Limited Masterworks 2010 Indian Rhinoceros

In 80 A.D. the first rhinoceros came to Europe with Emperor Titus. It was the sensation in Rome's Colosseum. The second reached our continent only again in 1515 in Lisbon as an unusual import of the recently existing sea route to India. Here a local artist made a woodcut of the fabulous creature that Albrecht Dürer used as a template for his own famous woodcut. His wonderful graphic was copied many times, for example in 1583 by Abraham de Bryn in a copper engraving, which in turn was the inspiration for the large MEISSEN Indian rhinoceros modelled by Johann Gottlieb Kirchner in 1732. Since that time, the template has been in the manufactory's archive. Only after the arrival of the third rhinoceros in Europe in 1714 did the fantastic rhinoceros slowly become a real animal, only to make an impression in Meissen porcelain for the first time a few years later.