christoph
Helmschmid 199-200 Books of emblems 50, 78-79, 99, 142, 230; see
engraving of Golden Fleece on 149 also rhinos
Philip II’s interest in 25, 148-52 Borcht, Pieter van der 142-44
Maximilian I’s interest in 22 Buen Retiro Park see zoos; staged animal
with Hercules engravings 150, 152 combat
see also armadillos Buffon, Georges 59, 161
Arrival of Vasco da Gama to Calicut or Cochin Buitrago see bulls
see rhinos; lions Bullbaiting 200
ayotochli (gourd rabbit) see armadillos bulls 15-16, 18-19, 26-28, 38, 60, 63, 95, 97-98,
126-27, 173-82, 188, 190-94, 196-200, 201,
Babur, ruler of Mughal empire see rhinos 202-04, 206-17, 224, 226
Baburnama (the Book of Babur) see rhinos and national pride and race 201-03, 215
Badiano, Juan, author of Aztec medicine and Philip II 178-79, 200
manual 138 and Philip III 179-80
Balthasar Carlos, prince of Asturias and son of anti-bullfighting proponents 178
Philip IV 192-93 arenas for
Barbary lions see lions Benavente 198
bards (horse armor) see armor finca de la Tela (the terrain of the Cloth,
Bazán, Alvaro de, Marquess of Santa Cruz and Madrid) or Parque (Park) 193, 195
commander-in-chief of the Spanish naval Hertz Theatre in Vienna 215
forces 156 Pamplona 176-77
Becerril see bulls Plaza de Toros (Madrid) 215
Bella, Stefano della see armadillos Plaza Mayor (Madrid) 65, 179, 193-94,
Belon, Perre 123 197, 207
Benavente see bulls Real Maestranza (Seville) 215
Bernaldo de Quirós, Francisco Antonio 207 Vauxhall (London) 215
El toreador don Bibilés (Don Babilés the Santa María Plaza (Guadalajara) 198
Bullfighter) 207 as a hunting spectacle 196-197
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo see Fountain with Four as both exotic and indigenous 21, 28, 200
Rivers as the principal popular spectacle in early
bezoar stones 83, 83 n.74, 132 modern Spain 203, 207-14
biogeography 15, 17, 19, 26, 28, 35, 115-16, 173, breeding of 177, 180-81
223-28 centrality in material culture outside of
in teaching 223-28 Spain 197-200
birds 17 n.5, 21, 43 n.9, 47, 50, 59, 63, 64 n.39, connection to religious spectacle 178
77-78, 122, 127 n.16, 130, 138-41, 158-59, 176, horns as symbolic of Islamic Turks 211-12,
188, 192, 197, 199, 204, 206, 216, 230-31, see 214
also theaters in early modern Spain importance of the Jarama river region for
birds of paradise 17 n.5, 159 breeding 175-76, 180-81
blue-bellied roller 135, 146, also see Dürer, images of
Albrecht painting by Laethem, Jacob van (in the
bullfinch 59 Spanish city of Benavente) 198
ducks 59 as part of hunting scenes by Jan van der
eagles 95, 197, 230 Straet (Stradanus) 199
flamingos 59, 157 n.40 print published by Galle 198-99
hummingbirds copper engraving by Jan Cooaert 198
ibis 157 n.40 Antonio Tempesta’s broadsheet 176
ostriches 59, 139, 157 n.40, 183, 190 as woodcut by Arfe in Argote’s Book on
owl 135 Hunting 200, 201
Index 245
on Arfe’s ewer and basin 97-98, 200-01 El retablo de las maravillas (The Marvelous
on shield of Philip II’s parade Puppet Show) 28, 175, 216-17
armor 200 La casa de los celos (The House of
Vista del Alcázar Real y entorno del Jealousy) 205
Puente de Segovia (The View of the La gran sultana Doña Catalina de Oviedo
Royal Alcázar and the Environs of the (The Great Sultana) 89
Segovia Bridge) 196 La Numancia (The Siege of Numantia) 206
in ancient Minoan culture 175 Pedro de Undemalas (Pedro, the Great
proper names of Pretender) 206
Caramelo 175 chaīmalli (coyote shield) see feather shields
Fernando 175 Charles V 22, 25, 62, 74, 77, 80-81, 88, 94, 97,
Jarama 18-19, 26, 28, 130, 173-82, 190-93, 128, 138, 148, 150, 151, 153, 178, 184, 194, 198,
195-98, 201-03, 208-14, 216, 224 228, 233-34
Spanish terms relating to see also armor bards (horse armor)
corrida 57 n.21, 178-79, 196-98, 99 China 71-75, 91, 122, 159, 233
n.36, 200 Chunee see elephants
cuchilladas 179 cimarrones (fugitives) 202, 203
encierro (in town of Cuéllar) 177, 179 cattle 202-03
n.7 dogs 202-03
mandón 176 slaves 202-03
rejón 198-99 Circe, La (Circe) see Vega, Lope de
toros bravos 176-77 Clara see rhinos
place names in Spain related to Clusius, Carolus see L’Écluse, Charles de
Becerril 175 Cock, Enrique, chief archer for Philip II 152,
Boalo 175 178-79, 196
Buitrago 175 coconuts 83
Torote 175 Codazzi, Viviano see Perspectival View of a
transporting across land 176-77 Roman Amphitheater
see also Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande Collaert, Adrian 43 n.9, 141
(The Amphitheater of Philip the Great); coloquio de los perros, El (The Colloquy of the
theaters in early modern Spain Dogs) see Cervantes, Miguel de
Burgkmair, Hans 22, 51, 134-35; see also armor, Columbus, Chistopher 49, 75
rhinos Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India
Burningham, Bruce 174 (Colloquies of the Remedies and Drugs from
India) see D’Orta, Garcia
caballero de Olmedo, El (The Gentleman from conde Partinuplés, El (Count Partinuples) by
Olmedo) see Vega, Lope de Ana Caro see theaters in early modern
Cabrera de Córdoba, Luis 79, 179, 190, 191 n.22 Spain
cachicamo see armadillos Contentious Diálogos de contención entre la
Cairo see menageries Milicia y la Ciencia (Dialogues between the
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro Military and Science) see Núñez de Velasco,
Judas Macabeo (Judas Maccabeus) 205 Francisco
La pedidora (The Lady That Asks) 207 Cooaert, Jan see bulls
Mojiganga del Parnaso (Parnassus corral see theaters in early modern Spain
Interlude) 85, 204 n.45 corrida see bullfighting
Cantigas de Santa María (Songs of Holy Mary) Cortés, Hernán 77-78, 121, 228, 230
see Alphonso the Wise Cosimo I see the Medici family
Caramelo see bulls coyotes see animals
Caro, Ana 204 n.45, 206 cuchilladas see bulls
Casa de Campo see zoos Cuelvis, Jakob 60
casa de los celos, La (The House of Jealousy) see Thesoro Chorographico de las Espannas
Cervantes, Miguel de (Chorographic Treasure of the Spanish
Castillo, David R. 225 Kingdoms) 60
Catherine of Austria, Queen of Portugal 38, Cull, Laura 173
Cervantes, Miguel de 28, 67, 86, 89, 162, 175, curiosity cabinets (curio cabinets) 23, 115, 130,
186, 188-89, 204-06, 216-17, 223 132, 142, 158, 194, 224
Don Quixote 40, 67, 86, 162, 180, 186, 188-89 as armoires (guardarropas) 162, 162 n.46
El coloquio de los perros (The Colloquy of the as humanist gathering place 127, 158, 160
Dogs) 67, 206 as museum and place of the muses 127
as theatres of the world 129-130, 157 Kitmir 208

