SOMETHING DIFFERENT
Recently, when enjoying a cup of morning coffee, I browsed through my copy of Nature and Its Symbols. Here I learned that in days of old the call of the parrot was interpreted as Ave, believed to be the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary at the time of the Annunciation. Therefore since then, the parrot has been a symbol of the Virgin Mary, of innocence and of purity and often this led to portraits of brides in northern Europe also containing the parrot. The exotic nature of the parrot, a bird thought to have originated in dry eastern regions in order that rain not spoil its plumage, was also a symbol of rarity and wealth, and its inclusion in art was frequently a reference to the rich patron, the commissioner of the work. Having got this far, I then turned to my art books and sure enough I found Albrecht Durer’s Adam and Eve to be seen in The Met, contains a parrot as a symbol of the Virgin, the obscure rationale being that if a parrot can mimic human speech then the Virgin can be pregnant. Other examples are Martin Schongauer’s Madonna and Child with a Parrot, an engraving depicting the parrot on the hand of the Christ Child and Henri Gaudier Brzeska’s Bride with Two Women and a Parrot, a more modern work which harks back to the ancient connotation. Lastly, I turned to a recent acquisition, Australian Bird Names Origins and Meanings. The parrot that mostly frequents the trees surrounding my house is the Crimson Rosella Platycercus elegans Race Adelaide, Adelaide rosella and here I learned that the word PSITTACULIDAE denoting the family classification is taken from the Latin Psittacus and Greek Psitatakos; the Little Parrot Family, in use since the 5th century BC. The genera Platycercus means having a broad tail and the species name, elegans, indicates the elegance of the bird. The name Rosella apparently wasn’t formally recognised until the 20th century when the RAOU in 1926 listed the Crimson Parrot as the Crimson Rosella. it would seem that Eastern Rosellas, once common in the Rose Hill area, formerly Parramatta, were known as Rose Hill Parrots, then Rose Hillers and in 1843 by James Backhouse as Rosella, Rosehill or Nonpareil Parrot, nonpareil meaning having no match. “P.e.adelaide, from the Adelaide region – Gould published this as a species name; Adelaide Rosella or Parrakeet. Pheasant Parrot or Parrakeet, apparently for the perceived similarity of the reddish scalloped back to that of the European Common Pheasant Phasianus colchicus; this name goes back to the earliest years of settlement in Adelaide.” References: Lucia Impelluso, Nature and Its Symbols First published in USA 2004 Getty Publications pp302-303 Ian Fraser and Jeannie Gray Australian Bird Name Origins and Meanings, 2019 CSIRO Publishing pp152-159.
1 Comment
Margaret Tiller
24/4/2020 03:30:44 pm
Very interesting, Gill. We now have time to do some reading on subjects that appeal to us!
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