THE DODO AND ITS ILLUSTRATORS — FRIEDMANN 479 



figure of a dodo (pi. 2, fig. 2), first published in 1646 and preserved 

 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, generally assumed by recent 

 authors to be the white dodo of Keunion, is merely a reversed or mir- 

 ror image of the one at the left of the Crocker Gallery's Savery, 

 which is ostensibly based on the gray dodo of Mauritius! Credit 

 should be given to Strickland who long ago thought Bontekoe's fig- 

 ure was based on the Mauritius bird. The fact that the Bontekoe figure 

 is a mirror image suggests the possibility that the Savery drawing 

 had been engraved at some time and that Bontekoe may have used a 

 copy of the engraving. The feet in his drawing are rendered in a 

 somewhat unclear manner as if he was not certain whether the toes 

 should be webbed. Now that we have some inkling of his source, it 

 is understandable that he should have been puzzled and uncertain, 

 and it is possible to interpret the very broadened, almost coherent, 

 toes in his picture as being webbed. 



Years ago Newton (1876, p. 334) suggested that the figure of a 

 dodo in A. de Wees's amplified Dutch version of Pliny's Natural His- 

 tory (many editions, 1650 to 1776), "is unquestionably of cognate 

 origin with that given in . . . Bontekoe's Voyage ... I think . . . 

 the copper plate of the Pliny has not been copied from the woodcut of 

 the Bontekoe, but the woodcut from the copper plate . . ." Later, 

 Oudemans (1917, esp. pp. 56-64) brought together the variations of 

 this figure, credited to Salomon Savery, in the different editions of 

 de Wees's compilation. Most of them (Oudemans, figs. 13-18, 20) 

 show the webs very clearly, while one (fig. 19) is similar to the Bonte- 

 koe one with very widened, almost coherent toes. According to 

 Henkel (1935), Salomon Savery, like his uncle Roelandt, was an 

 etcher as well as a painter and thus might have produced an etching 

 from the drawing, which, in turn, may have been used by Bontekoe. 

 Were it not for the fact that the drawing must have been done not 

 later than 1627 (the date of Goeimare's derived painting), and also 

 the fact that the Belgian art authorities apparently have accepted 

 the Crocker sheet as an original by Roelandt, and not as a work of 

 his nephew Salomon, I would have been inclined to suggest that the 

 latter might have been the author of the sketch. Additional support 

 for the drawing's being by Roelandt may be derived from the fact that 

 the lost Seiffer painting (pi. 3, fig. 1), reported to be by him, also 

 showed a web-footed dodo. 



I am indebted to Ernest van Harlingen, director of the E. B. Crocker 

 Art Gallery, for a photograph of the Savery drawing here discussed, 

 and for the loan of a copy of the Ghent exliibition catalog. 



Even though it has no bearing on the Crocker Gallery's drawing, the 

 fact that another unrecorded painting of the dodo has come to my at- 

 tention may be added to this discussion of early illustrations and illus- 