in the homes of Lionel (Little Lion) (owner Philip II and
Aldrovandi, Ulisse 124 Isabel de Valois) 187, 223
Argote de Molina, Gonzalo 131 Mahoma (owner Día Sánchez de
Arias Montano, Benito 130 Carvajal) 224
Enríquez de Ribera, Fadrique 128 Manchado (owner Philp II) 223
Enríquez de Ribera, Per Afán 128 Don Diego see elephants; Diego, son of Philip
Gessner, Conrad 159 II of Spain
Giovio, Paolo 128, 134 Don Quixote see Cervantes, Miguel de
Hubert, Robert 160 dragon blood (red resin from plants) 136
Imperato, Ferrante 123 Duarte Cerón, Francisco 146
L’Écluse, Charles de (Clusius, Duchesse Eleonora de Medici see the Medici
Carolus) 157-60 family
Mal Lara, Juan de 127, 127 n.17, 159 Durán, Agustín 181
Monardes, Nicolás 132 Durán, Diego 231
Worm, Ole 123 Dürer, Albrecht 15, 22, 23, 24-26, 28, 43-44,
Vincent, Levinus 122 n.12 80-82, 84, 99, 134-35, 153, 156, 158
Zamorano, Rodrigo 124 as sixteenth-century authority of true-to-
paintings of life animal image 24, 135
America by Jan van Kessel 142 gardens at Warande 135
The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Wing of a European Roller 135, 146
Visiting a Collector’s Cabinet 131 see also Philip II, rhinos
Still-life with Rarities (Jan van der
Heyden) 161 earth ethics 15-16, 29
see also animals Ecce Homo see feather art
elephants 15-19, 26, 28, 35, 37-40, 41, 42-43, 47,
Daniel in the Den of Lions by Peter Paul Rubens 49, 53, 59-63, 65, 67-69, 72-77, 82, 87-89, 90,
see lions 92, 96-100, 122 n.12, 131, 134, 144, 157 n.40,
D’Avity, Pierre see armadillos 180, 184, 191, 197, 200, 205, 214-16, 224
De varia commesuración para la Esculptura y allusions to
Architectura (Varying Proportion for Sculpture in Góngora poem 69
and Architecture) see Arfe y Villafañe, Juan de in Miguel de Cervantes 89
diablo cojuelo, El (The Limping Devil) see Vélez in Sebastián de Covarrubias 57, 69, 99
de Guevara, Luis and the moriscos 87
Día Sánchez de Carvajal see dogs and the Mughals 37, 45, 47
Día y noche de Madrid (Madrid at Day and and the Ottoman Turks 86-88
Night) see Santos, Francisco as animal of peace 98-99
Dialogo dell’impresse militare et amoris as gifts 19, 27, 37, 38, 38 n.4, 39, 40, 42, 47,
(Dialogue of Military and Love Emblems) by 60, 70 (tusks of), 71, 73
Paulo Giovio see rhinos as images in floats in parades 76, 87, 144
Diálogo de las empresas militares y amorosas as natural rival to the rhinoceros 58-59 (in
(Dialogue of Military and Love Emblems) by Pliny and Lope de Vega), 82 (in Villalva)
Rovillé, Guillaume see rhinos as paired with the rhinoceros in Columbus,
Diálogos de la montería (Dialogues about Marco Polo, and Mendoza 75
Hunting) see Argote de Molina,Gonzalo as paired with the rhinoceros in art and
Diálogo del hierro y sus grandezas y excelencias architecture 75-76
(Dialogue about Iron, Its Greatness and as possessing language 101
Excellence) see Monardes, Nicolás as taxidermy specimens 60-61
Diego, Prince of Asturias and Portugal, fourth as war animal 89-91
son of Philip II of Spain 38-40, 58 n.24; see images of
also elephants of Philip’s 1562 elephant (by Jans
The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Mollihns I) 40, 41
Empire of Guiana see Raleigh, Sir Walter on ewer by Juan de Arfe 92, 97
dogs 17 n.3, 45, 67, 86 n.82, 126, 127 n.16, 131, in Cristóbal Acosta 90
186-87, 189, 192, 196, 199-206, 223-24; see also jawbone of 157 n.41
theaters in early modern Spain names of 40, 42
Amadis (owner Lorenzo Suárez de Chunee 180
Figueroa) 224 Don Diego 40
Bocanegra (owner Philip II) 223 Don Pedro 72
Index 247
Hanno 40, 49, 53, 60, 70 Ferdinando I, Grand Duke, see Medici family
Hansken 60-61, 63 Ferdinando II, Grand Duke, see Medici family
Hawa’i (owner Akbar) 37 Ferrer de Valdecebro, Andrés see rhinos
Hawa’i (owner Philip II) 18, 19, 26-28, finca de la Tela (the terrain of the Cloth) or
35-45; 47, 49-51, 53, 55-56, 59, 62-63, Parque (Park) see bulls, theaters in early
66, 68-72, 74-76, 78, 86-89, 92, 122, modern Spain
184-85, 200, 208, 214, 224 Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of
Süleyman 38 n.4, 60 Extinction see van Dooren, Thomas
owned by Philip II Forma e natura e costume de lo Rinoceronte
gift for Hideyoshi (Don Pedro) 72-73 (The Shape, the Nature, and the Way of the
gift for Prince Carlos (1562) 38-39, 41 Rhinoceros) by Giacomo Penni, Giovanni
gift for Prince Carlos (1551) 38 see rhinos
in Antón Martín Hospital in Madrid and Fountain with Four Rivers by Gian Lorenzo
gift for Henry IV (Hawa’i) 68 Bernini
on ships 49-54 masterpiece of sacred theater and Europe’s
see also mahouts mapping of world 144
Elizabeth, queen of England 42 see also armadillos
Elogios o vidas breves de los caballeros antiguos Fray Bernardino de Sahagún 228
y modernos, ilustres en valor de Guerra que Fuleco see armadillos
están al vivo pintados en el museo de Paolo Funes y Mendoza, Diego de 57, 92
Iovio (Praises or Short Lives of Historical
and Modern Noble Men Shown as Valorous game of canes ( juego de cañas) 178, 194, 198
Soldiers that Are Painted Alive in Paolo Ganda 43, 49-53, 90, 92 n.94
Giovio’s museum) see Giovio, Paolo as hobbled 50-51
Empresas espirituales y morales (Spiritual and images of
Moral Emblems) by Villava, Juan Francisco Dürer, Albrecht 23
de see rhinos Giacomo Penni, Giovanni 52
encierro see bulls Burgkmair, Hans 51
environmental cultural studies 30 n.12, see also rhinos
173-74, 225-26 Galle, Philip
importance of comedy in 117 n.1, 162 publisher of Venationes Ferarum, Auium,
epilepsy 84-85 Piscium; Pugnae bestiariorum: & mutae
Equestrian Portrait of Carlos V see Sánchez bestiarum (Hunts of Wild Animals, birds
Coello, Alonso and Fishes) 176, 188, 197, 199
Experiments on the Generation of Insects see see also Abada, bulls, lions
armadillos Gallinero see menageries
ewers 92, 93, 94-97, 98, 99-100, 126, 200-01 Gargiulo, Domenico see Perspectival View of a
in early modern Spain 92 n.93 Roman Amphitheater
in European museums 92 n.93 Gaspar de la Fuente, son of Gaspar de la Fuente
see also Arfe y Vallafañe, Juan de see Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande (The
Amphitheater of Philip the Great)
feather art 227-28, 230-35 Gaspar Pimentel y Benavides, the Fourth
amantecayotl (feather mosaics) 227 Marquis de Javalquinto see Anfiteatro de
bird specimens as part of 231 Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip
miters 232 the Great)
the mosaic Ecce Homo 232 General Hospital see rhinos; early modern
the mosaic of a female saint with a cross in theaters in Spain
her hand 231 Géricault, Théodore see lions
the mosaic Saint Jerome 231 Gesner, Conrad 24, 123, 135-36, 140, 147, see
see also gifts also curiosity cabinets
feather shields Ghislain de Busbecq, Ogier 88
as legacy of Hernando de Vega 230 Giacomo Penni, Giovanni 53
as legacy of Spanish conquistador Don Forma e natura e costume de lo Rinoceronte
Julián 232 (The Shape, the Nature, and the Way of
as part of Mexica collections 231 the Rhinoceros) 53
chaīmalli (coyote shield) 227-28, 227 see also rhinos
Philip II’s adarga 228-35, 229, see also Islam gifts
Fernández de Enciso, Martín see armadillos African slaves as 58 n.24
Ferdinand II, archduke of Tyrol see menageries as feather art 232
in international diplomacy (Iberia versus Herrera, Gabriel Alonso de 177

