An Imaginary Brazilian Zoo

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the animals in the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, along three lines of inquiry. First: what animals are included in the treatise, how and why? Are the depictions and descriptions of these animals using European and/or Indigenous knowledge? And what is the role of the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae in the shaping of the European image of Brazilian animals? The Historia Naturalis Brasiliae is seen as the first in a series of scientific zoological publications. But the publication also follows in a long tradition of bestiaria, first hand-written and hand-painted, and afterwards printed in large quantities from shortly before 1500. The tome, and especially the choices made in its text and illustrations, can be understood better when it is considered to be as much rooted in tradition as it is modern. As a case study of capybaras shows, it was the monumental art based on the Brazilian campaign of Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen that shaped the common image of the natural world of South America, more than the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. That means, ironically, that scientists have worked with less realistic depictions of the animals than other people will have seen.