In 1514, King Manuel I of Portugal gave Pope Leo X a white Indian Elephant named Hanno. When Hanno arrived in the Vatican—after sailing from Conchin, on India’s southwest coast, to Lisbon and from Lisbon to Rome, he was an enormous sensation. He marched in parades and gave audiences. He was billeted in a house built just for him in-between St. Peter’s and the Papal Palace. According to a contemporary poet, Hanno danced for the Pope, to whom he displayed grace, love and reverence.
Two years later, with Pope Leo by his side, Hanno died. He’d taken sick suddenly with an intestinal problem. He was only seven years old. The Pope, and all of Rome, were devastated. Pope Leo arranged for him to entombed in Bramante’s Cortile del Belvedere, and commemorated with a memorial fresco painted by Rafael. The Pope wrote Hanno’s epitaph himself:
Time marched on, but Rome never forgot Hanno. Portraits of him, painted from life, survived and circulated Europe. Four of them can be seen today at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. A hundred and fifty years after Hanno died, in 1667, an ancient Egyptian obelisk was uncovered in an excavation of an ancient part of Rome. Then-Pope Alexander VII went to Rome’s foremost artist, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and asked him to design a pedestal on which to display the obelisk. Bernini designed a charming, sprightly little white elephant, who looked distinctly like Rafael’s Hanno. (Though Rafael’s original no longer exists, studies of it do.) The obelisk would stand on the little elephant’s back. That’s where it still stands, in Rome’s Piazza della Minerva, 350 years later.
The little elephant may not be Bernini’s greatest sculpture (in fact, he only designed it; it was sculpted by his workshop). But it’s certainly his most light-hearted, and many find it to be his most charming. It’s reportedly one of Rome’s most photographed artworks, which—to put it mildly—is an impressive feat in impressive company. Pope Alexander was—according to legend—so pleased with Bernini’s elephant that, on its completion, he celebrated the man who gave Rome Hanno in the first place— Portuguese king Manuel I—by declaring that every Portuguese citizen then in Rome would drink for free at any Roman public house. This is said to be the origin of the Italian expression “fare il portoghese,” to make like a Portuguese, which means, idiomatically, to show up somewhere uninvited.
Bernini designed the little elephant when he was 69; this is perhaps why Bernini gave it such a playful, affectionate expression, along with a distinct eye-twinkle. Bernini mellowed later in life. Early in his career, he was less jocular about his art. When Bernini was 21, he carved his “Damned Soul”—one of my favorite sculptures, though I’ve never seen it in person. (In fact, it’s unclear exactly where it is now; the Damned Soul has long belonged to private collectors, and no one I’ve talked to seems sure of its present whereabouts. If you happen to know—email the Standard or tweet me or something.) The Damned Soul has the wildest and most tortured expression ever imparted to marble—a feral, screaming face contorted in agony.
The statue is a self portrait, carved from studies of Bernini’s own screaming face, studies that he drew as he looked at himself in the mirror with his hand held to an open flame.
It’s the expression the entire civilized world made, two weeks ago, when it heard that vandals had snapped one of the tusks off Bernini’s elephant. The elephant will be repaired, so far as it can. The vandals are still at large, may they rot in hell.
(An interesting post script: Hanno was replaced by another gift from King Manuel, a rhinoceros—who became equally famous in the art world. Perhaps famous-er.)
