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This section comprises videos on some topics of the photography to circulate some discourses on the History of photography.

The Indian elephant Fritz

The Indian elephant Fritz

Anonymous[Faustino Curlo], The Turin elephant who later died Mad, 1850 daguerreotype, Simeom Collection, Archivio Storico della Città di Torino.

Video on one of the oldest Italian daguerreotype which portrays an Indian elephant kept in the royal menagerie of Stupinigi. The elephant Fritz was the favorite subject of many prints as well popular tales.

THE INDIAN ELEPHANT FRITZ IN THE MENAGERIE OF STUPINIGI” OR “THE ELEPHANT OF TORINO WHO LATER DIED MAD” OR EXOTICISM AND MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY ITALIAN PHOTOGRAPHY

An extraordinary example of Italian daguerreotype is held in the Simeom collection in Turin. Mounted European style in an oval paper passe-partout with a black fillet border, this daguerreotype is exceptionally refined for it bears neither spots neither nor scratches of a mechanical cleaning.

The picture shows a pachyderm between his two keepers in livery standing in the courtyard of the Royal Hunting Lodge at Stupinigi, premises since 1826 of the royal menagerie.


Ill. 1 Anonimous [Faustino Curlo] The Elephant of Turin who later died mad, 1850, daguerreotype, Archivio Storico della Città di Torino

Dating to around the middle of the nineteenth century, photographer unknown, it was probably made by the Marquis Faustino Curlo, whose name appears in the dark ink lettering along the lower part of the picture. This daguerreotype is one of the rare photographic image of animals to be found in Italy.1 Compared with the more conventional early nineteenth-century representations of animals, ,ILL 2, 3 ,4

 
Ill.2 Pietro Monticone, Felice Festa, Tamarin, 1819, Lithograph,ASCT
Ill.3 Pietro Monticone, Felice Festa, Giraffe, 1819, Lithograph,ASCT
Ill.4 Anonimo, Rhinoceros, Lithograph , n.d., ASCT

usually with accompanying annotations, dates and descriptions resembling the illustrated plates in natural history books, attests to its rareness. Its originality is evident when we compared it with classical paintings of animals, such as the watercolor by Delacroix of the head of a roaring lion unleashing his power – symbol of the turbulent nineteenth-century Romantic spirit. Ill5

Ill.5 Eugène Delacriox, Testa di un leone che ruggisce, 1864, acquerello, tempera su carta,
Musée du Louvre, Parigi

The daguerreotype of the elephant Fritz falls into the category of “primitive” photography. It dates back to the dawn of this art when photographers, mostly portraitists, were looking for ‘outstanding’, fascinating and unusual subjects that could compete with the painting motifs. A good example is Cow, Ill 6

Ill.6 Anonimous, Cow, 1853, salt paper, in Blanquart Evrard, Etudes photographiques, Private Collection

which with its unconventional quality looks like a pure study in tonality, a photographic sketch.

Other examples of photographs of animals in the second half of the nineteenth century are those of the wild animals in the zoo of Turin, no longer majestic and awesome as they were in their native environment.


Ill.7 Giuseppe Ambrosetti, Lion, 1869 c. albumen print, Biblioteca Reale, Turin

The daguerreotype of the Archivio Storico della Città di Torino

( Turin Historical Society) is a splendid example of early Italian photography and, at the same time, an surprising tribute to the most popular animal in the king’s menagerie.

Fritz was a great favorite with the king and his subjects. He became famous thanks to a series of events and tales in which he was the protagonist, and which turned into a drama of madness as heralded in the portrait’s subtitle.

The smudges around the tail and trunk, threatening the legibility of the image, are intimations of the catastrophic finale of poor Fritz’s story. They indicate the animal’s restlessness as his keepers try to get him to hold still, with one of them rather awkwardly trying to placate him with food. Ill.8

Ill.8 Anonimous [Faustino Curlo] The Elephant of Turin who later died mad, 1850, daguerreotype, Archivio Storico della Città di Torino

The imposing arched silhouette of the elephant Fritz resembles an effigy to be found in some antique book in which its secret is witheld. It is the imprimatur that heralds the sad apologue of the story of the Indian elephant.

THE STORY OF THE INDIAN ELEPHANT WHO CAME TO STUPINIGI IN 1827

Fritz was not the first Indian elephant whose presence in Piedmont is documented. In the eighteenth century an elephant belonging to two gentlemen had already been paraded in the civic festivals of Turin


Ill.9 Ignazio Sclopis, Passeggio della cittadella con l’elefante venuto da Torino l’anno 1774, ( A stroll thru the city with Turin elephant which arrived in Turin in 1774 ) engraving, ASCT

Among the exotic animals that arrived in the Savoy capital the elephant of Stupinigi is undoubtedly the most frequently depicted, mentioned and described. Before long he became the most fascinating animal in the royal menagerie. For twenty-five years Fritz was exhibited off and on to a limited public of admirers who flocked in from Turin and the surroundings.

