Dear Lex, My guess, from a cursory Google glance, would be that there are many pictures gracing the pages of various books, showing Arion playing a stringed instrument. The question really is whether there is any connection between Mouton and Narvaez.
It is certainly true that the posture of the two players is similar, but that is somewhat inevitable, because they are both plucking a stringed instrument. Significant differences include: 1) Narvaez's Arion is more modest than Mouton's, since he appears to have clothes on the upper part of his body. Mouton's has a nipple peeping over his lute. 2) The dolphins are facing opposite directions. 3) The tail ends are different: Narvaez's is whale-like; Mouton's has a frilly edge. 4) The curve of the tail is different: Narvaez's goes up-down-up, whereas Mouton's goes down-up. (Having a long tail though, as you point out, could be seen as a similarity.) 5) Mouton's dolphin has a mouth like a platypus'; Narvaez's is more snub-nosed. 6) Mouton has a couple of cherubs flying around with a banner; Narvaez doesn't. I think the few similarities are not enough to link the two pictures. Nowadays we take exotic animals for granted. We have photographs. We can even travel easily by plane to distant lands. In earlier times there was a fascination with unfamiliar animals, and they turn up, often strangely depicted, for example in Durer's woodcuts. Their presence in the Capirola Lute Book was part of the plan to preserve the music. I think it is possible, especially in cases where the animals are not well drawn, that the illustrator hasn't actually seen the animals first hand. It is likely that he has had to rely on other people's drawings, and the creatures become distorted, just as messages can get distorted with Chinese whispers. Mouton's engraver was Etienne Baudet (c. 1636-1711). Had he seen a real live dolphin, before engraving a picture of one? If not, he would have had to have copied someone else's picture, to know what they looked like. Even if he had seen a real one, he may still have found it convenient to copy someone else's drawing, rather than rely on his memory. The rarer the animal, the more likely it is for an illustrator to copy someone else's work. My guess is that there could be a great chain of dolphins, one copied from the other. If you assembled all the dolphins ever drawn in 16th- and 17th-century books, you might be able to show how one developed from another, and that chain may include Mouton's and Narvaez's dolphins. However, with the information we have, I am not convinced that Baudet sought inspiration directly from Narvaez's book. Best wishes, Stewart. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lex Eisenhardt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Stewart McCoy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Lute Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 7:41 AM Subject: Re: Delphin gut 2 > Dear Stewart, > Thanks for your enlightning answer. > I could indeed have formulated the question in a more serious way. For > us (the rest of the world) it is hard to be funny (deliberately) in > English. I am willing to learn more about those fishy mammals. (I am > doing research for an article in 'Lute & Whale') > > 1) are there more pictures around with people playing lute or vihuela > (or guitar), seated on the back of a delfin? > 2) I think I see similarities in the posture and anatomy of both > players, e.g. right arm and leg. > 3) the head and tail of the delfins are similar. (The tail could easily > belong to the monster of Loch Ness) > > any comments? > Best wishes, Lex To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
