SIENA 



time. He was, however, a contemporary of the one 

 which De Rossi described. This was sent to Lorenzo 

 as a present from the " Sultan of Babylon " in 1488, and 

 lived until January 1489. It appears to have been 

 a popular favourite, and to have died affectionately 

 mourned, both by the children from whose hands it 

 gently accepted an apple, and the women into whose 

 baskets it delicately inserted an upper lip.^ 



Before Lorenzo's time one had probably not been 

 seen in Italy since the days of the Roman Empire. 

 Pliny says that it was first seen at Rome in the 

 Circensian games held by Caesar, the Dictator ; and 

 ten were exhibited in Rome at once in the time of 

 the Emperor Gordian.'^ 



There is a study for another Adoi^ation of the Magi 

 by Peruzzi at Sigmaringen.^ This is full of a vigour 

 and movement which is not only dramatic but theatrical. 

 Crowds of men are pointing and stretching out their 

 hands to the sacred group ; there are camels, and an 

 immense elephant flaps its ears and trumpets with 

 upraised trunk. 



The elephant, though not often drawn, had been 



^ See Dr. Guido Biagi, The Private Life of the Renaissance Florenti7ies, 

 1896. 



^ Natural History {^o\\w, 1855), p. 275, note. 



' It is reproduced by Frizzoni, Arte italiana del Rinascimento (Milan, 

 1891), p. 55. 



53 