Fritz was a male Indian elephant (elephas maximus) around 27 years old


Ill.10 Sofia Giordano Clerc, Elefante indiano maschio di 27 anni, (A 27 year-old male elephant) 1827, lithograph by Felice Festa, ASCT

sent by the Egyptian viceroy Mohammad Ali to king Charles Felix in exchange for a hundred merino sheep. The exchange took place thanks to the mediation of Consul General in Egypt Bernardino Drovetti (1776-1852). ILL11


Ill 11 Anonimo, Bernardino Drovetti, s.d., engraving, ASCT

Even before the elephant arrived in the menagerie of Stupinigi, he was being talked about. As soon as the king was informed of the arrival of the elephant, he gave orders to transform the stables into a shelter for the animal, complete with a fenced-in passageway and a tub for his bath. Fritz left Alexandria in Egypt on October 26, 1826 together with two Egyptian keepers and arrived in Stupinigi in June of 1827 when work on his lodgings had just been terminated. Upon his arrival in Genoa it had been decided to wait till summer before transporting him to Stupinigi. Stefano Novarino and Casimiro Carena where charged with his custody. The extraordinary sum of 7648.55 [sic] was entrusted to Casimiro Roddi, head keeper of the menagerie. The money was to cover the elephant’s needs and was carefully documented by Roddi. 2

In the meanwhile the then director of the Royal Zoological Museum of the University of Turin, Bonelli, prescribed the diet for the elephant: “50 loaves per day of 3 Genoese libbre each the equivalent of not much more than 5 Piedmont rubbi; 24 Lombard cabbages, or other vegetable equivalent, or instead 4 libbre of buttiro with 16 of boiled rice, sugar in the water 5 libbre, wine one or two pints a day, tobacco, and smoke for the person smoking”. 3

 

 

THE INDIAN ELEPHANT COMING FROM EGYPT: THE ORIENTALIZATION OF FRITZ

During his twenty-five years in the royal menagerie, the periodic “performances” of the elephant Fritz inspired tales and anecdotes that fired the imagination of crowds of fans from Turin and its surroundings, including the sovereigns. Stories about Fritz were passed from mouth to mouth and the elephant in Stupinigi soon became a myth, as famous throughout Piedmont as a character in one of Perrault’s fables. Ill.13


Ill.12 Enrico Gonin, Stupingi Royal Castle, 1836, lithograph by Demetrio Festa, ASCT

Fritz became very popular for it combined the fascination of India with the mysteries of Egypt, from where he came, lands on which the interests and expansionistic aims of the European empires were focused. In Turin the elephant represented the Orient, the irresistible attraction of those lands: it materialized the fantasies and projections of the Eurocentrism and Orientalism of the time.

Fritz was the Orient at the Savoy court: the quintessence of that elsewhere

Ill.13 Francis Frith, The Pyramids of Dashhoor , from the East, 1857, album print, J.Paul Getty Museum , Malibu

east of the West where, ever since the late eighteenth century, the great European powers were appropriating dominions and colonies, as well as archaeological finds for the permanent collections of western museums. Ill14

Ill.14 Anonimous, Group of Funeral Statues Associated with Osiris, Taken from the Seapeaum of Apis at Memphis-Saqqara, 1890c, photoengraving, Centre Canadian Architecture, Montreal

As noted by the historian Edward Said, in the late eighteenth century for France and England the Orient represented a world to be defined and discovered, not only geographically, but also to be westernized both culturally and politically.

The exotic Indian elephant Fritz, depicted in paintings, exhibited to the public, observed and studied, also fell subject to the slow unrelenting colonization that characterized these far-distant lands in the nineteenth-century.

