Hanz e Parkie. Un metodo grafico per il disegno degli elefanti

The contribution is situated within the field of the history of representation and focuses on the study of the Histoire naturelle des deux éléphans, mâle et femelle, du Muséum de Paris, venus de Hollande en France…: a description, both graphic and textual, of two elephants originating from Sri Lanka and arriving at the end of the 18th century at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Published in 1803 by Jean- Pierre Houël in the form of a natural history treatise, the work is analysed highlighting its popular and didactic purposes. With the aim of involving a diverse audience, the author uses a descriptive and evocative narrative style. At the same time, addressing the category of expert painters who were attempting to reproduce these giants, he proposes a graphic method for correctly representing the elephant’s head in the right proportions and in the different positions. The study, through comparison with contemporary representations, highlights the specificities of the representation of animal forms and, through redrawing, verifies the effectiveness of the tracing method suggested by Houël for the ‘correct’ representation of an animal species that was not well known in Europe at the time.