Japan and China) 70-74, 157 n.40 Obra de Agricultura (Treatise on
from emperor Wanli (Ming dynasy) to Agriculture) 177
Iberia 74-75 Hideyoshi, Toyotomi, chief Imperial minister of
spices 53 Japan 72-73
see also animals, Abada, elephants, lions, Historia natural y moral de las indias (Natural
rhinos and Moral History of the Indies) see Acosta,
Giovio, Paolo 50, 79-81, 128, 134 José de
collector of Dürer’s Rhinoceros 134 Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil
Elogios o vidas breves de los caballeros (Voyage to Brazil) by Léry, Jean de see
antiguos y modernos, ilustres en valor armadillos
de Guerra que están al vivo pintados Histoire Naturelle des Indes (The Natural
en el museo de Paolo Iovio (Praises or History of the Indies) 120, 153, 202; see also
Short Lives of Historical and Modern armadillos
Noble Men Shown as Valorous Soldiers Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y
that Are Painted Alive in Paolo Giovio’s costumbres del gran reyno de la China
museum) 128 (History of the Most Notable Things, Rituals,
Gobierno general, moral y político hallado en and Customs of the Great Kingdom of China)
las fieras y animales silvestres (The General see González de Mendoza, Juan
Governing Morals and Politics Found in A History of Portuguese Kings by Andrade
Beasts and Wild Animals) by Ferrer de Caminha, Pedro de see rhinos
Valdecebro, Andrés see rhinos Honorato Pomar, Jaime 147
Góngora, Luis de 69, 211-12, 214 Horse Armor of Maximilian I see armor
Soledades (Solitudes) 211 horses see animals, armadillos
González de Mendoza, Juan 74-75, 92 Hospital de la Caridad see theaters in early
Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y modern Spain
costumbres del gran reyno de la China Hospital de la Santísima Trinidad see theaters
(History of the Most Notable Things, Ritu- in early modern Spain
als, and Customs of the Great Kingdom of Hospital de la Señora de Gracia see theaters in
China) 74-75 early modern Spain
González de Rosende, Antonio see Anfiteatro de Hospital de Nuestra Señora de Gracia see
Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip theaters in early modern Spain
the Great) Hospital de Nuestra Señora del Pecador see
Gran Sultana, La see Cervantes, Miguel de theaters in early modern Spain
Gresham College London see museums hospitals 19, 26, 35, 37, 42, 57, 63-70, 85-87, 224
Guadalajara, Marcos de 87 as a place for observing animals 63, 83-87
Memorable Expulsión y justísimo destierro as a place for observing the mentally ill 86
de los Moriscos de España (Commemora- as a place for the poor and sick 63, 66
tion of the Expulsion and the Most Just see also theaters in early modern Spain
Exile of the Moriscos of Spain) 87 hunting 21, 27, 45, 46, 60, 69, 101, 121, 124,
gurre see armadillos 126-27, 130-31, 176, 183, 186-87, 191-92, 197,
Guzmán, Gaspar de, Count Duke of Oli- 199-202, 203, 205, 216, 223-24, 226
vares 193-94, 214 see also Abada, animals, Arfe y Villafañe,
Guzmán y Ribera, Don Enrique de 193 Argote de Molina, bulls, Galle, lions,
rhinos, Velázquez
Hannibal 89, 97
Hanno see elephants Imperato, Ferrante see curiosity cabinets
Hansken see elephants The Imperial Book of Festival see staged animal
Hawa’i see elephants combats
Head of a Lioness by Géricault, Théodore see lions Imprese morali et heroiche (Moral and Heroic
Heise, Ursula 27, 162 Emblems) by Simeoni, Grabiele see rhinos
Helmschmid, Desiderius see armor Inscriptions or Titles of the Most Ample
Henry IV, King of France 42-43, 184 Theater that Houses Exemplary Objects and
Hercules 25, 150, 152, 155, 190 Exceptional Images of the Entire World see
see also Philip II, armor Quiccheberg, Samuel
Hernández, Francisco de 146, 159 Isabella Clara Eugenia, Sovereign of Spanish
Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus (The Natural Netherlands see curiosity cabinets
History of New Spain) 146 Isabel de Valois, Queen and third spouse of
herre-herre see armadillos Philip II 186
Index 249
Islam 87-88, 159, 184, 202 n.40, 210-12, 230, lions 15-19, 23, 27-28, 35, 42 n.7, 50, 63, 68,
233-34 87-88, 90, 95-97, 98, 126, 135, 144, 150, 152,
as represented on feather shield 230, 233-34 154-55, 173-74, 181-86, 187, 188-93, 196-97,
Philip II’s attitude toward 233-35 199-200, 204, 206-08, 210, 212, 215-16, 223-24,
see also bulls 233, see also theaters in early modern Spain
Istanbul 88-89, 123, 182-83, 185-86, 188, 207; as intentional subjects 189
see also menageries as Ottoman gifts to Europeans 184-86
Barbary (Pantera leo leo; lion subspe-
jaguars see animals cies) 19, 97, 182-86, 188, 197, 206, 216
Jahangir, Prince Salim and the 4th Mughal connection with Hercules 155
emperor 47 connection with Spanish kingdom of
Jansz Post, Frans 120 León 233
Japanese diplomatic envoy in Spain 71-72 hunting of 184, 186
Javan (or lesser one-horned) rhino see rhinos images of
John II, king of Portugal 40 by Dürer 135
Juan de Dios 86-87 Daniel in the Den of Lions by Peter Paul
Juan of Austria see lions Rubens 183
Judas Macabeo (Judas Maccabeus) see Calderón Head of a Lioness by Théodore
de la Barca, Pedro Géricault 189
jueche see armadillos A Lion Hunt by Peter Paul Rubens 188
juego de cañas see game of canes woodcut by Juan de Arfe for Argote’s
Book on Hunting 187-88; 187
Kessel, Jan van see curiousity cabinets, images of wooduct published by Galle in
Khair-ed-Din (Red Beard) 184 Venationes Ferarum, Auium, Piscium;
Khevenhüller, Hans, ambassador for the Rudolf Pugnae bestiariorum: & mutae
II in the Spanish court 58, 61-64, 68 bestiarum (Hunts of Wild Animals,
Kircher, Athanasius 129 birds and Fishes) 188, 198-99
Kitmir see dogs, names of importance for the Medici family 182-83
Kutuz, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt see animals Juan de Austria and 183
Maghreb 18-19, 26, 144, 173-74, 181-82, 184-
landscapes of exclusion 28, 223, 235 86, 189-90, 193, 195-96, 203, 209, 212, 224
L’Écluse, Charles de (Clusius, Carolus) 21-22, lion tamers 185
116, 124, 155, 157-60 leonero 186, 188 n.15
Exoticorum libri decem (Ten Books of leontocomos 186
Exotica) 21, 157-58 near extinction of Barbary 182, 216
Laethem, Jacob van 198-99 stereotype of as man-eating 186-89
game of canes, painting of a 198 transportation of 185-87
see also bulls Lo fingido verdadero (Acting is Believing) see
León Pinelo, Diego see Anfiteatro de Felipe el Vega, Lope de
Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip the Lombard, Lambert 138, 147
Great) A Book of Diverse Animals, Birds, and
leonero see lions Reptiles 138-41
leontocomos see lions López de Mendoza y Pimentel, Iñigo 198
Léry, Jean de 120, 122-23 López Martínez, Antonio Luis 176-77
Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil López Medel, Tomás 118-20, 232
(Voyage to Brazil) 120 peligros de la ausencia, Los (The Dangers of
Libro de la descripción de verdaderos retratos Absence) see Vega, Lope de
de ilustres y memorables varones (Book Lotti, Cosme 195
of the Description of the True Portraits of Louis XIV, king of France 63, 142
Famous and Noteworthy Men) see Pacheco, Lucretia de León 86-87
Francisco de
Libro de la Montería (The Book on Hunting) see Mahoma see dogs
Argote de Molina, Gonzalo mahouts (nair) 40-42, 45, 49, 53-56, 58, 60, 68,
Linschoten, Jan Huyghen van 73 72-73, 89, 92 n.94
Voyage ofte schipvaert van Jan Huygen names of
van Lischoten naer Oos ofte Portugales Dharma and Drama 40
Indien (The Voyage of Jan Huygen van Gaspar 40
Linscholten to the East Indies) 73-74 Oçem 40
A Lion Hunt by Peter Paul Rubens see lions Mahmet 40
Maravall, José Antonio 197 Minsheu, John 58, 127

