An Alentejo Elephant
ANTÓNIO ARAÚJO
Words
MATILDE TRAVASSOS
Photography
Such is Portugal: in the heart of the Alentejo countryside, near Montemor-o-Novo, stands a church. Seen from the outside it is unremarkable, a small chapel with nothing to distinguish it (perhaps that is where its charm rests, being discreet and simple, as plain as it is sound).
The church dates back to at least 1511, having been built upon the ruins of a 13th-century temple, there since the reign of King Afonso II. Apparently, records show a place of worship dating back to 1220, having been rebuilt in the 16th century by the Fiéis de Deus Brotherhood. Blessed be.
Classified as a monument of public interest since July 2014, the chapel has an official file declaring its setting to be “peri-urban, detached, isolated, on a plain, at the foot of the castle’s escarpment, on the southern slope, a few metres from the River Almansor’s south bank, the Telheiro da Encosta do Castelo on the other bank and the Alcácer Bridge to the south”.
There is also mention of intriguing aspects, such as a “differentiated gable roof for the apse and a terrace for the galilee”, large windows “all with perfect door lintels”, a “side door with masonry frame”, a “multi-ribbed vault” or, finally, “a barrel vault supported on three round masonry arches.”
Covered in murals from the 16th and 17th century, the interior is more astonishing. On the far side we see Saint Peter, the patron saint, depicted here as a monarch of the spirit or, shall we say, as the bishop of Rome, seated on his high-backed chair, head covered with the papal mitre and many ostentatious insignia, one hand holding the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, the other in a Eucharistic gesture of blessing. Peter is flanked by two trees, which experts say fulfil a precise purpose, almost like the columns of a building, from which seven branches sprout, as many as the virtues or deadly sins.
The trees also make the transition between two worlds: the celestial, represented by Christ's apostle in the centre, and the earthly, appearing in the backdrop, represented by small, endearing depictions of rural life, indicating farming methods still practised today - grazing, harvesting, working in vegetable gardens, carrying water (1).
In addition to the number seven - the seven branches of the trees, the seven heavenly virtues, the seven deadly sins -, the painting surprises with the presence of the numeral two or, shall we say, because many of its figures come in pairs: two women, two men, two trees, two houses, two oxen, Saint Peter’s two keys. According to experts, such duality expresses the ambivalence between Heaven and Earth, between the sacred and profane, the spiritual and temporal, the endeavour of souls and toiling in the fields.
The greatest surprise appears to the right, close to Peter’s feet: an Indian elephant, ridden by a mahout. It is said to be in a prominent place, near to the saint and those viewing the painting. That said, the faded nature of the painting and the rather small size of the animal – the elephant is smaller than the oxen, as well as the men next to it! – require a certain effort on our part, particularly as the outline of the mahout, or tamer, is now very worn. Fortunately, Montemor-o-Novo municipality has developed a platform divulging the area's heritage (MORBASE), which allows those interested to view and peruse the painting, marvelling at the unsuspected details of this late-Gothic gem (2).
In this pictorial ensemble, the elephant is a foreign body, primarily because of its exoticness in the Alentejo landscape, the bizarre nature of its unexpected appearance in a place and time not its own, never having been so. Some say the elephant was strategically placed by the stream - let's not forget the chapel is called São Pedro da Ribeira (Saint Peter of the Stream) - preparing to drink water, to quench its considerable thirst. It almost seems like it has been added after everything else had been completed, a dissonant note that detracts from the pictorial whole and intention underlying it. What is an elephant doing in a religious painting that deals with the heavens, earth and great power of Saint Peter?
Scholars wonder whether it was nothing more than creative daring by the author or rather an à clef allusion, a hidden metaphor whose meaning we are unaware of today. Some say that the elephant is not there by chance. They believe that, on the contrary, the figure represents a real elephant, one that actually existed, and an event contemporary with the chapel’s construction and decoration.
