559
in the night to Antwerp. By turns, the masterpieces, many of them, would transit
through Europe’s air of exhausted warring aftermath into the collection of Phillippe,
the Duke of Orléans. By the Duke’s death in 1723, his was considered second only
to Rudolf’s former collection, the finest in the western world. But alas, like everything else that had lived and breathed in the castle in Prague, the masterpieces would
be scattered to the four corners, particularly after the French Revolution, when great
masters were secreted away in fire-sales and the lives of all those animals who had
once been captured and shipped, still breathing or stuffed, would fade into the realm
of romanticism. For one, the Dodo, her time was up.
18
59.2 The Minutiae of Suffering
The seventeenth century leaves far less an intricate record of human-bird encounters
than the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Linnaeus, of course, has his diverse,
global taxonomic sources of information. The 10th edition of his monumental
Systema Natura (1758) would list 554 species, 63 genera. But by the time of Darwin,
natural history observations had become meticulous and rapacious to the point of
often horrifying delectation, where the boundaries between science and the salacious became blurred. One thing is for certain: we know, for example, far more grim
detail as to what precisely would happen to the Great Auk (Alca impennis), extinct
very soon after 1844—that century’s ornithological icon for the tragic fate of so
many birds—than we do the Dodo. But reading, for example, Errol Fuller’s tragic
accounts (and his own painting of, the Auk’s “Last Stand”) should be enough to
impart nightmares to anyone, and convey sufficient machinations so as to allow us
to draw our own picture of what became of the even larger, more docile Dodo.
19
By
the early twentieth century, we are left with numerous photographs of Martha, the
last Passenger Pigeon, going extinct in a cage in a zoo.
20
The seventeenth century
leaves us images of the Dodo thanks to Savery.
Today, with at least 18,000 bird species identified, another 2000 species genetically extrapolated, the ratios, percentages, and threatened and endangered species
tallies are beyond anything the first three major chroniclers of bird species—Pliny,
18 See William Buchanan, Memoirs of Painting, with a Chronological History of the Importation of
Pictures of Great Masters into England by the Great Artists since the French Revolution,
Ackermann, London, 1824. See also, Catalogue des tableaux flamands du cabinet de feu
S.A.R. Mgr le duc d’Orléans, noted by Louis Courajod, Le livre-journal de Laurent Duvaux Paris,
1873. See also, Nicholas Penny, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The Sixteenth Century
Italian Paintings, Volume II, Venice 1540–1600, National Gallery Publications Ltd, London, UK,
2008.
19 See Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, pp. 156–163.
20 See also, https://www.si.edu/object/martha-passenger-pigeon:siris_sic_11640 See the short, recreated and heartbreaking, “From Billions to None,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdFC7Q
fuVTA.
59.2 The Minutiae of Suffering
in the night to Antwerp. By turns, the masterpieces, many of them, would transit
through Europe’s air of exhausted warring aftermath into the collection of Phillippe,
the Duke of Orléans. By the Duke’s death in 1723, his was considered second only
to Rudolf’s former collection, the finest in the western world. But alas, like everything else that had lived and breathed in the castle in Prague, the masterpieces would
be scattered to the four corners, particularly after the French Revolution, when great
masters were secreted away in fire-sales and the lives of all those animals who had
once been captured and shipped, still breathing or stuffed, would fade into the realm
of romanticism. For one, the Dodo, her time was up.
18
59.2 The Minutiae of Suffering
The seventeenth century leaves far less an intricate record of human-bird encounters
than the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Linnaeus, of course, has his diverse,
global taxonomic sources of information. The 10th edition of his monumental
Systema Natura (1758) would list 554 species, 63 genera. But by the time of Darwin,
natural history observations had become meticulous and rapacious to the point of
often horrifying delectation, where the boundaries between science and the salacious became blurred. One thing is for certain: we know, for example, far more grim
detail as to what precisely would happen to the Great Auk (Alca impennis), extinct
very soon after 1844—that century’s ornithological icon for the tragic fate of so
many birds—than we do the Dodo. But reading, for example, Errol Fuller’s tragic
accounts (and his own painting of, the Auk’s “Last Stand”) should be enough to
impart nightmares to anyone, and convey sufficient machinations so as to allow us
to draw our own picture of what became of the even larger, more docile Dodo.
19
By
the early twentieth century, we are left with numerous photographs of Martha, the
last Passenger Pigeon, going extinct in a cage in a zoo.
20
The seventeenth century
leaves us images of the Dodo thanks to Savery.
Today, with at least 18,000 bird species identified, another 2000 species genetically extrapolated, the ratios, percentages, and threatened and endangered species
tallies are beyond anything the first three major chroniclers of bird species—Pliny,
18 See William Buchanan, Memoirs of Painting, with a Chronological History of the Importation of
Pictures of Great Masters into England by the Great Artists since the French Revolution,
Ackermann, London, 1824. See also, Catalogue des tableaux flamands du cabinet de feu
S.A.R. Mgr le duc d’Orléans, noted by Louis Courajod, Le livre-journal de Laurent Duvaux Paris,
1873. See also, Nicholas Penny, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The Sixteenth Century
Italian Paintings, Volume II, Venice 1540–1600, National Gallery Publications Ltd, London, UK,
2008.
19 See Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, pp. 156–163.
20 See also, https://www.si.edu/object/martha-passenger-pigeon:siris_sic_11640 See the short, recreated and heartbreaking, “From Billions to None,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdFC7Q
fuVTA.
59.2 The Minutiae of Suffering