'Clara': the female rhinoceros that amazed Europe in the 18th century appears again in Amsterdam

Rhinoceros unicornis

, that was

a female rhinoceros native to India, who became famous in the eighteenth century walking around Europe.

She arrived in the Dutch city of Amsterdam in 1741 and attracted a multitude of curious people who had never seen this living mammal and only knew of an engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer, dated 1515. Clara maintained her fame for 17 years, until her death. , and amazed from the Netherlands to Poland, and from Austria to Denmark.

She went from being an almost fictional figure to being shown and studied - as well as exploited - as a prodigy.

Dedicating an exhibition to him is a tribute.

In an unexpected twist, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has joined the story of Clara to that of more than 200 insects,

Exhibition on the female rhinoceros Clara at the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam).Olivier Middendorp (Olivier Middendorp)

The Dutch museum has been filled with

for this exhibition.

They are sheets, porcelain and paintings in which

appears and a large constellation of insects and amphibians that stand out for their brightness, color and state of preservation.

Entitled in Dutch

which could be translated as “Clara and the little creatures”, it guides the visitor from inside the windows of the museum's façade itself, taken over by a colony of soldier ants one meter in size.

The procession continues inside the access walls and, once inside, they structure the installation

by Colombian artist Rafael Gomezbarros, who uses the nomadic nature, effort and capacity for cooperation of insects as a metaphor for the weight and work endured by people who are forced to emigrate.

It is a work created as a reaction to the civil war in Colombia, which forced the departure of millions of compatriots from their homes.

“I wanted to present migrations as a consequence of the internal problems of each country”, explains the artist standing in front of his ants.

The head and body, finished in charcoal, have been cast from a human skull.

The legs are made of jasmine wood, "a tree whose flower gives off an intense smell that masked that of the buried bodies of the victims of the civil war," he points out.

Gomezbarros's installation, which can also be seen as a plague, prepares for the visit to the rooms with the works dedicated to insects, arranged on a black background.

Until the 16th century, insects and reptiles could have negative connotations, even diabolical, and be associated with death.

"From then on, they become examples of the beauty of creation and for two centuries the fascination with these creatures prevailed," says Jan de Hond, curator of this section of the exhibition.

In his opinion, the turn had a religious component because most of the first artists who captured these insects were Protestants.

“And the Protestants focus on the Bible, but at that time they considered nature to be the fifth book, after the four gospels.

So by studying nature they could gain knowledge about God.

The same thing happened with the first students of insects, ”he says.

Exhibition on insects in the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam).Olivier Middendorp (Olivier Middendorp)

The dragonflies that appear in medieval prayer books, as well as the flowers, amphibians and butterflies painted in oil in paintings such as the one painted in 1685 by the artist Rachel Ruysch on a canvas whose price once exceeded Rembrandt, flooded the houses with nature. of their owners.

They were exotic animals, like a rhinoceros beetle reproduced in great detail, and they mostly came from the Dutch colonies.

“When you ask the biologists, they explain that they were brought from Indonesia, Suriname or Africa, places with which they were traded at that time.

They attracted by their beauty and could be collected, and fascinated because it was believed that they reproduced by spontaneous generation”, continues De Hond.

Fade to white, and

appears .

Until this female rhinoceros arrived in Europe, the quintessential image of the armored-looking mammal was Dürer's 1515 engraving. The German Renaissance artist never saw it in person, but relied on a sketch by an unknown author .

Despite his anatomical inaccuracies, his work was widely distributed and made a deep impression.

It was believed that they fought to the death with elephants and their horns were transformed into objects of art, but little was known about the animal itself.

's mother was killed by hunters in India

.

“This type of big game hunting was a privilege of the elites and the offspring were later given as a prestigious present.

it was offered to Jan Albert Sichterman, then director of the Dutch East India Company”, says Gijs van der Ham, curator of this section.

For two years

was with the family, and when she grew too old she was given to Douwe Mout, captain of the company.

He took her out of India to take her to Amsterdam in 1741, and the fate of the animal was cast: she would be a superstar who changed the image of her species and was inevitably exploited.

Cobwebs exhibited at the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam).Olivier Middendorp (Olivier Middendorp)

Passed through Europe, his influence was enormous.

“Scientists were going to examine it.

People came because rhinos were known to exist, but they hadn't seen them live.

Her arrival was advertised on posters and she was seen at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin and in Vienna by Emperor Francis I and his wife Maria Theresa.

And there is at least one book from 1750 that imagines a conversation between a rhinoceros and a grasshopper revealing the pain of Clara's treatment.

“It says that when she returns to her land, she will take a human being who will be treated better by her peers.”

Clara's travels also sparked a fashion and adorned clocks, rhinoceroses were included in paintings of biblical and colonial scenes and featured in porcelain carvings.

Captain Mout managed to sell her in 1758 and Clara died in the UK.

Among the pieces that commemorate her in the Rijksmuseum is a gigantic oil painting by Jean Baptiste Oudry, a French rococo artist.

With her disappearance far from her habitat, the current threat of extinction of the species resounds in the room.

Before returning to the soldier ants on the windows, the same echo has a gigantic spider web, woven by four different species and placed in an urn by the Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno.