Image copyright BIBLIOTECA APOSTOLICA VATICANA Image caption The cockatoo belongs to either the triton or yellow-crested species, researchers say 
 
 Researchers have discovered the oldest-known European illustrations of an Australasian cockatoo, in a manuscript from the 13th Century. 
 
 Four drawings of the white bird were found in a falconry book once owned by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. The book is now in the Vatican Library. 
 
 They pre-date other European depictions of cockatoos by 250 years. 
 
 Researchers say the images in the book, dated between 1241-1248, provide insight into medieval trade routes. 
 
 "The fact that a cockatoo reached Sicily during the 13th Century shows that merchants plying their trade to the north of Australia were part of a flourishing network that reached west to the Middle East and beyond," said co-author Dr Heather Dalton, from the University of Melbourne. 
 
 The bird was either a yellow-crested or a triton cockatoo, she said, meaning it most likely came from northern Australia, Papua New Guinea, or islands off Indonesia. 
 
 Dr Dalton and a team of Finnish scholars studied the Latin language book De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds). 
 
 Image copyright BIBLIOTECA APOSTOLICA VATICANA Image caption There are four drawings of the cockatoo 
 
 It features more than 900 drawings of birds and animals that were kept by Frederick II at his palaces. 
 
 A description in Latin next to one drawing identifies the cockatoo as a gift from a sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty, which was centred in Egypt. 
 
 "Scholars, including me, were aware the sultan had given a white parrot to Frederick II, [but] few were aware there were surviving images of this bird," Dr Dalton said. 
 
 Dr Dalton said she believed that the cockatoo was taken from its original habitat to Sicily via Cairo in a journey lasting several years. 
 
 The research has been published in the journal Parergon. 
 
 Previously, the oldest-known European depiction of a cockatoo was a 1496 artwork by Italian painter Andrea Mantegna. ||||| Share selection to: 
 
 Among the hand-written documents, books, and ancient artefacts in the Vatican Library is a 13th century manuscript on falconry written in Latin by or for the Holy Roman Emperor - King Frederick II of Sicily. 
 
 Frederick’s De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds) dates from between 1241 and 1248. In its margins are nine hundred drawings of falcons, falconers and other animals kept by the emperor at his palaces. 
 
 The Holy Roman Emperor King Frederick II of Sicily’s falconry book, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds) features 900 pictures of birds in its margins. Picture: De Arte Venandi cum Avibus / Alamy 
 
 Four of these images depict a white cockatoo, described in the text as a crested, talking parrot - a gift from ‘the Sultan of Babylon’. 
 
 The discovery of these images, which are published in the journal Parergon, highlight the fact that during the medieval period, merchants plying the waters just to the north of Australia were part of a flourishing trade network that reached west to the Middle East and beyond. 
 
 Andrea Mantegna’s Madonna della Vittoria, painted in 1496, features a cockatoo above the Madonna’s head (above the cross). This was previously thought to be the earliest depiction of a cockatoo in Europe. Picture: Wikimedia 
 
 In 2014 I published an article on an Australasian cockatoo in an altarpiece painted in Italy in 1496 by Andrea Mantegna. As this Sulphur-crested Cockatoo or Yellow-crested Cockatoo (also known as a Lesser-crested Cockatoo) appeared to have been painted from a live model, which would have travelled to Mantua primarily overland, I saw this as evidence of the complexity and range of Southeast Asian trading networks prior to direct European contact. 
 
 I had thought Mantegna’s cockatoo was the earliest European image of a cockatoo until I was contacted by Pekka Niemelä, an emeritus professor of biodiversity and environmental science at the University of Turku in Finland, in February 2015. He and colleagues, Jukka Salo - a zoologist, and Simo Örmä - Intendant of the Finnish Institute in Rome, had been working on identifying the images of the cockatoo in Frederick’s manuscript. 
 
 I was intrigued to hear that these images were created 250 years before Mantegna’s painting existed, and so began our collaboration to place this work in historical context and share the story of how an Australasian cockatoo reached Europe in the mid thirteenth century. 
 
 Identifying Frederick’s cockatoo 
 
 The four images in the Vatican manuscript have rarely been reproduced in print. Many scholars have relied on Casey Albert Wood and Florence Marjorie Fyfe’s English translation of De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, published in 1943 (there is a copy in Melbourne University’s Baillieu Library). But although Wood and Fyfe included many illustrations from the original manuscript, they did not include those of the cockatoo. 
 
