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Creator (Definite): Lise Camilla Ruud
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Full title:
Ruud, L.C., 'Six Monstrous Pigs: Animal Monsters and Museum Practices in the Eighteenth-Century El Real Gabinete de Historia Natural', in Thorsen, L.E., Rader, K.A. and Dodd, A. (eds.), Animals on Display: the Creaturely in Museums, Zoos, and Natural History (Pennsylvania University Press, 2013), pp. 15-36.
Description:
Ruud draws on Daston and Park's Wonders and the Orders of Nature in its consideration of six specimens of 'monstrous pigs' that were collected at El Real Gabinete de Historia Natural in Madrid during the late eighteenth century. She places particular emphasis on the cultural significance of the pigs, emphasising that they 'were not primarily interesting monsters to be investigated in a scientific manner, or displayed to visitors at the museum', but rather 'valued gifts to the king and contributions to the Enlightenment knowledge distributed in his empire, and [that] they were particularly important due to their capacity to represent both the donor's important contributions to and participation in the museum, as well as the museum's position within the royal sphere.' (20) Ruud suggests that this cultural aspect of the pigs' significance redressess Daston and Park's neglect of 'a broad range of metaphorical and political uses of monsters' (16) at this time.
Ultimately, she concludes that 'the archival documents reveal that the pig monsters were represented in many different ways and that they were incorporated into a multitude of museum practices. All the pig monstres were flexible objects that could be shaped by describing them according to different textual practices, practices that transformed the monsters into something that they would not have been without that specific document...
The archival remnants of the pigs... can also reveal something about how representations and understandings of monsters changed toward the end of the eighteenth century at the Royal Cabinet in Madrid - of how animal monsters gradually became objects of a specialized subdiscipline within medicine, and lost significance as objects for display and study in the cabinet... The study of pig monsters in the Madrid collection adds to the picture of the eighteenth century as a period of rationalization, domestication, and normalization of the monstrous.' (30-31)
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Cited byA. Dodd et. al., 'Introduction', in L.E. Thorsen, et. al. (eds), Animals on Display: the Creaturely in Museums, Zoos, and Natural History. 2013. pp. 1-11.
Description:Dodd et. al describe Ruud's article as follows:
'Lise Camilla Ruud opens the volume with an examination of how six preserved monstrous pigs became objects of value and exchange in the museum culture of eighteenth-century Spain... Ruud shows that the [enlightenment] emphasis on monstrous difference ultimately erved an overarching agenda that stressed the conformity of nature to an overarching plan. But the monstrous pigs did more than this; they also became commodities, gifts, and gestures, elevating the social status of their donors and recipients, many of whom were eager to associate themselves with the prestigious world of institutionalized natural history. Each of Ruud's pigs has its own story, and each is an explicitly unique individual. Yet, taken together, they can be seen as the unlikely cast of a particular chapter of eighteenth-century Spanish history: dead and preserved in glass jars, yet instrumental in a nexus of human relationships, and indeed reverberating with other treatments of animal monstrosity throughout Enlightenment Europe.' (5-6)
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Cited byAdam Dodd, 'Popular Entomology and Anthropomorphism in the Nineteenth Century: L.M. Budgen's Episodes of Insect Life', in Thorsen et. al., Animals on Display (2013), pp. 153-175.
Description:'The newly appreciated abundance of life at the subdivisible level made the collection of insects appealing, and a well-filled cabinet edified (in a kind of microcosmic way) the grandeur of the Creation (see Ruud, this volume). (169)
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Related toReal Gabinete de Historia Natural
Description:Ruud notes that 'The Spanish Cabinet of natural history was established in 1771, when Carlos III acquired the collections of the Ecuadorian Creole Pedro Franco Dávila, tradesman in cocoa and reputed private collector... The royal decision to establish a public cabinet in 1771 was one of a series of Bourbon reforms.
