Jackalopes in Renaissance Art

Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Virgin and Child Surrounded by Flowers and Fruit is a breathtaking painting by a Flemish master who was obviously keen to showcase his skills with a brush and his knowledge of flora and fauna. The religious theme becomes secondary, almost an afterthought amongst the lush border. The mother and child are rendered with no less skill, but are not in fact his work. They were completed by Peter Paul Ruebens, and history tells us the overall work was a rejection of Protestant ideas of the time period against the cult of images.

Thanks to the Prado’s website, which houses this amazing piece and offers a great zoom feature for online visitors, we get to enjoy every meticulous detail without the crowds or trip to Spain.

It is in these details that we find a peculiar figure. Almost hidden away in the bottom right corner is a small rabbit, hunched-back with wide eyes. Unlike the other rabbits featured in the painting, there’s something different – the horns upon his head. He’s a jackalope.

We know this painting was completed far away from America, and in fact before its very inception. So what could we be looking at? Long before Fearsome Critters of the Lumberwoods and American Folklore told us of the jackalope, though, there was something far older – the lepus cornutus. As an example from a manuscript dating to the 1600s illustrates below.

Overall, the entire painting is a breathtaking exemplum of flowers, fruits, and animals. Each seem to be painstakingly detailed and crafted from life. Then what’s the story with the jackalope? The answer, surprisingly, lays in a type of papilloma virus (yes, similar to kind that causes cervical and penile cancer in humans) called shope papilloma virus. This strain can infect some species of rabbits and lead to the conclusion of the existence of the Lepus Cornutus (Horned Rabbit) as an entirely independent species of animal. Another example is seen below.    

When we compare and engraving with a photograph of a rabbit suffering from this disease, it becomes pretty obvious how the rumor mill started on this one. On the left, an illustration from Tableau Encyclopedique et Methodique by Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre. On the right, a specimen of a living rabbit infected with shope papilloma virus displaying the distinctive horn-like growths. With that mystery solved, I’m lead to wonder what other “mythical creatures” were really just odd, misinterpreted variants of local populations? What kind of disease could lead to dog-headed men?