makeshift (temporary) theatres see theaters in Mira de Amescua, Antonio see Anfiteatro de
early modern Spain Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip
Mal Lara, Juan de 127, 146, 155, 159; see also the Great)
curiosity cabinets Mocquet, Jean 123
Málaga see theaters in early modern Spain Mojiganga del Parnaso (Parnassus Interlude)
Mamluk Sultan of Egypt 157 n.40 see Calderón de la Barca, Pedro
mandón see bulls Molina, Tirso de 180, 204 n.45, 206-07
Manuel I, king of Portugal 49, 53, 70 Marta la piadosa (Marta the Pious) 180
Maravall, José Antonio 197 La mujer que manda en casa (The Woman
Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Who Runs the House) 206
Historical Structure 197 Santa Juana (Saint Joan) 207
Maria Manuela, princess of Portugal 38 Mollihns I, Jans 40; see also elephants
marqués de Mantua, El (Marquis from Mantua) Monardes, Nicolás 25, 27, 84, 115-16, 118, 127,
see Vega, Lope de 130, 132, 133, 134-36, 137, 138-40, 144-45, 147,
Marta la piadosa (Marta the Pious) see Molina, 152-62
Tirso de as a businessman 27, 116, 132, 134, 156, 157
Marvin, Garry 180-81 connection to slave trade 132
Maximilian I, archduke of Austria, German Diálogo del hierro y sus grandezas y
king, and Holy Roman emperor 22, 24, excelencias (Dialogue about Iron, Its
152; see also armor Greatness and Excellence) 133
Maximilian II, Holy Roman emperor 60, 76 Primera y segunda y tercera pares de la
Medici family Historia medicinal, de las cosas que se
Catherine de Medici 89 traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales
Cosimo I de Medici 76, 176, 183, (Medicinal History of the Things Brought
Duchesse Eleonora de Medici 157 n.40 from Our West Indies) 27, 116, 132,
Grand Duke Ferdinando I 193 134-36, 139, 152-53, 155
Grand Duke Ferdinando II 61 Monforte y Herrera, Fernando 76
Memorable Expulsión y justísimo destierro de Relación de las fiestas que ha hecho el
los Moriscos de España (Commemoration of Colegio Imperial de la Compañía de Jesús
the Expulsion and the Most Just Exile of the de Madrid en la canonización de San
Moriscos of Spain) see Guadalajara, Marcos Ignacio de Loyola y S. Francisco Xavier
de (News about the Parade that Imperial
menageries 35 n.1, 37, 45, 59-60, 63, 71, 78, 100, College of the Company of Jesus Held in
115, 123, 129, 183-83, 185 Madrid for the Canonization of Saint
Alcázar (Segovia) 150 n.30, 184 Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis
Ambras Castle, Innsbruck (Ferdinand II of Xavier) 76
Tyrol) 71 The Monkey Painter see Teniers, David
Aranjuez (Philip II) 59, 63, 78, 175-76 Monserrate, Antonio 37
Belvedere Park (Pope Gregory XIII) 71 museums 18, 23, 45 n.11, 115-16, 124, 128, 150
Cairo 88, 182, 185 n.30, 158, 160-61, 224
capital city of Qin dynasty 21 etymology (as connected to the
Florence (Medici) 60, 188, 192-93, 195-96 muses) 127-28, 160
Gallinero (Chicken Coop, historic aviary in Gresham College London 61 n.32, 160
the Buen Retiro) 192 history of 18, 23, 116, 150 n.30, 160, 224
Ghent (Charles V) 183 rise of empiricism 156-61
in Assyrian empire 100 see also curiousity cabinets
Istanbul 88-89, 123, 182-83, 185-86, 188, 207 mujer que manda en casa, La (The Woman Who
Tenochtitlan (House of Animals) 77-78, 122 Runs the House) see Molina, Tirso de
Versailles 51, 59, 63 Muzaffar Shah II, Sultan of the Muzaffarid
Warande gardens (Ghent) 135 dynasty 49
Méndez de Loyola, Pedro see Anfiteatro de
Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip nair see mahouts
the Great) Nelson, Bradley J. 225
Menezes, Diogo de, Portuguese viceroy in Nobleza de Andalucía (Nobility of Andalucía)
Goa 47, 49 see Argote de Molina; Gonzalo
Miguel EN Cervantes: El retablo de las maravil- Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus (The Natural
las by Rubín, David and Miguelanxo Prado History of New Spain) see Hernández,
(graphic novel) 217 Francisco de
Index 251
Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre Philip II, king of Spain 22, 25-28, 35-43, 47,
(New Philosophy of Human Nature) by 58, 60-75, 77-82, 85 n.79, 86-89, 93, 95, 97
Sabuco, Oliva see elephants, descriptions of n.101, 98-100, 115-16, 124, 126, 128-32, 134,
Núñez de Velasco, Francisco 57 n.21, 226 145-56, 149, 158-62, 178-79, 183, 186-87, 190,
Contentious Diálogos de contención entre la 193, 196, 199, 200-01, 207, 215, 223-24, 226,
Milicia y la Ciencia (Dialogues between 228-35
the Military and Science) 57 n.21, 226 as collector 25, 146-152, 158-59
Numancia, La (The Siege of Numantia) see as Hercules 150, 152, 155
Cervantes, Miguel de as self-promoter of image of a planetary
ruler 25, 81, 99-100, 148, 202, 234
Obra de Agricultura (Treatise on Agriculture) see also armor, public spectacles
see Herrera, Gabriel Alonso de Philip III of Spain 61-62, 95, 179, 184, 190-91,
Oçem see mahouts 193
Officinae epitome (or Officina) by Jean Tixier da Philip IV of Spain 27, 40, 173, 181, 184-86,
Ravisi see rhinos, descriptions of 190-95, 197, 203-04, 209-11, 213-14, 226
orientalism 74-77 Piazza della Signoria (Florence) see staged
Orta, Garcia Da 49, 83-84, 134 animal combats
Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India Piccinini, Filippo see Vega, Lope de
(Colloquies of the Remedies and Drugs Pimentel de Herrera, Juan Alonso, governor of
from India) 83, 84, 134 the Duchy of Milan 183
Ortelius, Abraham 130 Pires, Tomé 159
Theater of the World (bundle of maps) 130 Suma Oriental (Account of the East, from the
Ōtomo Sōrin, Japanese lord 71 Red Sea to China, written in Malacca and
Ottoman Turks 37, 49, 234; see also elephants India in 1512-1515) 159
Oviedo, Alonso de see Anfiteatro de Felipe el Pius V, Pope 183
Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip the Plaza Mayor (Madrid) 65, 179, 193-94, 197, 207;
Great) see also bulls
Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández de 136 n.23, 152-54 Pliny 58, 91, 157, 184
Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias Polo, Marco 50, 74-75; see also elephants,
(Summary of the Natural History of the rhinos
Indies) 153 Primera y segunda y tercera pares de la Historia
medicinal, de las cosas que se traen de
Pacheco, Francisco de 94 n.97, 125-26, 128, 131 nuestras Indias Occidentales (Medicinal
Libro de la descripción de verdaderos History of the Things Brought from Our West
retratos de ilustres y memorables Indies) see Monardes, Nicolás
varones (Book of the Description of the Prado, Miguelanxo see Miguel EN Cervantes: El
True Portraits of Famous and Noteworthy retablo de las maravillas
Men) 126, 128 psychoanalysis 15
pageants 23, 25, 77, 148, 150, 155, 196, 233; see public spectacles 26, 36, 70, 76, 198
also public spectacles in celebration of Carlos V 178
Pamplona see bulls in celebration of Ernst of Austria 144
Parque (Madrid) 193-94 in celebration of Maximilian II 76
Pasha Saqizli, Mehmed 183 in celebration of Philip II 87-88, 148, 152,
Patio de la Leonera (The Lion Patio) see staged 152 n.32, 178-79, 196
animal combats in celebration of Philip III 179
pedidora, La (The Lady That Asks) see Calderón Ottoman 208
de la Barca, Pedro Roman emperors in 190, 190 n.20
Pedro de Osorio, illegitimate son of Isabel de see also Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande
Osorio and Philip II 40; see also elephants (The Amphitheater of Philip the Great),
Pedro de Urdemalas (Pedro, the Great armadillos, bulls, elephants, lions,
Pretender) see Cervantes, Miguel de pageants, rhinos
Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar, José see Anfiteatro de public sphere in early modern Spain 27, 35,
Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip 36 n.2
the Great)
peludo see armadillos quetzal see birds
performance studies 27, 28, 173, 175 Quetzalcoatl 230
Perspectival View of a Roman Amphitheater by Quevedo, Francisco de see Anfiteatro de Felipe
Viviano Codazzi and Domenico Gar- el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip the
giulo 191, 193 Great)
Quiccheberg, Samuel 129 Diálogo de las empresas militares y

