Bestiario de Conrad Gessner

"The Histories of Animals," published by the Swiss physician Conrad Gessner in the mid-1500s. "Somewhere in England, about 600 years ago, an artist sat down and tried to paint an elephant. There was just one problem: he had never seen one.

The artist was illustrating a book known today as the “Bestiary of Anne Walshe,” a guide to animals. To paint an elephant, he could not jet to Kenya to scrutinize one in person. He could not visit the London zoo. He could not watch a David Attenborough DVD or click through a Web gallery of nature photographs. The only clues the artist could have found were in the mix of facts and myths preserved in old books.

There he might read how elephants cannot bend at the knees, or that they have no interest in sex. There were illustrations of elephants in those old books, too, but they were painted by artists who had also never seen one. In the end, the illustrator of the “Bestiary of Anne Walshe” produced a charming mishmash of guesses. His elephant looks like a bull terrier with camel hooves for feet and a vacuum cleaner for a nose."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/science/23paint.html