The problem is that we are unsure who painted it. According to Francisco Bilau, in the abovementioned study, it is likely, but not entirely certain, that the author was Afonso Lopes, from Évora, one of the first confreres of the city’s Misericórdia (house of mercy) and still connected to the institution in 1536. In 1515, his name is documented as a witness for a will drawn up in Évora, at the residence of Catarina Pires Amado, and later, in 1528, also in Évora, “uma adega de que são duas casas da porta adentro na Rua Gomez Farto que sai a Rua dos Mercadores”. for the sale of “a cellar made up of two houses, entering via Rua Gomez Farto, and leaving via Rua dos Mercadores”. Francisco Bilau also mentions that, in February 1521, Afonso Lopes received a letter asking him to paint the nave of the São Julião parish church in Setúbal, for which King Manuel rewarded him with the sum of 70,000 reis. It is worth noting that at the end of February 1521, Lopes went to Lisbon to “rehearse” the church endeavour and the respective pictorial programme with King Manuel, which exemplifies his status as a master painter of his time.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned Setúbal work did not survive, suffering the same tragic fate of hundreds or even thousands of artistic works that endured centuries of neglect and contempt.
It might have been in Lisbon, where he went to meet the king, that Afonso Lopes heard about this majestic animal. However, to verify such a thing, we need to know what type of elephant we are talking about. That is where the problems begin: the elephant could be a well-known elephant, or another well--known elephant, or a third elephant that nobody knows about. Or it may not be a specific elephant at all, just a simple depiction of an Asian elephant of the Elephas maximus species.
In his extraordinary book, The Pope's Elephant: An Elephant's Journey from Deep in India to the Heart of Rome (Carcanet Press, 1997), historian Silvio A. Bedini forcefully argues that the Montemor-o-Novo proboscis is the famous Hanno, which was given by King Manuel to Pope Leo X on the occasion of his coronation as Peter's successor. The Portuguese king received it from the king of Cochin or asked Afonso de Albuquerque, governor of India. Either way, it is said that the animal arrived in Rome in 1514, aged four years old. It was also said to be white, or albino, making an enormous impression on Leo X, who adored the animal to such an extent that, when it fell ill (from angina, due to the Eternal City’s humid climate), the Pope was steadfastly by its side, while there were unsuccessful attempts to save it with a purgative. The animal eventually died on 8th June 1516, in the company of the Holy Father, who, remarkably, had some parts of its body embalmed, such as its penis, and composed an epitaph in verse:
In these verses, the Pope speaks of Raphael of Urbino - otherwise known as Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (or simply Raphael) - and credits him as author of a famous pen drawing, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, in which we see the elephant Hanno being ridden by its mahout, just like the painting in the São Pedro da Ribeira Church, near Montemor-o-Novo. The work is attributed to both Raphael and Giulio Romano, and was created around 1514-16, the time when the Pope's elephant amazed Rome with its wonders beheld.
At the Ashmolean Museum, in the town of Oxford, there are four sketches of the beast, originally attributed to Raphael, now credited to Giulio Romano. In one of the drawings, we see Hanno in an aggressive, perhaps furious pose, with its trunk aloft and mouth wide open, an image reminiscent of the Disney film Dumbo.
At the time, there were many illustrious depictions of elephants, many inspired by Hanno, others not. King Manuel's elephant can be found in a bas-relief by Giovanni da Udine on the ceiling of the Palazzo Baldassini in Rome, as well as on a majolica plate by the Caffagiolo workshop, c. 1516, now in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The plate shows Leo X leading a strange procession, with Hanno at the head, and the Swiss Guards surrounding the Pope.
It is not by chance that King Manuel's tomb is supported by two Indian elephants in the Jerónimos Monastery’s main chapel, like the other surrounding tombs. Constructed at the behest of Catarina, regent of the kingdom between 1557 and 1562, and fashioned by Jerónimo de Ruão, the proboscideans bear several royal sarcophagi, which are arranged in biblical order in the chapel: on the Gospel side, the tombs of King Manuel I and Maria of Aragon; on the Epistle side, those of King João III and Catarina of Austria. Elsewhere in Lisbon, in the Capela dos Castros, in São Domingos de Benfica, the scene is mirrored. Here, Asian elephants support the tombs of several illustrious members of the family, such as João de Castro, Viceroy of India.
In King Manuel I's illuminated manuscript, Livro de Horas, we also come across an elephant, not to mention two camels and a rhinoceros, the latter probably having inspired a famous engraving by Dürer after the animal drowned in a shipwreck off La Spezia. And in King Manuel's copy of Leitura Nova, now in the Torre do Tombo national archive, there is a miniature drawing with a remarkable depiction of the monarch dressed as a mahout, riding an elephant that everything suggests is Hanno, the Pope's elephant, as always.
The most amazing thing is realising that the elephant in the mural of a little church in the Alentejo, near Montemor-o-Novo, is the same one that dazzled Rome, the Pope and artists, such as Rafael Sanzio, Giulio Romano, Francisco de Holanda, and many others.