Inscriptions or Titles of the Most Ample amorosas (Dialogue of Military and
Theater that Houses Exemplary Objects Love Emblems): 79-81
and Exceptional Images of the Entire Empresas espirituales y morales
World 129 (Spiritual and Moral Emblems) by
quirquinchos (kirkinchu) see armadillos Juan Francisco de Villalva 81-82
Gobierno general, moral y político
Rabat Zoo see zoos hallado en las fieras y animales
Raleigh, Sir Walter 140 silvestres (The General Governing
The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Morals and Politics Found in Beasts
Empire of Guiana 140 and Wild Animals) by Andrés Ferrer
Real Maestranza see bulls de Valdecebro 78
Redi, Francesco in captivity in Europe 43
Experiments on the Generation of Javan (or lesser one-horned rhino) 45
Insects 160 popularity of printed image of 89, 91
rejón see bulls transported on ships 49-54
Relación de las fiestas que ha hecho el Colegio see also Abada, armadillos, Albrecht Dürer,
Imperial de la Compañía de Jesús de Madrid Ganda
en la canonización de San Ignacio de Loyola Rodríguez de León Pinelo, Antonio see Anfitea-
y S. Francisco Xavier (News about the Parade tro de Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of
that Imperial College of the Company of Jesus Philip the Great)
Held in Madrid for the Canonization of Saint Rodríguez Rubí, Tomás 215
Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis Xavier) Spanish Self Portraits 215
see Monforte y Herrera, Fernando Rojas, Agustín de 204
relics 82-83, 85, 146 Rovillé, Guillaume see rhinos
Remedios específicos de la India Oriental y de la Royal Indian Hospital see theaters in early
América (Specific Remedies from East India modern Spain
and the Americas) see Cristóbal Acosta Rubens, Peter Paul see lions
retablo de las maravillas, El (The Marvelous Rubín, David see Miguel EN Cervantes: El
Puppet Show) see Cervantes, Miguel de retablo de las maravillas
rhinos (rhinoceroses) 15-16, 18-19, 21, 23, 24-26, Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor 61-63, 71, 83
28, 35-36, 40, 43-45, 47, 49-50, 51, 52-64,
67-70, 72, 74-85, 91-92, 96-98, 99-101, 134-35, Sabuco, Oliva 101
138-40, 142, 144, 146-47, 150-51, 153, 158, 184, Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre
190, 200, 214-16, 224 (New Philosophy of Human Nature) 101
as favoring a water habitat 55 Saint Jerome see feather art
as gifts 47, 49, 53, 62 (horn of) Sánchez Coello, Alonso 74, 129, 233
as images on floats in parades 76-77, 144 Philip II in Parade Armor 149
as legendary rival to the elephant 82, 98 Equestrian Portrait of Carlos V 233
as paired with the elephant in art and Sande, Duarte de 71-72
architecture 75-76 Santa Juana (Saint Joan) see Molina, Tirso de
as paired with the elephant in Columbus, Santa María Plaza (Guadalajara) see bulls
Marco Polo, and Mendoza 75 Santos, Francisco 179
as touring spectacle 55, 63-64 Día y noche de Madrid (Madrid at Day and
bezoar stone from 83 n.74 Night) 179
Clara 53 n.15, 55-56, 63, 99 Sarmiento, Martín see Abada
etymology 44 Scipio Africanus, Publius Cornelius, Roman
greater one-horned Indian (Rhinoceros general 92, 93 n.95, 94-99, 126, 200
unicornis) 19, 44, 45, 92 n.94 (mistaken science, history of 156; see also curiosity
for African rhino); see also Abada, cabinets, museums, zoos
Ganda Sebastian, king of Portugal 49, 70, 85
horn, blood, hide, breath, and hoof as selva sin amor, La (The Forest without Love) see
cure 82-86 Vega, Lope de
hunting of in the Mughal empire 45-47, serrana de la Vera, La (The Mountain Woman
46, 48 from La Vera) see Vélez de Guevara, Luis
images of in books of emblems siete carnes (seven meats) see armadillos
Dialogo dell’impresse militare et Simancas, Juan de 136, 153
amoris (Dialogue of Military and Simeoni, Gabriele see rhinos
Love Emblems) 79-81 Sixtus V, Pope 232
Index 253
Soledades (Solitudes) see Góngora, Luis de birds as actors in 206

