The entries should be according to scientific name, so called. So here is
one for "Pavo cristatus".
In a message dated 12/2/2015 1:05:40 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
lionpainter@xxxxxxxxx writes in her entertaining, "Columella, Dinosaurs: Mother
of
all chickens and art" of "Dinosaurs, Chicken Talk, and "Hearabouts"": "This
fact," the Lionpainter goes on, "has made painting [chicken] more of a two
dimensional mission, and as such, a challenge."
Good. Should you make a statue of them, that would give you a
fourth-dimensional mission! :)
Statuary (I don't use 'sculpture' since bronze is the material for me*) of
chicken are not THAT common, but in Rome, the pair of bronze statues of
the peacock (Giunone's pets) _are_ and lovely, too. Wikipedia should have a
specific entry for them. Instead, there are isolated references in different
entries. One at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigna_(rione_of_Rome)
"A pigna stands today under Pirro Ligorio's vast niche at the far end,
flanked by a pair of Roman bronze peacocks brought from Hadrian's mausoleum,
the Castel Sant'Angelo." In fact, since the peacocks are bronze they were
brought inside now. An outdoor view can be seen at:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Cortile_della_Pigna_pine
_cone_2.jpg
A very SMALL photo of the INDOOR display of the pair of bronze peacockes
can be seen at
http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/x-Schede/MBNs/MBNs_Sala01_03.html
with the attending text. Their catalogue numbers are: 5117 and 5120, which
is puzzling, since some monk felt the need to inventory two items in
between the inventoring of the first and the second peacock!
"Early medieval sources record the presence
of these peacocks in the area around
Hadrian's Mausoleum (117-138 A.D.),
known today as Castel Sant'Angelo. These
gilded bronze peacocks were for a long
time part of the decoration of the great cloister
in front of the old basilica of St Peter,
ornamenting the so-called Cantaro.
It was a fountain in which pilgrims
could wash themselves formed of the
great bronze pine cone which
now forms the focal point of the
Cortile della Pigna in the Vatican Museums.
In 1608, during the building of
the new basilica of St Peter, the
two peacocks were also moved to the
Cortile della Pigna, and later
brought here -- the New Wing -- to where
they are now kept to ensure their preservation."
Bronze being what it is.
"The peacocks are notable for their extremely
fine workmanship which can be seen in the
realistic details and the refined representation
of their plumage. These characteristics,
together with the symbolism of the
peacock as representing immortality,
reinforce the theory that these two peacocks
were indeed part of the original decoration of
Hadrian's Mausoleum."
So Adriano loved a peacock, but I still prefer the bird's association with
Juno:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(mythology)
"She often appeared sitting pictured with a peacock."
An Irish playwright punned on this -- and the thing became a film:
Hitchcock's Juno and the Paycock.
And of course, a chicken is LIKE a peacock, and vice versa (but then, as
Geary glosses the Lionpainter's signature quote* : "Everyting resembles
everything else" -- * "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it
attached to the rest of the world." -- John Muir).
Chickens and peacocks belong to the same family, Phasianidae, same
subfamily, Phasianinae, but different Genus: Gallus vs. Pavo -- but since
Chickenpainter was talking about dinosaurs, it may be worth noting that some
extinct chickens are now believed to be extinct speciems of the Genus Pavo. So
go
figure!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junglefowl
The extinct "Gallus aesculapii" (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene of Greece)
possibly belonged to the genus Pavo.
[* When I say 'bronze' is my thing, I was reading recently an exhibition
catalogue, "The gods' delight": "According to mythology, bronze was invented
by the gods on the island of Cyprus." The author goes on to note the irony
of it all: "The most common method of manufacturing bronze objects --
lost-wax casting -- has a magical contrariness about it that is most
appropriate
to a divine intervention. It is one of very few media in the full range of
the visual arts in which the craftsperson or artist does NOT form an
object directly. Ironically, this [statuary] -- shaped without direct
manipulation by human hands -- reproduces [however] the immediacy of the
artist's
touch on the wax model."
"The Gods' delight" is about the 'human figure', as the subtitle of the
exhibition read, and the compiler notes that besides bronze, other metals were
used for different parts of the human body: silver for the eyes, and
copper for the lips and nipples -- while gilding was not uncommon, even
applied
to animals: the horse in the Marc'Aurelio statue in the Campidoglio, for
example.]
Cheers,
Speranza.
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