To next page
Codex Vindobonensis Palatinus 2647
(Vienna) (about 1500)
---------------------------------------------
Taken from : www.hmml.org/coll/gallery.asp
This full-page illustration shows a giraffe, called here in the caption a "camelopard." It is taken from a manuscript book of 82 watercolors in the Austrian National Library.
The giraffe shown here I redrew by hand from the original.
The reason why I inserted it in this book is because the drawer of the giraffe has clearly never seen a giraffe in reality. But a good drawing and explanation of it. My idea is that because he made the giraffe into a unicorn his inspiration must have come from China where just some years earlier giraffes were imported as unicorns . On Fra Mauro's map some people also see Chinese boats in the south of Africa. Both these mentions would then show that some information of Chen-Ho's voyages to East Africa had reached Europe.