 One of the four images of the cockatoo gifted to Frederick II by the ‘Sultan of Babylon’. Codex Ms. Pal. Lat 1071, folio 20v (© [2018] Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). For a high resolution colour image see article published in Parergon 35/1 (June 2018): 35-60. 
 
 This meant that while many scholars, including me, were aware the Sultan had given a white parrot to Frederick II, few were aware there were surviving images of this bird. 
 
 While ornithologists have made various identifications of the cockatoo, its significance had never been explored in depth until my Finnish colleagues studied the drawings in situ in the Vatican Library. They looked closely at details, like the shape of the crest and the colouring, and concluded the cockatoo was likely to have been either a Triton or one of three sub-species of Yellow-crested Cockatoo. 
 
 This means that the cockatoo gifted to Frederick II was taken from the northernmost tip of what is now Australia’s mainland, New Guinea or the islands off New Guinea or Indonesia. Based on the fact that my colleagues found red paint flecks in the irises of all four images, they also surmised it was probably a female. 
 
 
 
 A cockatoo as a prestigious gift 
 
 In the thirteenth century it was common for monarchs to exchange animals as gifts and the larger, fiercer or more rare the animal, the higher its prestige. In 1251, for example, the King of Norway presented a polar bear to Henry III of England (who kept a menagerie of exotic beasts in the Tower of London), which was allowed to swim in the Thames and catch fish. 
 
 Frederick’s tastes were a little more refined, however, and he preferred rare books or animals whose behaviour he could study. He had many diplomatic exchanges with the ‘Sultan of Babylon’, the fourth Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt (the Kurdish al-Malik Muhammad al-Kamil), who knew the emperor enjoyed falconry and was particularly fond of birds. An exotic ‘white parrot’ from what was then considered furthest India was therefore the perfect gift. 
 
 Cockatoos travel well with people, being gregarious and long-lived. In captivity, they can have lifespans of up to eighty years and Australian Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoos have been known to live up to 120 years. The journey along trade routes would have taken years, and their chances of surviving would have been much higher than the majority of animals. 
 
 How did a cockatoo reach Sicily in the thirteenth century? 
 
 Although our part of the world is still considered the very last to have been discovered, this Eurocentric view is increasingly being challenged. As more medieval European, Middle Eastern and Asian texts and images are translated, digitised and made available to wider audiences, previously overlooked records and images (like Frederick’s cockatoo) are coming to light - heralding a new era in the understanding of our region prior to European settlement. 
 
 The red lines indicate major overland trade routes (silk roads). The blue lines indicate the sea route more commonly taken after Vasco de Gama’s fleet landed in Calicut in 1498. The overland route was considered to have extended to the Indonesian archipelago, but new research indicates it stretched to the waters to the north of Australia. Picture: Wikipedia 
 
 The waters to Australia’s north were busy trade routes with merchants buying and selling fabrics, animal skins and live animals. This is not always acknowledged because, while written histories record the strong influence India, China and the Arab world undoubtedly had on Southeast Asia, they tend to downplay the maritime achievements of indigenous Southeast Asians. 
 
 Yet, in the early 13th century, China’s growing trade with the region had led to the emergence of new trading ports in Champa, Sumatra and Java with goods moving in both directions between Southeast Asia and China, the Indian Ocean region and the Middle East. By this time, the rise of Islam in the Middle East had provided the merchants of the Eastern Mediterranean and Persia with a safe, common marketplace through which ran numerous silk roads. 
 
 Although this trade lessened from the mid thirteenth century due to circumstances within China and India, records show that during the early thirteenth century Malay ports were exporting goods from other Southeast Asian destinations into China and beyond - including white parrots. 
 
 Frederick II’s cockatoo provides a rare window into that world - a medieval world that was surprisingly interconnected. 
 
 Banner image: One of the four images of the cockatoo gifted to Frederick II by the ‘Sultan of Babylon’. Codex Ms. Pal. Lat 1071, folio 18v (© [2018] Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). For a high resolution colour image see article published in Parergon 35/1 (June 2018): 35-60. 
 
 ||||| On the margins of a 13th-century manuscript written by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, are more than 900 illustrations of birds and falconers. Among the usual hawks, herons, and sparrows familiar to European readers are four sketches of a bird from further afield – an Australasian cockatoo. 
 
