Dodo

Roelant Savery (1576–1639) was a Netherlandish painter specializing in landscapes but is perhaps more famous for his various depictions of the now extinct dodo. He painted the dodo approximately ten times during his career, suggesting that he had seen one firsthand to be able to study its form.

His style was extremely detailed, following the artistic approach still so admired among late 15th-century artists. This gives his work a similar feel to that of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. His compositions, however, have a hint of the fantastical about them. In this painting it is not so much because the dodo is a strange creature (to the modern viewer), but instead it is because the many subjects that are represented in his paintings are all exclusively busy. This sense of constant movement and active participants bring his paintings to life in the same surreal way that the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch seem to be alive.

Looking into the eye of this dodo is a true moment of revelation. Was that dodo still alive when Savery painted this work? Did it understand that it and all its kind would soon be very swiftly erased from living memory? It's an obvious and sad thing to say, but when I look into its face I am of course thinking "you are no longer here—how weird is that?" I am also thinking, for reasons that I can't explain, "I miss you."

- Sarah Mills

P.S. Today is Endangered Species Day. The rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate. These experts calculate that between 0.01 and 0.1% of all species will become extinct each year; that means between 10,000 and 100,000 species are becoming extinct each year.

P.P.S. Here are 7 images of Dürer’s animals that are better and fairer than a trip to the zoo!