Twee fantasie 'kamelen' before 1650

Antonio Tempesta made this small engraving titled ‘Two imaginary Camels’ at the turn of the 17th century. Although the text calls them camels of India, they appear to be giraffes. European encounters with new animal species during this period triggered a huge appetite for images of exotic creatures. Accurate or not, these pictures were incorporated into a Western worldview dominated by a desire to classify and catalogue. Tempesta was based in Rome, a city whose artistic institutions had a long tradition of natural history illustration. His interpretation, however, is far from scientific. The animal on the left looks like it has been crossed with a goat. When we look at images like this, it is helpful to consider the kind of cultural assumptions that were being made. The history of science can help us to understand how people attempted to represent and understand the world around them, while also helping us to recognize the politics of imagery.