 The images are believed to be the oldest European depiction of the bird, trumping a similar discovery in a 15th-century artwork, and have sparked a reassessment of trading routes that existed more than 700 years ago. 
 
 Cockatoo perched in Renaissance painting forces rethink of history Read more 
 
 The drawings are likely to be of a sulphur-crested cockatoo, a yellow-crested cockatoo or a Triton cockatoo, from the northern tip of Australia, New Guinea, or the islands around New Guinea, and show how trade in the waters around Australia’s north was flourishing in medieval times. 
 
 The sketches were discovered by Finnish researchers in the manuscript De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds), which was written in Latin by Frederick II, between 1241 and 1248, and is held in the Vatican library. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest There are four drawings of an Australasian cockatoo in the 13th century Sicilian manuscript. Photograph: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana 
 
 They are likely to be of a single bird, a cockatoo given to Frederick II, who was known for his large menagerie of animals, including lions, panthers and elephants. It was presented to him by al-Kamil, the sultan of Egypt, meaning the bird was probably traded first from Australasia to Egypt before it was brought to Europe. 
 
 The images are believed to pre-date Andrea Mantegna’s 1496 altarpiece Madonna della Vittoria, which was previously believed to be the oldest European depiction. 
 
 
 
 Dr Heather Dalton, a historian at the University of Melbourne, published research about the cockatoo in the Mantegna artwork in 2014 and, after news coverage of the discovery, was contacted by Finnish biologists who said they had seen images of a cockatoo in Frederick II’s manuscript, which pre-dates the altarpiece by 250 years. 
 
 We tend to think of our region, not just Australia, but the islands around it, as the very last things to be discovered Heather Dalton, historian 
 
 “I was just thrilled to bits of course,�? said Dalton, who collaborated with the Finnish researchers for an article published in Parergon Journal. “I just couldn’t believe that nobody had really talked about them, this is a high-profile document.�? 
 
 “The main significance about it is we tend to think of our region, not just Australia, but the islands around it, as the very last things to be discovered; the European view is it’s almost this dead continent and nothing was happening until Europeans discovered it. 
 
 “The fact that a cockatoo either from the northern tip of Australia, or from New Guinea or the islands around it, was traded to Cairo and on to Sicily is significant. It’s a window in on what I think was quite a vibrant trading network.�? 
 
 By examining the manuscript, Dalton and her collaborators, were able to conclude the images are of a female cockatoo, because red paint was used for the eyes and females have red or reddish-brown eyes, whereas male cockatoos have black eyes. 
 
 The researchers also noted that the crest of the cockatoo was not raised – something the birds do when aggressive, fearful, surprised or as part of a courtship display - and concluded this probably meant Frederick’s bird “felt safe and calm�? while being sketched. 
 
 Dalton said that since publication of her discovery of the cockatoo in the Mantegna work in 2014, colleagues had been sending her joke emails with various Australian animals Photoshopped onto famous artworks; a joke that might resurface in light of this new cockatoo discovery. 
 
 “I’m looking for the wombat in the altarpiece now,�? she said.
– The 1496 European altarpiece Madonna della Vittoria contains an image of a non-native cockatoo, but that's no longer such a remarkable fact. Researchers now say they've found images of the bird in a manuscript penned by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II over a seven-year period beginning in 1241, shifting the timeline forward on when the bird was first depicted in Europe. It's more than a bit of trivia: The Guardian reports the discovery has "sparked a reassessment" of centuries-old trading routes. The drawings in The Art of Hunting with Birds, which is in the Vatican library's possession, are of either a Triton or subspecies of yellow-crested cockatoo, which was likely a female and would have hailed from either the Northern Australian or Papua New Guinea area. Australian historian and study co-author Dr. Heather Dalton gives context to the find: "We tend to think of our region ... as the very last things to be discovered; the European view is it's almost this dead continent and nothing was happening until Europeans discovered it." The cockatoo wasn't the result of European discovery but rather a gift to Frederick II from the then-sultan of Egypt, per a note in Latin next to one of the sketches, reports the BBC, indicating an Australasia-Egypt trading route. In an article, Dalton writes that it was customary for leaders to gift exotic animals at the time, citing the 1251 exchange of a polar bear from the king of Norway to Henry III. Frederick was known to be partial to birds, and the "white parrot" would have been able to withstand what would have been a years-long passage. (A museum was shocked to discover its giant egg was real.)