Vintage
illustration for Jocko ou le Singe du
Brésil (public domain)
It’s been quite a while since I last
posted a ShukerNature Picture of the Day, so the recently-received eyecatching
illustration presented above provides an ideal example with which to remedy
this situation.
Not so long ago, I was sent this picture
by a correspondent who had encountered it by chance online but without any
accompanying details. So he wondered whether it may depict anything of
cryptozoological interest or significance.
I had never seen this very
dramatic-looking but decidedly strange image before, and was greatly intrigued
by it, bearing in mind that it seemingly portrayed some form of giant indri-like lemur
abducting a young child while being viewed closely by a large aquatic serpent. As
I was unaware of any such event ever having been reported, however, I wondered
whether it may instead be some form of satirical representation, a pictorial
joke of some kind, rather than any literal depiction.
But as is so often the case with cryptozoological
matters, first impressions can be deceiving, as I soon discovered after
conducting an image search online.
It turns out that this picture is
actually an illustration of an event in a two-act play by French writer and
dramatist Edmond Rochefort entitled Jocko
ou le Singe du Brésil (‘Jocko or the Monkey of Brazil’), first staged in
1825, and inspired by Jocko, a bestselling
novel by French author Charles de Pougens, published the previous year. Also
inspired by this novel and again first staged in 1825 was a ballet by
Fredéric-Auguste Blache, with music by Alexandre Piccinni, and sets by
Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri, which proved so successful that numerous adaptations
and copies of it were subsequently produced and staged for many years
thereafter.
Famous
French dancer and mime artist Charles-François Mazurier taking the role of
Jocko in the original ballet version, as illustrated by French artist Godefroy Engelmann,
1825 (public domain)
The principal storyline of Jocko centres upon the capture of a
large monkey in Brazil by a rich travelling Portuguese man, who names his
captive Jocko. During the subsequent Atlantic crossing back to Europe, the
man’s vessel is shipwrecked, but Jocko saves the man’s small son, Laurençon,
from drowning, though in so doing Jocko is himself killed. When the play was
performed for the very first time, however, the audience was so outraged by the
death of the brave Jocko that it insisted he survive, and so in all subsequent
performances he did!
What I find so interesting about the
above picture, in which Jocko is in fact rescuing Laurençon from the clutches
of the snake, is just how lemur-like, and just how monkey-unlike, he is
portrayed, not to mention his great size and bipedal stance. Whoever had depicted
him had clearly not based their portrayal upon an actual specimen of any known modern-day
species of New World primate, that’s for sure!
Speaking of known – or, rather, unknown –
modern-day species of New World primate, however, Jocko’s great size and
bipedal nature do readily call to mind various cryptozoological reports
describing alleged encounters with very large bipedal ape-like monkeys in many
different parts of South America, including Brazil (where they are known locally
as the caipora) – creatures that still remain undescribed by science.
(Indeed, incidentally, such reports even inspired
the infamous hoax photograph of a supposed shot specimen of just such an entity
that was published in an Illustrated London
News article by Swiss geologist and Venezuelan explorer Dr François de Loys
in 1929, and which French zoologist Prof. George Montandon deemed to be a major
new species, naming it Ameranthropoides
loysi – click here for Part 1 of my extensive 3-part ShukerNature
coverage of this controversial saga, which is also contained in my book ShukerNature Book 2.)
Is it possible, I wonder, that the artist
responsible for this illustration of Jocko had also heard of such reports, some
of which do indeed date back as far as the early 19th Century (and even
earlier, in fact), which duly influenced his portrayal of his simian subject? A
memorable example, if true, of cryptozoology and culture combined!
De
Loys’s infamous fake photograph of a supposed bipedal South American ape-like monkey
shot by him in 1917 and subsequently dubbed Ameranthropoides
loysi by Montandon – it was actually a dead pet spider monkey artfully arranged
to look bigger than it actually was (public domain)
