The elephant in the room (at Notre-Dame de Gourdon, Burgundy)

John Osborne begins this paper with a question: what was an elephant doing on the wall of a Romanesque church dedicated to the Virgin Mary’s Assumption? He answers by considering first the placement of the elephant in the other art of the building and the relationship of the lower part of the wall-painting (called the dado) to the higher images; then by considering what medieval Europeans would have known about elephants from natural history books, bestiaries, and imported silks; some would also have seen live animals, the rare gifts to monarchs from Eastern rulers, and would have extensive knowledge of the ivory trade.