However, some say that the São Pedro da Ribeira elephant is not Hanno, but another equally famous one, called Suleiman (or Süleyman), which left Lisbon for Aranda del Duero, in Castile, in 1549, sent as a gift from King João III and Catarina of Austria for their grandson Don Carlos, who was five at the time. From there it was taken to Barcelona, where it set sail for Genoa, en route to Vienna, where it joined Archduke Maximilian of Austria’s collection of rare animals, which was kept at Kaiser Ebersdorf Castle.
As historian Jorge Fonseca highlighted:
“The route that the elephant and fellow travellers took between Lisbon and Aranda de Duero is not known. However, it is likely they took advantage of the plain that, after crossing the Tagus to Aldeia Galega (now Montijo), continued to the Castilian border. This facilitated travel to the neighbouring kingdom considerably. It was the route used by the herders who travelled between the coast and interior, as well as by most of the travellers in transit to Castile: Vendas Novas, Montemor-o-Novo, Arraiolos, Estremoz, Vila Viçosa, Elvas and Badajoz. From there on, heading for their destination, the animal and respective entourage might have travelled via Placencia, Salamanca and Valladolid, or via Madrid, which is more likely, as the terrain was easier.
As such, approaching Montemor along the road that flanked the stream to the south, after crossing it to enter the town and continue their journey, they may have spent some time resting and drinking. In late October, the stream would have had water, like today. Passing the São Pedro chapel would have been inevitable, as the route included the castle slope, next to the spring that still exists, entering the town via Rua de Alcácer. There, we can imagine the anonymous painter of the São Pedro fresco putting the finishing touches to his work, hearing the hubbub of people admiring the enormous and hitherto unknown animal, coming outside to see what was going on.
He would mentally record the shape of the animal and the oriental handler riding it, and soon be back inside the chapel, expressing his strong impression in the fresco itself.” (3)
It was this journey that inspired José Saramago to write The Elephant's Journey in 2008. However, the question remains: is the Montemor-o-Novo elephant Hanno, the Pope’s and Raphael’s, or Suleiman, the Archduke Maximilian’s and Saramago’s? Or is it another elephant? Or perhaps not an elephant at all? Doubts may endure, but the essential is clear: in deepest Alentejo, near Montemor-o-Novo, there is a unique memory of the Discoveries era, a clear and unmistakable sign of its universalism.
The most disconcerting thing of all is that the mural painting in São Pedro da Ribeira was only discovered... in 1975, a year in which the Alentejo felt the heat of a “hot summer”, marked by the Carnation Revolution and Agrarian Reform. When removing a canvas behind the altar for restoration by the José de Figueiredo Institute, the remarkable mural painting was discovered. It had lain dormant there for four centuries, hidden from everyone, guarded from human carelessness and inclement weather by a very pious canvas. The São Pedro da Ribeira elephant was unscathed by the Age of Discovery, the Spanish invasions, the battles between the miguelistas (royalists) and Liberals, the transition from monarchy to republic, and the Estado Novo dictatorship. For us, and for the world, it came to life in 1975, a contemporary of democracy, even if we are unsure whether it is Hanno, Suleiman or some other elephant. As we said at the beginning, such is Portugal. May we be worthy of them.
(1) — CF. FRANCISCO BILAU, "A PINTURA MURAL DA CAPELA-MOR DE SÃO PEDRO DA RIBEIRA, EM MONTEMOR-O-NOVO: PARA UMA TENTATIVA DE INTERPRETAÇÃO ICONOLÓGICA E AUTORAL DA OBRA", ALMANSOR | REVISTA DE CULTURA, NO. 2, 3RD SERIES, 2016, PP. 27-31.(2) — HTTPS://MONTEMORBASE.COM/NOTICIA/VISUALIZADOR-INTERACTIVO-DO-PAINEL-CENTRAL-DA-ERMIDA-DE-SAO-PEDRO-DA-RIBEIRA/(3) — CF. JORGE FONSECA, “UMA REPRESENTAÇÃO DE SALOMÃO, O ELEFANTE DO PRÍNCIPE CARLOS DE ESPANHA E DO ARQUIDUQUE MAXIMILIANO DE ÁUSTRIA, EM MONTEMOR-O-NOVO?”, ALMANSOR | REVISTA DE CULTURA, NO. 2, 3RD SERIES, 2016, PP. 43-44.