Spanish Self Portraits see Rodríguez Rubí, Tomás dogs as actors in 205-06
Spectacle and Topophilia: Reading Early Modern horses and donkeys as actors in 204-05
and Postmodern Hispanic Cultures see lion costumes in 206-07
Castillo, David R. and Bradley J. Nelson locations of permanent
staged animal combats 18, 26-28, 68, 173-75, Alcalá de Henares 65, 99
181, 188, 190-97, 204, 207-09, 212, 215-16 Alcázar palace 39, 60, 71, 191, 193-94
automatons in the shape of wooden turtles Almagro 65
that prod animals to fight 195-196 Casa de Comedias del Hospital
locations of (Málaga) 65
General Hospital (Madrid) 68 Cruz (Madrid):65-69, 192
Istanbul (as described in The Imperial Guadalajara 65, 99
Book of Festival) 188, 207-08 Hospital de la Caridad (Trujillo) 65
Patio de la Leonera (The Lion Hospital de la Santísima Trinidad
Patio) 192-93 (Salamanca) 65
Piazza della Signoria (Florence) 188 Hospital de la Señora de Gracia
organizers and spectators of (Murcia) 65
Cosimo I de Medici 196 Hospital de Nuestra Señora de Gracia
Guzmán, Gaspar de, Count Duke of (Tudela) 65
Olivares 193 Hospital de Nuestra Señora del Pecador
see also Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande (The (Toro) 65
Amphitheater of Philip the Great), bulls Princípe (Madrid) 65-68, 192
States, Empires and Principalities of the World Royal Indian Hospital (New Spain) 65
by Pierre d’Avity, see armadillos Zamora 65
Stevens, John 128, 140 locations of temporary (makeshift) 194-
Still-life with Rarities by Jan van der Heyden see 97; see also bulls, finca de la Tela (the
curiousity cabinets terrain of the Cloth) or Parque (Park)
Straet, Jan van der (Stradanus) see bulls relationship to hospitals 64-70
Süleyman, Sultan of Ottoman Empire 38 n.4, see also public sphere
60; see also elephants Thesoro Chorographico de las Espannas
Suma de Geografía (Sum of All Geography) see (Chorographic Treasure of the Spanish
Fernández de Enciso, Martín Kingdoms) see Cuelvis, Jakob
Suma Oriental (Account of the East, from the Red Thévet, André 121, 140
Sea to China, written in Malacca and India in Titian 233
1512-1515) see Pires, Tomé Tixier da Ravisi, Jean 44
Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias Officinae epitome (or Officina) 44
(Summary of the Natural History of the toche see armadillos
Indies) see Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández de toreador don Bibilés, El (Don Babilés the
Bullfighter) see Bernaldo de Quirós,
Teles de Menezes, Fernão, Philip II’s viceroy to Francisco Antonio
Goa 38 Toro see theaters in early modern Spain
Tempesta, Antonio 176, 234 toros bravos see bulls
Ten Books of Exotica see L’Cluse, Charles Torote see bulls
Teniers, David 163 Tournament Armor of Charles V see armor
The Monkey Painter 163 Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las indias
Tenochtitlan see menageries orientales (Treatise of the Drugs and Medicines
taxidermy 61 n.2 of the East Indies) see Acosta, Cristóbal
etymology 153 Trezzo, Jacopo da 58, 58 n.24
the description of the armadillo in Trujillo (Hospital de la Caridad) see theaters in
Monardes as 153 early modern Spain
Dürer’s Rhinoceros as artistic 152 Tudela see theaters in early modern Spain
also see Abada, elephants
theaters in early modern Spain Urreta, Luis de 91-92
as commercial enterprise (price of
admission) 67 Valdivielso, José de see Anfiteatro de Felipe el
as places for animal combat 190-197 Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip the Great)
bull costumes and references 207, 217 Valenzuela Fajardo, Pedro de see Anfiteatro de
corrales 64-65, 68-69, 174, 191-92, 201-02, Felipe el Grande (The Amphitheater of Philip
204-06, 211, 215, 224 the Great)
Valeriano, Pierio 230 Vissher, Janszoon see armadillos

van der Heyden, Jan Still-Life with Rarities see Vista del Alcázar Real y entorno del Puente de
armadillos; curiosity cabinets Segovia (The View of the Royal Alcázar and
van Dooren, Thomas 216 the Environs of the Segovia Bridge) see bulls
Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Vos, Maarten de see armadillos
Extinction 216 Voyage ofte schipvaert van Jan Huygen van
Vaca, Jusepa 211 Lischoten naer Oos ofte Portugales Indien
Vega, Lope de 58, 91, 177 n.2, 180, 186, 195, 203, (The Voyage of Jan Huygen van Linscholten
204 n.45, 205, 207, 211, 214 to the East Indies) see van Linschoten, Jan
Adonis y Venus (Adonis and Venus) 206 Huyghen
El caballero de Olmedo (The Gentleman from Voto, Antonio 61-62
Olmedo) 207
El marqués de Mantua (Marquis from Wagschal, Steven 157 n.40, 187, 189
Mantua) 206 Wanli, Emperor of the Ming dynasty (Zhu
La Circe (Circe) 214 Yijun) 74, 233
La selva sin amor (The Forest without Love), Warande see Dürer, Albrecht; menageries
an opera produced in collaboration with Weiditz, Christoph 50
Filippo Piccinini 195 Trachtenbuch (The Book of Garments) 50
Lo fingido verdadero (Acting is whales see animals
Believing) 91 Wing of a European Roller see Dürer, Albrecht
Los peligros de la ausencia (The Dangers of Wing of a Green Amazon Parrot see Dürer,
Absence) 206 Albrecht
Velázquez, Diego de 94 n.97, 197 Worm, Ole see curiosity cabinets
Philip IV Hunting Wild Boar 197
Vélez de Guevara, Luis 42, 59, 204 n.45, 205, Yamuna river see rhinos
207, 211-12
El alba y sol (The Dawn and the Sun) 212 zoos 17 n.4, 18, 21, 26-27, 29, 35-36, 59-60, 63,
El diablo cojuelo (The Limping Devil) 42 77, 78, 100-03, 122, 182, 224
La serrana de la Vera (The Mountain Woman as symbol of Philip II’s imperial power 78,
from La Vera) 205, 207, 211 100
see also Anfiteatro de Felipe el Grande (The history of 18, 21, 26, 27, 29, 35, 35 n.1, 36,
Amphitheater of Philip the Great) 78, 100, 100 n.111, 101, 122
Venationes Ferarum, Auium, Piscium; Pugnae locations of
bestiariorum: & mutae bestiarum (Hunts of Buen Retiro Park (Madrid) 35
Wild Animals, birds and Fishes) see Galle, lions Casa de Campo (Madrid) 19, 35, 40,
Versailles see menageries 60-61, 63
vida y hechos de Estebanillo González, La (Life Rabat (Morocco) 182
and Deeds of Estebanillo González) 180 Jardin des Plantes (Paris’s first public
Villava, Juan Francisco de see rhinos zoo) 59, 63
C O N N E C T E D H I S T O R I E S I N T H E E A R LY M O D E R N W O R L D
Animal spectacles are vital to a holistic appreciation of Spanish culture.

In Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain, Beusterien
christens five previously unnamed animals, each of which was a protagonist
in a spectacle: Abada, the rhinoceros; Hawa’i, the elephant; Fuleco, the
armadillo; Jarama, the bull; and Maghreb, the lion. In presenting and
analyzing their stories, Beusterien enriches our understanding of the role
of animals in the development of commercial theater in Spain and in the
modern bullfight. He also contributes to growing scholarly conversations on
the importance of Spain in the history of science by examining how animal
spectacles had profound repercussions on the emergence of the modern
zoo and natural history museum.
Combining scholarly content analysis and pedagogical sagacity, the book
has a broad appeal for scholars of the early modern Spanish Empire, animal
studies scholars, and secondary and postsecondary instructors looking for
engaging exercises and information for their Spanish language, culture, and
history students.
John Beusterien is Professor of Spanish and Coordinator of the Comparative

Literature Program at Texas Tech University.
“Transoceanic Animals recounts the stories of five itinerant animals who lived and died
in early modern Spain. From a Brasilian armadillo whose carapace graced a cabinet
of curiosities in Seville to an Indian rhinoceros who bathed in the Tagus, it reveals
the multiple meanings assigned to exotic beasts and examines their shifting roles
as specimen, spectacle, symbol and muse. Engaging, illuminating and sometimes
harrowing, Beusterien’s book makes an important contribution to human-animal
history.”
–Helen Cowie, University of York, author of Llama
ISBN: 978-94-6372-044-1
AUP. nl
9 789463 720441

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C O N N E C T E D H I S T O R I E S I N T H E E A R LY M O D E R N W O R L D

Amsterdam University Press

Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden

isbn 978 94 6372 044 1

© J. Beusterien / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020

Introduction: Armored Beasts and the Elephant in the Room 15

1. Hawa’i the Elephant and Abada the Rhinoceros 35

2. Fuleco the Armadillo 115

3. Jarama the Bull and Maghreb the Lion 173

Conclusion: Biogeography as a Teaching Tool 223

Keywords: animal spectacles, early modern Spain, biogeography, Anthro-

Earth anthropomorphosis, the transformation of the Earth into a human

Animal biographies have been the focus of many recent publications.3

Name Animal Species Birth: Place, Death: Display: Place,

Hawa’i Elephant Asian elephant India, London, Antón Martín

Table 1. The Lives of Five Animals in Spectacles in Early Modern Spain.

Escher-like circuit in which their physical transoceanic displacement had

definition of the exotic based upon how sixteenth-century Portuguese and

V in which he designed an image cast on a medallion that showed the

When Dürer made the broadsheet Rhinoceros, he created a hide on the

made a spectacle of Abada, a living Indian rhino, and people perceived

Chapter 1 especially focuses on the emerging public sphere in early

Animal spectacles are vital to a holistic appreciation of Spanish culture.

fact that the marginalization of animals in modern humanities research

Keywords: zoo history, public sphere, Philip II of Spain (1527–98), Hawa’i

The zoo is a microcosm of the Anthropocene because it is a space where

Hawa’i (ca. 1580–ca. 1593)

orders it to be brought to his room where he delights in seeing such a novel

On October 9, 1583, the king ordered that an elephant be brought from

Philip II when he was traveling in northern Europe. The mahout in Mollihn’s

The Spanish and Portuguese typically referred to mahouts as “nairs” in the

Abada (1573–ca. 1591)

Fig. 3. Abada (1586) by Philip Galle (private collection).

10 “Rhinoceros unum habet in nare cornu” (Tixier de Ravisi 1559, 201).

languages derived from the Malay “badak” or “badoh,” pronounced “bada”

12 “eu não vi algum rinoceronte” (qtd. in Wicki 1970, 330 n.41).

13 “Sento di Calicute” (Penni 2006, 160).

16 “por dormir a par dele” (qtd. in Fontes da Costa 2009, 79).

19 “En 16 de octubre de 83 metieron por mandado de Su Majestad el rinoceronte en el jardín

describe all rhinos as prone to attack, most especially as having a supposed

27 “aun no osaban darle de comer, ni beber” (Vélez de Arciniega 1613, 49).

Two Hospitals in Madrid

37 See, for instance, Robbins 2002, 206–30.

of the structure. As opposed to the open area of a public square in which

Abada and Hawa’i at the Service of Philip II’s Planetary Control

The Japanese visitors marveled at Philip’s horses:

we saw two animals of, as it were, a prodigious nature, namely an elephant

Sande’s account was published in Macao, and the Japanese emissaries

Emerging European Orientalism

60 For the Dutch description, see Linscholten 1596, 70.

Architecture, 1586) by Josephe Boillot (1546–1605), one of the first books of

When Philip II renovated the urban space of Madrid, he wanted an imperial

hunchbacks, and those with deformed limbs. Just as Moctezuma had

Abada as Emblem of Philip II as Christian Warrior

Books of emblems, particularly those that included a copy of Dürer’s

66 “determinado de acabarlo con el mayor príncipe y rey de cristianos de nuestro tiempo”

70 ‘Rhinoceros nonquam victurs ab hoste redit’ (Rovillé 1561, 49).

The noble rhinoceros

One characteristic of Counter-Reformation Spain was a heightened interest

Introduction: Armored Beasts and the Elephant in the Room 15

1. Hawa’i the Elephant and Abada the Rhinoceros 35

2. Fuleco the Armadillo 115

3. Jarama the Bull and Maghreb the Lion 173

Conclusion: Biogeography as a Teaching Tool 223