A Chained Monkey

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Franz Brun’s reversed, excerpted image of the pet monkey from Albrecht Dürer’s Madonna with the Monkey differs from the original in several ways. The monkey is tethered to an abbreviated stump rather than a fence, and he grasps an uprooted flowering plant between his paws. Like the often-mimicked Dürer original, Brun’s copy traveled widely. One impression was even pasted into a late-16th-century Mughal book known as the Jahangir or Berlin Album (now in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek), which is replete with calligraphy and miniatures. The image’s inclusion likely reflects a universal fondness for such domesticated court animals.

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