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The Wild Boar from San Rossore 209.qxp 01-12-2009 12:04 Side 55 UDSTILLINGSHISTORIER OG UDSTILLINGSETIK ● NORDISK MUSEOLOGI 2009 ● 2, S. 55-79 Speaking to the Eye: The wild boar from San Rossore LIV EMMA THORSEN* Abstract: The article discusses a taxidermy work of a wild boar fighting two dogs. The tableau was made in 1824 by the Italian scientist Paolo Savi, director of the Natural History Museum in Pisa from 1823-1840. The point of departure is the sense of awe this brilliantly produced tableau evokes in the spectator. If an object could talk, what does the wild boar communicate? Stuffed animals are objects that operate in natural history exhibitions as well in several other contexts. They resist a standard classification, belonging to neither nature nor culture. The wild boar in question illustrates this ambiguity. To decode the tale of the boar, it is establis- hed as a centre in a network that connects Savi’s scientific and personal knowled- ge, the wild boar as a noble trophy, the development of the wild boar hunt in Tus- cany, perceptions of the boar and the connection between science and art. Key words: Natural history museum, taxidermy, wild boar, wild boar hunt, the wild boar in art, ornithology, natural history in Tuscany, Museo di Storia Naturale e del Territorio, Paolo Savi. In 1821, a giant male wild boar was killed at There is a complex history to this wild boar. San Rossore, the hunting property of the We have to understand the important role this Grand Duke of Toscana. It was killed during a species played in Italian and European hun- hunt arranged in honour of prominent guests ting tradition, the link between natural histo- of Ferdinand III. Under the skilled hands of ry illustrations and art and the porous boun- Paolo Savi, the wild boar was prepared and pla- daries between the museum and the society ced in a new hunting scene. The tableau beca- outside its walls. Together with four other dra- me an eye-catching attraction in Galleria matic tableaux – a condor feeding on a don- Pisana, then housing the university’s natural key foal, the fight between a pair of wolves history collections. It was on display here from and a shepherd dog, a lioness that has brought 1824 to 1981 when the collections were pac- down an antelope, and a single Bengal tiger – ked and moved away from the old university the wild boar and the dogs form a central axis area in the centre of Pisa to Certosa di Calci.1 in Sala Storica. Along the walls are arranged Botany was all that was left in the town. wax models, conches, prepared intestines, 209.qxp 01-12-2009 12:04 Side 56 LIV EMMA THORSEN 56 La Sala Storica. Photo: The author. stuffed birds and reptiles from the 18th and ripped open by the painfully sharp tusks of 19th centuries. The large tableaux dominate the wild boar. The other dog has sunk its teeth the hall, which resembles a mix between a in the wild boar’s ear. sculpture hall and the studio of the British animal painter Edwin Henry Landseer (1802- We do not want such repulsive scenes in today’s natu- 1873). ral history museums, where hunting and natural sci- ence have long since taken separate paths. The wild THE TABLEAU boar tableau is nevertheless displayed to the public be- cause it is both old and demonstrates excellent crafts- A raging wild boar is fighting two dogs. Its manship. The taxidermist has shaped the animals face is smeared with blood, its neck is pierced with a plasticity and anatomical accuracy that were by a spear. The spear is broken and blood is unique for the time. This is one of the oldest dioramas running from the wound. Its anus is dilated; to have been preserved in European museums (Zuffi we are seeing the animal at the moment of de- 2008: 195ff). ath. One of the hunting dogs is lying on its back with its intestines spewing out; its belly The brass sign on the display case offers some 209.qxp 01-12-2009 12:04 Side 57 SPEAKING TO THE EYE: THE WILD BOAR FROM SAN ROSSORE 57 The wild boar tableau. Copyright: Museo di Storia Naturale e del Territorio. Photo: Silvia Battaglini. terse factual information about the specimen’s of the royal house of Savoy, and from 1945 past history: “Cinghiale e cani (Sus scrofa L. the property has been owned by the Italian 1758) Esemplare uccisa nella tenuta di San state. The area was opened to the general pu- Rossore nel 1824.”2 No information is given blic in 1979. on the provenance or the breed of the two hunting dogs. However, the taxidermist has KICK OFF assigned them roles with a dramatic effect far beyond that of mere extras. The wild board I will start with the wild boar tableau and its was killed on the property of San Rossore. San ability