Design for a Border with a Portrait of Baron Cuvier 

Jean-Baptiste Arnout designed this border with a portrait of Baron Cuvier using graphite on paper sometime in the 19th century. This drawing acts as a window into the world of 19th-century scientific illustration, where the lines between art, science, and colonial power often blurred. Georges Cuvier, whose portrait is at the top, was a celebrated naturalist and zoologist. The border's imagery of exotic animals and lush vegetation speaks to the European fascination with, and domination over, the natural world at the time. What does it mean to frame a man of science with images of the very subjects he studied and classified? Is it a celebration, or does it unwittingly expose a desire to control and contain the wild? Notice how the detailed rendering of flora and fauna contrasts with the more austere portrait of Cuvier, creating a tension between the observer and the observed. This tension makes one wonder about the complex relationship between knowledge, power, and representation that continues to shape our understanding of the natural world today.