“Le Rhinoceros ou Cornas” published in a 1559 edition of Aneau, B., Premier livre de la nature des animaux, tant raisonnables, que brutz. Lyon, Balthazar Arnoullet (first published in 1552).
This image is probably copied after that of Michael Herr (1490/5-1550) in his “Accurate descriptions of all four legged animals’, c.1546 Strasburg. It represents a divergent view from that of Dürer in that the rhinoceros resembles a large pig with hoofed feet like an ox or unicorn. André Thevet also promoted this train of thought in his ‘Cosmographie universelle (1557), inspired by Aristotle when he states that ’some call the Ethiopian ox as having the head of a pig, tail like a cow and skin armoured naturally like that of a crocodile. Its proportions are roughly the same as that of an elephant and he has a horn on its nose and a second one between its shoulders, which is equally large and sharp’.
