Notes on Gessner’s Giraffe. Bible, Sources and Iconography

Thierry Buquet (1)

1 CRAHAM - Centre Michel de Boüard - Centre de recherches archéologiques et historiques anciennes et médiévales

The chapter on giraffe given by Conrad Gessner in his Historia animalium is an important step in the long-term history of this animal, from antiquity to pre-modern times. The aim of this paper is not to give an in-depth review of Gessner’s chapter on the giraffe, but it will stress three topics: the specific problem of the presence of the giraffe in the Bible; some aspects of Gessner’s textual sources, with a special focus on medieval authors, and the illustrations of the giraffe in the printed editions of Gessner’s Historia animalium.

Keywords: XVIth Century; iconography; Bible; Konrad Gessner; engraving; Giraffe; Natural History; printed books

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; History

Thierry Buquet. Notes on Gessner’s Giraffe. Bible, Sources and Iconography. Leu, Urs B.; Optiz, Peter. Conrad Gessner. Die Renaissance der Wissenschaften (The Renaissance of Learning), De Gruyter Oldenbourg; De Gruyter, pp.557-579, 2019, 978-3-11-049696-3. ⟨10.1515/9783110499056-030⟩. ⟨hal-02139257⟩