INTRODUCTION13THE RETURN OF TAXIDERMYThe events that took place on the night of February 1, 2008, on Paris’s Rue
du Bac would affect not only nearby streets or even the whole city. They
would go on to impact popular culture and contemporary art on a global
scale. 46 Rue du Bac was the home of Deyrolle, the oldest and most fa-
mous, still operating, taxidermy shop in the world.^1 The business had
been trading since 1831. The owner, Jean-Baptiste Deyrolle, a renowned
entomologist, passed it on to his son Achille, who expanded the scope of
the collection through his interest in African megafauna. In 1888, Achille’s
son, Émile, relocated the business to Rue du Bac. It perhaps comes as no
surprise that the rich history of Deyrolle closely mirrors the ups and
downs of a complex and controversial craft: taxidermy. In its heyday,
from the 1870s to the 1920s, Deyrolle employed more than 300 people,
and its activities went well beyond mounting and trading specimens
(fig. I.1).^2 Its educational programs, for instance, greatly contributed to its
international fame. But in 1978, as taxidermy seemed to have completely
lost its fashionable appeal, the shop entered a period of slow decline and
was eventually sold.
Yet the beginning of the new millennium saw an unexpected change
of fate for Deyrolle, as attitudes toward taxidermy appeared to shift once
again. In an attempt to renew interest, its current owner, Prince Louis
Albert de Broglie, reinvented the collection as an eccentric cabinet of cu-
riosities, exhibited house-museum style. Taxidermy mounts of lions,
tigers, llamas, zebras, bears, peacocks, and horses were displayed side
by side, as if in one of Jan Brueghel’s “paradise paintings” of the early
Baroque period in Flanders. Visiting Deyrolle made for an overwhelming
experience—a feast for the eye counterpointed by the uneasy appeal of
death disguised as life. The walls were covered with glass cabinets, and
entomological drawers manifested a deliberate disregard for scientific
taxonomy. The rhythmic repetition of iridescent butterfly wings, next
to the spiky bodies of locusts and the multicolored elytra of beetles, en-
thralled adults and children: the charm was Victorian in essence and the
attraction seemingly irresistible in nature.
But at five o’clock in the morning on February 1, 2008, Deyrolle’s dis-
plays made their appearance on the international news: a fire rapidly