Tintin Forums

In the year 1515, the German artist Albrecht Dürer made a woodcut of a rhinoceros based on a description and sketch by an unknown artist.

The woodcut became very famous and was the way rhinoceroses were depicted for two centuries. Unfortunately, the woodcut had some inaccuracies, and included a small horn on the rhinoceros's back and - importantly for us - misinterpreted the rhinoceroses folds of skin as armor plating.

My question is - by the 1700s the idea of the armor plated rhinoceros was being supplanted due to real rhinoceroses coming to the courts of Europe. Nevertheless Hergé seems to be under the impression that the rhinoceros is armor-plated, as we see in the infamous 'rhino scene' in Tintin in the Congo.
His bullets ricochet of the animal's hide and he eventually has to destroy the creature by drilling dynamite into its back.

Now, I know that Hergé did not do nearly as much research for his first four volumes as for the rest of his series, but it strikes me as odd that he would be unaware of basic biological anatomy.

Any thoughts?

Well spotted. As you say it seems that Düer's rhino had a huge impact. Most probably Hergé had seen the woodcut or a copy made of that, maybe that was even pictured in schoolbooks if the Belgian kids learned of rhinos in early 20th century.

We have to remember that even in the 1920's photos were rarely printed. So I can only assume that Hergé could've easily seen a copy of Dürer's work, whereas it could've been rather difficult to see a photo of a rhinoceros, let alone a real one.

(oh, and I'm probably not the only one who hasn't seen the woodcut before. Wikipedia has a picture and some background story.)