Dürer was a master of drawings and engravings:
The Rhinoceros, 1515 - woodcut
“In January of the year 1515, the Nossa Senhora da Ajuda set sail from India, bound for Lisbon via the Cape of Good Hope. Along with the usual priceless cargo of exotic spices, the ship carried a rhinoceros, a gift from Sultan Muzafar II for his ally King Manuel I of Portugal. No rhinoceros had been seen in Europe since the days of the Roman menageries. Scholars of the 16th century were unsure whether rhinoceroses actually existed, or whether they were mythical, like the unicorn. When the rhinoceros disembarked in the port of Lisbon, it was welcomed as a major scientific discovery. A description of the rhinoceros reached the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), who was inspired to make a pen and ink drawing of it. The drawing was used as a template for a woodcut block, which was then inked to make multiple prints of Dürer’s design. However, this image is a work of imagination rather than a representation of reality, because Dürer never had the opportunity to examine the rhinoceros himself. A real rhinoceros has thick folds of knobby skin, not armor plates or scales, and it has a single horn on the end of its snout. The little augur-shaped horn on the nape of the image’s neck is pure fiction.”
(Source: donauschwaben-usa.org)
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