Fuleco the Armadillo

Abstract

Chapter 2 provides a biogeography of Fuleco the armadillo, beginning with his birth in South America. Gonzalo Argote de Molina placed Fuleco’s carapace in his collection in Seville and Nicolás Monardes visited Argote’s collection, thereafter publishing a woodcut image of Fuleco (1571 and 1574). Fuleco functioned as a specimen in a modern museum in the sense that Argote, following the model of other Renaissance curiosity cabinets, sought to create a theater of the world. Fuleco was an important collectible because his body was considered an American wonder in which nature fashioned a bard on the skin of an unusual horselike animal. By contrast, Fuleco as specimen symbolically enhanced the value of live horses and armor as collectibles in both Argote and King Philip II’s collection.