In 1774... the museum's collections were stored in the basement of the royal palace in the Retiro, waiting for the Goyeneche Palace tin calle Alcalá (purchased in 1773) to be reconstructed into a proper Enlightenment museum. Tha palace was remodelled in order to hourse and display the collections in nine halls, and the cabined opened its doors to the public in November 1776. The museum was open for everyone to visit, every Tuesday and Thursday from morning to afternoon - the only condition governing who could attend was that the visitor needed to be decently dressed. Outside of opening hours, however, the director would receive a more exclusive audience, such as members of the royal famly and court, high officials, aficionados, nobility, and foreign travellers - some of whom came with important contributions to the museum.' (18)
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Related toCerdo Monstruoso (Monstrous Pig)
Description:Ruud notes that 'In 1774, a monstrous piglet, preserved in alcohol within a glass bottle, was delivered to El Real Gabinete de Historia Natural in Madrid, the first public museum in Spain. The deformed animal was a gift from Gasper Soler, govenor of the village of Almadén, and was one of the first monsters to be included in the cabinet's collections.' (15)
'The piglet donated by Gaspar Solar was accompanied by a humble letter underscoring his confidence in the director's authority. Soler wrote that he himself was not sure whether the small monstrous piglet was "worthy of being displayed at the Royal Cabinet of Natural History." He wrote that he nevertheless trusted that the museum director would decide this, since [the director of the museum] Dávila had "superior comprehension" of the matter. Soler also added that he was more than happy to wait for further orders from the director concerning his future contributions to the museum, and noted that he "truly wanted to satisfy the director."' (19)
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Related toCerdo Monstruoso (Monstrous Pig)
Description:Ruud notes that 'In August 1786 the Duke of Híjar donated a piglet monster to the museum [the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural]... The donator and the museum were connected through the gift of the monstrous pig, and thereby situated in a network of institutionalized reform and royal patronage.' (20)
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Related toCerdo Monstruoso (Monstrous Pig)
Description:Ruud notes that 'In 1778, the museum [the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural] director Dávila wrote a two-page description of a piglet that had been donated to the museum... this document lacks information about the monster's provenance... it was the piglets and its deviances that were the focus - as an object for scientific study...
the text starts with an underscoring of the monster's normality: "Its structure is similar to that of any other pig, except for the head, which is irregular." However, the focus on normality is soon abandoned in favour of a narrow focus on the abnormalities, and the monster piglet is described as "the rarest character among the monsters" in the collections. This status was gained from its three peculiarities: it had a nose shaped like an elephant's trunk; its two eyes were melded into one, like a cyclops; and it had a very extraneous position of the jaws and teeth, with three canines, one in the front mouth sticking out like a beak.' (20-21)
Also that 'in Dávila's description, the pig was characterized in Spanish as ojanco, a reference to the Cantabrian one-eyed folklore figure Ojáncano, a northern Spanish variant of the cyclops embodying rage, cruelty, and evil.' (23)
NB: she also states that 'In 1779... Dávila wrote about the rare piglet discussed above' (24)
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Related toCerdo Monstruoso (Monstrous Pig)
Description:Ruud notes that 'In 1779... Francisco de Guya, an archpriest from Úbeda in Andalusia, visited the cabinet [de Historia Natural]. The archpriest told the museum director about a stuffed "pig of extraordinary magnitude" that he had in his hometown, a pig that he thought was "worthy of being displayed at this Royal Cabinet."' (24)
Also that 'In a museum guide that was published in 1818... a huge pig is mentioned and very likely it is the same pig: "On top of the last two shelves the only thing one sees is a large pig." Its size had been reduced, if not literally, then symbolically' (25)
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Related toCerdo Monstruoso (monstrous pig)
Description:'Of all the [pig] monsters offered to the cabinet [de Historia Natural during the late eighteenth century], only one was explicitly rejected. The decision concerned an aborted piglet offered to the museum in 1783 by Paula Montenegro y Palomo.' (25)
Ruud relates how Montenegro y Palomo described the piglet in a letter to the museum as follows:
'two small sows joined together with only one, perfect head, with its two ears, and at the entrance of the neck, the two other ears together. The body, only one, with its two legs on one side, and on the other side the two other ones. Where the body ends, the abdomens deviate and each have their little thighs on each side and their two tiny paws. In the middle of the abdomen is only one tract through which they are both nourished.' (25)
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Related toCerdo Monstruoso (monstrous pig)
Description:Ruud notes that 'in the accompanying letter [from Salaura], this piglet was described as "a monster that a sow gave birth to, if it is of any interest." No response was sent to Salaura, and no note or memorandum about the pig from the museum has been kept.' (28)
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Related toPaula Montenegro y Palomo
Description:Palomo is described by Ruud as 'a resident in the small village of San Felices de los Gallos in Salamanca and the wife of a military commander.' (25)
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Related toJudas Tadeo Salaura
Description:Salaura is described by Ruud as 'a clergyman from the village of Gaudalix in the diocese of Toledo.' (28)
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Related toGasper Soler
Description:Ruud notes that in 1774, Soler was govenor of the village of Almadén, a village in Castilla la Mancha, as well as superintendent of the royal mines there. She also notes that he was the donor of a 'monstrous pig' to the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural in that year.
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Related toDuke of Híjar [first name unknown] [last name unknown]
Description:Ruud notes that 'Híjar... moved in multiple spheres of authority and power: he was duke and the director of a hospital in Madrid... the Duke of Híjar can be associated with the institutionalized sphere of science and reform in contemporary Madrid.' (20)
