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The tiny island of St Helina in the middle of the South Atlantic is famous above

all as the open prison for Napoleon Bonaparte, banished there after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. But another great wonder of Europe

also stayed on St Helina, a being much less destructive than the French Emperor and one that in the Europe of 1515 was truly a wonder.

It was an Indian rhinoceros. He too was in captivity, but in a Portuguese ship stopping off on the long journey from India to Lisbon, a journey that was a triumph of navigation.

Europe was on the brink of its great expansion

that would lead to the exploration, mapping and conquest of much of the world,

all made possible by new technologies in ships and sails.

There was tremendous interest in recording and disseminating this new knowledge through

another new technology, printing, and all these strands come together in this

program's object, one of the most famous images of Renaissance art, because the Indian rhinoceros, in one respect at least, was much luckier than Napoleon.

His portrait was made by Dura.

When this rhino first arrived, it must have been an incredible shock that there are parts of the world

where animals like this actually live and run free.

I mean it must have been absolutely astonishing.

A history of the world in a hundred objects. Dura's rhinocerus, a woodcut printed in Uuremberg in 1515.

So far this week we've been with four great land empires, all controlling huge tracts of the globe around 500 years ago.

But in this programme we're with a fledgling maritime empire in Portugal.

For centuries there had been a steady trade in spices between the Indian Ocean

and Western Europe, but by the late 15th century the Ottomans dominated the eastern Mediterranean,

and they blocked the traditional trade routes.

So Spain and Portugal began searching for new ways to gain access to Asian goods.

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