More on known Elephant Bars

This is from Carelli. I took the photo of the plate last week and haven’t been able to get it out of my head.

Currently I know of 4 whole bars in Copenhagen, BM, Vienna, Paris (Bank not BnF). BM and Copenhagen are illustrated in my 2021 article. Vienna and Paris have photos in binder 1 of the Schaefer Archive.

Lanzi in 1789 knew (or thought he knew) of three bars. The Guadagni bar (said by Sambon to be the same as the BM bar), The Florence Royal Bar and another in the Stosch collection that had already travelled to English by 1789. [Haeberlin doesn’t believe the Florence bar is real because of Fontana’s testimony and couldn’t track the Stosch bar]

Carelli‘s illustrations are of exceptionally mixed quality and many copied from earlier publications but I cannot tell where he got his illustration of this bar. He cites Riccio who claims to be illustrating a specimen in Naples, the drawing is hilariously awful. AND Riccio claims to know at total of FIVE such bars. Haeberlin dismisses Riccio’s claims.

Is there any connection between the three bar we now know of but which were unknown to Haeberlin?! Is there any connection to the earlier testimony about such bars. I’ve been here before many times but the Carelli image got me thinking again.

I was playing around with the idea that the Vienna bar might be the inspiration for the Carelli drawing, but then I got worried about something else.

The Vienna bar is far more similar to the BM bar than either are to Copenhagen or Paris specimens…. Almost too close? Could the Vienna bar have been made by casting the BM one? I’ll need better photos and probably to visit the Vienna bar before making any actual suggestions. It is also v curious that the Vienna bar is reported as the exact same weight as the BM bar….