For more than two decades the elephant was a living “show” for the court and the king’s subjects. He was systematically observed and described by the chief keeper of the zoological gardens in his periodic reports. Initially he was noted for his gentle nature: “he likes to hear the sound of music, the sound of the horn and the song of his keeper, he makes various gestures, that is he kneels, he sits, he lies down, roars in a high full voice that sounds like thunder”. 4

 

He then gradually became the object of voyeurism, barely dissimulated as scientific in nature as in the following: “…often he has an erection. His member then takes the usual direction pointing forward and a length of around 16 once and more”. 5

 

The elephant was a healthy vital animal, he amused and performed, he kept time to the music and danced. A real soubrette of the menagerie. The king prided himself on being kept informed with regards to the incidents and anecdotes concerning Fritz. The best known of these is that of the tooth. Apparently one day in March 1832 the elephant showed his keeper where the tooth he himself had broken and pulled was to be found in the straw of his bedding. He even showed him the gap in his teeth. 6

King Charles Albert, to whom the tooth was immediately given, noted the episode in his diary on April 19, 1832:  «L’elephant de Stupinis, apres avoir fait son possible pendant plusiers jours pour faire entendre a son guardien de lui tirer une dent qui le faisait souffrir, est parvenu a se la casser. C’est un beau morceau d’ivoire que l’on m’a apporter». 7

 

Trained to dance for the visitors of the royal menagerie, Fritz had become a spectacle to amuse the court. When his keeper died he seems to have suffered from depression, and eventually refused to leave his shelter and perform.

EPILOGUE

Fritz’s story came to a sad end. One day when his keeper Carena forced him to leave his shed, the elephant killed him and was subsequently put down.

The king then had the elephant’s remains mounted and displayed in the Royal Museum of Natural Sciences. The curtain had fallen on the extraordinary story of the exotic Fritz.

No longer able to serve as the representative of an Orient at the service of the Savoy court and its splendor, Fritz was transformed into a museum relic, turned both into a souvenir and an admonishment.

Once the star of the King’s menagerie and periodically exhibited as a marvel to the crowd, that rare animal, Fritz, ended up as a mounted specimen, permanently on exhibit to the public in the Museum of Zoological Sciences.


Ill.15 Lorenzo Delleani, Zoological Museum, 1871, oil on canvas, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino

No longer enjoyable as an object in the king’s cabinet of curiosities, as a museum exhibit, the elephant was mummified and turned into a scientific specimen. He was transformed into an example in support of the pedagogical aims and evolutionism that characterized the modern museum of the history of natural sciences.

Ill.16 Fritz the Elephant, Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali, Turin, 1990s

Only the silver surface of the daguerreotype of Fritz Ill.17 reproduces the marvel of the “here and now”, bringing before our eyes, once more, magically, “what -has- been” of the Indian elephant of Stupinigi.

Ill.17 Anonimous [Faustino Curlo] The Elephant of Turin who later died mad, 1850, daguerreotype, Archivio Storico della Città di Torino

 

1. Marina Miraglia , Culture fotografiche e società a Torino 1839-1911, ( Turin,1990), 325
2. Maschietti, Gabriele, Muti, Marina, Passarin d’Entreves, Pietro, Serragli e menagerie in Piemonte nell’Ottocento sotto la Real Casa Savoia, (Turin, 1988), 57.
3. Maschietti, Muti, Passarin d’Entreves, 65.
4. Ibid
5. Ibid., p.67
6. Roddi, Casimiro, Des Animaux de la menagerie Royale de Stupinis, (Turin, 1833), 45.
7. Salata, Francesco, Carlo Alberto inedito, il diario autografo del Re. Lettere intime e altri scritti inediti, (Milan, 1931), 296.

City of Images

The Indian elephant Fritz

La Città delle immagini (City of Images) is a pioneering project commissioned to me by the Archivio Storico della Città di Torino ( Turin Historical Society) in 2005 (complete in 2012) which I co-curated with Professor Pierangelo Cavanna. Its intent was to promote and foster not only the vast and rich photographic collections of the ASCTo but to encourage the discovery of the photocollections kept museums, Fine Art Academy as well as in Public and Private photographic archive of the Turin metropolitan area.

La Città delle immagini (City of Images) is a pioneering project commissioned to me by the Archivio Storico della Città di Torino ( Turin Historical Society) in 2005 (complete in 2012) which I co-curated with Professor Pierangelo Cavanna. Its intent was to promote and foster not only the vast and rich photographic collections of the ASCTo but to encourage the discovery of the photocollections kept museums, Fine Art Academy as well as in Public and Private photographic archive of the Turin metropolitan area.

It is divided in two main sections : one devoted to the ASCT photography archive and another to various Turin institutions .

Besides fully -documented entries on each of ASCTo funds it includes some sample images and a bibliography.

By clicking on the ASCTo first section one can learn about its funds and get acquainted with the history of each of its photo-clusters.

The section Letture critiche ( Critical reviews) includes two fully commented and animated entries on Fritz , The Elephant , a rare dagherrotype chosen among the Ninenteenth century photocollections and the “Gazzetta del Popolo” (1890-1981) a brief illustrated history based on the funds of the most important Turinese journal , which exemplifies the Twentieth- century photographic funds. Both reviews include subtexts and a bibliography.