wing feathers. Instead, the barbs were thread-thin but rigid and widely separated, giving each feather a breath-taking gauzy delicacy. And the feathers were so long that lower down the body the two bunches amalgamated and extended far beyond the tail, had there been one, in a single glorious, golden cascade.
The Victoria was the only survivor of a small fleet of five ships that three years earlier had set out from Sanlucar, under the command of Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521), in an attempt to reach the far distant Spice Islands, the small archipelago west of New Guinea that today is known as the Moluccas. Magellan planned to do so by sailing, not down the coast of Africa and then eastwards across the Indian Ocean as Portuguese rivals had done, but by heading west across the Atlantic, rounding the southern tip of South America for the very first time, and then crossing the vast emptiness of the Pacific. The expedition succeeded in doing so, but at great cost. It became embroiled in a local war in the Philippines and Magellan was killed. Four of the ships were lost – wrecked, burnt or so weather-beaten that they were abandoned. But The Victoria had survived and so became the first ship ever to circumnavigate the globe.
A Lesser Bird of Paradise painted from a wingless and footless specimen in the collection of Emperor Rudolf II. Joris or Jacob Hoefnagel, c.1600. Gouache on parchment, 36 cm × 27 cm (14 in × 11 in). National Library of Austria, Vienna.
Three early paintings of preserved skins of Greater Birds of Paradise.
Anonymous, c.1630. Watercolour and body colour, 23 cm × 9 cm (9½ in × 3½ in). Private collection.
Anonymous, sometimes attributed to Conrad Aichler, 1567. Watercolour and body colour, 45 cm × 22 cm (18 in × 8½ in). The significance of the inscription ‘Meralda’ is unknown, and the image bears some connection to the woodcut from Gesner’s Vogelbuch of 1557; the same preserved skin may have served as the model. The distorted shape of the head is due to Papuan methods of preservation – the skull was removed during the drying process. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
Anonymous, c.1560. Watercolour and body colour, 59 cm × 37 cm (24 in × 15 in). Graphische Sammlung, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Her crew had wonderful tales to tell – of new lands and new peoples, of Patagonian giants who quenched hunger by thrusting arrows down their throats so that they threw up their meals and could eat them again, of sea monsters that threatened their ship, and of gigantic birds so big they could pick up elephants in their talons. The shrivelled skins were proof of another marvel – birds that floated high in the skies beyond the sight of men. There they fed on dew, and were only found by humans when they died and fell to earth. That was why, as all could see, the skins lacked both wings and feet. The people in the Spice Islands called these wonderful creatures ‘bolong diwata’, birds of the gods.
The skins had been presented to the expedition as a gift to the King of Spain by the Rajah of Bacan, one of the Spice Islands. But in truth neither the Rajah nor his people had any first-hand knowledge of the living birds. The specimens were brought to them by traders from lands far away to the east of their islands.
Most European artists and scholars seem to have accepted the stories about the birds’ way of life at face value, although the first known European drawing of these extraordinary creatures is an unflattering but honest portrayal conveying little of the wonder that was so captivating. Produced in 1522, very soon after The Victoria landed, by a German artist, Hans Baldung Grien (1484/5–1545), the plumes are indicated by just a few simple parallel lines. The skins were certainly circulating quickly. By October 1522 the scribe of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was writing to a bishop in Salzburg explaining that he had acquired for the emperor (from The Victoria’s captain) the boneless body of a wonderful bird, ‘so that he may delight in its rarity and splendour’.
A second picture, made some 20 years later, and this time in colour, gives more than a hint of the magical legends that still surrounded the birds. It was painted by a Croatian artist, Giulio Clovio (1498–1578) and appears in a small illuminated prayer book, now known as The Farnese Hours. Clovio clearly accepted the stories of the birds’ connections with paradise, for he shows one sailing through the sky, trailing its plumes gloriously behind it, but without any sign of wings.
Even scholars and natural historians, whom one might have expected to be somewhat more critical, seem to have accepted the stories as truth. Ulysses Aldrovandus (1522–1605), in his great thirteen-volume encyclopaedia of natural history, which he started to publish in 1599, included illustrations of the bird drinking dew among the clouds. Other authors, pondering on how such creatures could perpetuate themselves – as they must surely do since they are mortal and die – stated as a fact that the female laid her eggs on the male’s back and then incubated them by sitting on both them and him as they sailed together through the sky. The wire-like quills projecting from the tail were also given a function. They, according to some accounts, were used as hooks with which the birds suspended themselves from the branches of trees when they wanted to rest from floating.
The first known European image of a bird of paradise. Silverpoint drawing by Hans Baldung Grien, 1522, 10 cm × 15 cm (4 in × 6 in). Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
The first known coloured image – painted on a page of the prayer book known as The Farnese Hours by Giulio Clovio, c.1540. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
Detail of Clovio’s picture.
Two fanciful birds of paradise drinking dew from the clouds, both apparently wingless and footless. Woodcuts from Ulysses Aldrovandus’ Ornithologiae (1599).
The Garden of Eden. Jan Brueghel the Elder, c.1617. Oils on oak panel, 53 cm × 84 cm (21 in × 33 in). Victoria and Albert Museum, London. A plumed bird of paradise is perched on the thinnest branch in the top left corner, and another flies just beneath.
The Earthly Paradise and the Fall of Man. A collaboration between Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, c.1617. Oils on panel, 78 cm × 112 cm (29 in × 45 in). Mauritshuis, The Hague.
It was not until the seventeenth century that more rational ideas prevailed. The Garden of Eden was a popular subject for artists as it allowed them to paint pictures that had religious connections and yet also permitted the inclusion of images from the natural world. Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) produced one in which a bird of paradise perches on a branch – on two legs. Close by is a toucan and a macaw, and beneath them another bird of paradise in flight – with wings.
Brueghel also produced a picture, The Earthly Paradise, in collaboration with his Flemish countryman Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). Rubens is said to have painted the human figures, the horse, and the serpent in its tree, while Brueghel produced the rest. And on the ground stands a bird of paradise complete with wings and legs. Another flies to the left of the ostrich’s head. At last birds of paradise were being portrayed un-mutilated, as real birds. Nonetheless, even after Brueghel, legions of other artists continued to show birds of paradise magically floating across the sky with their plumes streaming behind them – unconcealed by wings.