Ulysses Lands in Lisbon

Date: May 20, 1515 • Location: Rome, Italy

Ulysses, who would be famously depicted in a posthumous woodcut, landed in Lisbon, becoming the first of his species to visit Europe in a thousand years.

Dürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German artist Albrecht Dürer in 1515. Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times. Instead the image is based on an anonymous written description and brief sketch of an Indian rhinoceros brought to Lisbon in 1515. Later that year, the King of Portugal, Manuel I, sent the animal as a gift for Pope Leo X, but it died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy. Another live rhinoceros was not seen again in Europe until Abada arrived from India to the court of Sebastian of Portugal in 1577.