Man’s fascination has been beasts’ burden

THROUGHOUT history, we’ve put animals to use -- or we’ve exploited them, depending on your point of view -- in wartime, on farms and in our homes as pets, protectors and de facto family members. But we’ve also used them to build power and prestige, as art historian Marina Belozerskaya explores in “The Medici Giraffe.” Coincidentally, her book comes out as headlines report the increased activity of exotic animal thieves at European zoos, stealing and reselling prized animals to wealthy collectors.

The author returns to a time when exotic creatures seemed “potent, marvelous, and terrifying,” and were used as a kind of currency, as diplomatic gifts, for instance. Mesopotamian kings, she writes, built grand parks for the beasts they received from foreign rulers. And one 16th century Mughal emperor ordered his own doctors to look after his tigers, cheetahs and elephants.

Each chapter is devoted to a story of rare animals serving as unwitting objects of human obsession, and Belozerskaya explains that she chose to focus on “collectors whose preoccupations with exotic creatures and treatment of them somehow reflected the mentality and aspirations of their age.” Rather than study zoological organizations (a relatively recent innovation), she was far more intrigued by “individuals who felt compelled for one reason or another to expend enormous resources on tracking down, capturing, transporting, and maintaining wild animals from distant lands.”

Her journey is a decidedly uncritical one. Belozerskaya is a good storyteller but less adept when it comes to asking deeper questions about our use of animals as designer accessories or as a means of furthering power. Still, she pulls out some wonderfully rich details, animal facts and anecdotes. (For instance: A giraffe’s tongue is purple and about 17 inches long.)

She describes how in the 3rd century BC, Ptolemy Philadelphos rose to the throne of Alexandria and realized, in his quest to control Coele-Syria (southern Syria), that he needed more elephants, since his enemy Antiochos owned hundreds of these powerful tank-like animals and used them as warriors. “Flapping their ears, trumpeting, and stomping the ground with their treelike feet, the giant beasts were terrifying to the uninitiated,” Belozerskaya writes. “They threw soldiers and horses into panic, trampled them underfoot, and wreaked havoc on the battlefield.”

In the section that gives the book its title, the author profiles the Medici clan of 15th century Tuscany, Italy, and Lorenzo the Magnificent’s rise to power. He was not satisfied by his family’s empire (they were bankers and merchants who traded throughout Europe); instead he aspired to become royalty, and the ambitious, charismatic Lorenzo eventually succeeded. (An impressive feat, considering the rigidly hierarchical society in which he lived.) Though he came from a wealthy and powerful family, the Medicis were no aristocrats.

So how does a giraffe fit into this narrative of political power in Florence? Lorenzo, by the end of 1486, “wanted something more to solidify his standing, and he found an original and showy way” to definitively prove his status as no one else could.

Although she writes that it’s unclear why Lorenzo decided to acquire a giraffe, it’s possible that he was influenced by Julius Caesar, a ruler he admired and felt an affinity with. Caesar had triumphantly brought back a giraffe from Egypt, which he paraded through Rome along with lions, leopards, panthers and other creatures. His ability to procure a giraffe, which the Romans had never seen or even knew existed, was “a great coup,” she writes. “So why shouldn’t Lorenzo emulate Caesar?”

Though this wasn’t the key to demonstrating his power, it couldn’t hurt. “Appearing magnificent through ostentatious and luxurious possessions was part of the art of looking more powerful than others,” the author writes. “And so a live giraffe, not seen in Europe since antiquity, would lift Lorenzo’s prestige above that of all his contemporaries, who may have had other exotic mammals, but certainly none as extraordinary.” An Egyptian sultan would provide Lorenzo with the coveted gift, but the giraffe’s fate was tragic. After getting its head stuck between the beams of a barn where it was kept, the frightened animal twisted and broke its neck.

In one of the book’s best chapters, Belozerskaya visits 18th century France and the exotic animal collection of Josephine Bonaparte, whose beloved creatures would provide solace after Napoleon abandoned her in search of a woman who could produce an heir.

Oddly, the author devotes an inordinate amount of space to William Randolph Hearst, writing a sort of mini-biography that eventually leads up to his animal preserve at San Simeon. She covers earlier generations of the Hearst family, as well as William’s lonely childhood and distant relationship with his father. There are a few highlights among the superfluous passages: At Harvard, the young William played the role of eccentric dandy and kept a live alligator named Champagne Charlie. She follows him through later years as he builds his famed California estate and fashions what was, at that time, the largest private animal collection in the world -- including kangaroos, bison, polar bears, zebras, ostriches and deer.

“The Medici Giraffe” is entertaining and at times quite fascinating, though it generally lacks much insight or context. Read as a cursory history lesson on the roles that animals have played in political power, war and diplomacy, it won’t prove disappointing. But the book ends on a pseudo-ponderous note, explaining that we have come a long way from “treating wild beasts as war machines, slaughtering them by the hundreds for entertainment, and collecting them in the course of empire building.” The author wonders whether humans now sense that “our fates are inextricably intertwined -- that without them there would be no us,” a sense which seems unlikely in light of the atrocities committed to this day against animals (exotic and otherwise), not to mention our destruction of their habitats.

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Carmela Ciuraru is the editor of six anthologies of poetry, including “Solitude” and “Motherhood.”