to amaze and capture the viewer’s atten- Rossore is an old cultural landscape northwest tion, an immediate sensory perception that pe- of Pisa, and the area has always belonged to aks our curiosity. To the degree that materiality the regents of Tuscany.3 This was the private speaks, what is the speech of the wild boar? Ac- hunting ground of the Medici family from cording to the science historian Lorraine Das- 1535 to 1738, when the Habsburg-Lothringen ton, objects that speak are what she calls chi- house inherited the Grand Dukedom of Tosca- meras. A chimera is a being composed of parts na. In 1861, San Rossore became the property from different animals. Originally a Greek 209.qxp 01-12-2009 12:04 Side 58 LIV EMMA THORSEN 58 term, the chimera was half lion and half goat, his essay “I tingenes mellomrike” (In the with a serpent’s tail.4 The key aspect about chi- middle realm of objects) he writes: meras is that, in Daston’s words, they “straddle boundaries between kinds” (Daston 2004: 21), A querying introduction to “the philosophy of ob- or they straddle boundaries drawn between jects” must consider it as a primary task to ask ques- classes or species. They thus transcend boun- tions about the fruitfulness of the traditional dividing daries and connect elements. Because chimeri- line between nature and culture. In the day-to-day use cal objects challenge boundaries and categori- of the term and in the orderings and listings of the es, they attract attention. Daston maintains things daily life operates with, natural objects and cul- that chimerical objects bind materiality and tural objects move quite freely from one order to the meaning together (Daston 2004: 10). She also other. (...) When the things are examined as manife- claims that the speech of objects is derived stations of civilization and culture, a more detailed from the particular characteristics of the ob- study will, of course, instantly see that the products of jects, properties that fit with the cultural pur- civilisation and culture continuously bring an element poses they are part of and participate in, or of nature with them, however processed it might be. participated in. Hence, we must know the The boundary between cultural objects and natural context to make things speak. Stuffed animals objects will therefore in many cases necessarily be in are chimeras. As physical natural history ob- flux (Andersson 2001: 132f). jects they can be touched, moved, rebuilt and viewed, all according to the purpose. As natu- Both Daston’s and Anderson’s approaches to objects ral history representations, they tell about fau- and materiality strain the attempts to sort and order na and also mobilise perceptions, narratives objects into unambiguous categories, and this helps to and emotions. The stuffed animals resist stan- explain why objects so often resist such categoriza- dard classification according to the nature–cul- tion. As Andersson puts it, “A fully comprehended ture dichotomy. They raise the question of object will immediately lose its scope and shrivel into what kind of artefact we are dealing with, are a concept” (Andersson 2001: 131). they cultural objects, natural objects or rather hybrids that interact between nature and non- A picture will be interpreted in a number of nature, where non-nature points towards the ways according to who sees it and in which social and cultural conditions of natural scien- time period. The British art historian Martin ce, as well as toward art and notions about the Kemp claims that one of the tasks of the art relationship between people and animals. historian is to place a picture in the context it The Norwegian philosopher Dag T. Ander- was made to understand how it was seen and son also discusses the importance of moving understood in its contemporary period between and across boundaries rather than (Kemp 2007: 9). Paolo Savi’s wild boar table- drawing up boundaries when mapping out au may be interpreted as a sculpture, a three- the nature of objects. Very often things will dimensional scene from the iconography of move between nature and culture, and this ap- hunting which gave meaning to the contem- plies to common things as well as objects of porary viewers. As it has been on display in a art. When thinking about objects we should natural history museum, it is reasonable to use this tension as our point of departure. In claim that the purpose has been to present 209.qxp 01-12-2009 12:04 Side 59 SPEAKING TO THE EYE: THE WILD BOAR FROM SAN ROSSORE knowledge about the wild boar in nature, dis- history of natural-history collections and the 59 playing the animal whose Latin name is Sus monastery.
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