‘Photographs did not do it justice’: King Louis XV’s magnificent rhino is star of new London exhibition | History of science

King Louis XV’s rhinoceros was the star of the court of Versailles. Fed on bread, his hard skin was regularly massaged with oil. But it turned out that the pet was not easy to keep and unfortunately it killed two people who entered its enclosure.

Now the magnificent beast, having been taxidermied and preserved, has left Paris for the first time since its arrival in 1770, traveling to London to take a temporary place under the spotlight at London’s Science Museum.

“We’re very excited to see it here,” curator Glynn Morgan said this weekend. “It looks fantastic. The photos really didn’t show how impressive and characterful he was. The skin is almost jet black.’

The animal is a huge amount of surviving evidence of a period of so-called “rhynomania” that took hold Europe in the late 18th century, with clocks, decorations and sometimes even wigs, all shaped to reflect the shape of the animal.

One thing the adoption of the rhinoceros had already made clear to Morgan was that it would never be possible for a man to ride it without something like a specially constructed saddle invented controversially for the new Gladiator II movie. “The back of the rhinoceros is too broad, and it would be in no way advisable to attempt it,” he said.

The French king’s rhinoceros, which eventually died a violent death itself, will be one of the main attractions of the museum’s new major show, Versailles: Science and Splendorwhich opens next week. The exhibition will look at all the animals collected from around the world and subsequently studied that were kept at the Versailles zoo, each brought to France to advertise the king’s power and global reach.

“It’s important that it’s an Indian rhinoceros because that speaks to the geopolitical expression of Louis XV’s power,” Morgan said. “But once it was studied by scientists, it became incredibly important to our growing zoological knowledge.”

The male rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicorn) lived alone in a fenced pen in the Royal Menagerie with a small pool and soon became one of the most famous residents of the French capital. A gift from the French governor of Chandernagore, Jean-Baptiste Chevalier, it was carried on a boat, traveling for 10 months before arriving at Versailles. Leaving Calcutta, West Bengal on 22 December 1769, he arrived at Lorient, Brittany on 11 June 1770.

“The sea journey was long because there was no Suez Canal then, but the journey through it France it was just as bad,” Morgan said. There was no suitable transport for such a large beast in the port of Lorient, so it remained there for several weeks until a vehicle was built that could transport it 450 kilometers east to Versailles.

“This was one of many animals in the menagerie and we will emphasize that it was not kept in conditions that could even be compared to a modern zoo,” Morgan said. “It was unhealthy, but there must have been moments of complete passivity because it was possible to massage.”

The animal remained at Versailles for 22 years, passing into the possession of the king’s grandson, Louis XVI, until it was put to death by saber in 1793, during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution.

The rhinoceros then became the subject of the earliest known experiment in taxidermy on such a scale. Two eminent taxidermists, Jean-Claude Mertrud and Félix Vic d’Azire, worked together to dismember and stuff him. “It looks oddly barrel-chested because the outside shape was supported with wooden hoops, and the legs are too straight because of the beams inside,” Morgan said. The rhinoceros was then exhibited in the Grande Galerie de l’Evolution in the Jardin des Plantes, while its skeleton was sent to the adjacent Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée, both parts of the Paris Museum of Natural History.

For 200 years, the rhino wore a mismatched horn. A 19th-century naturalist gave it a much larger one in an attempt to emphasize its regal status. “It was probably from an African rhinoceros,” Morgan said. “But now there is a replica of the correct one and it was a mainstay of the Paris museum.

“It has never been loaned out before, except to return briefly to Versailles a decade ago for an exhibition. Holding such a fragile, meaningful exhibit is a testament to the strength of the relationship we have built.”