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The HUGE plaque (280x240 mm, 3,2 kg) has been cast in BRONZE and depicts the peacock.
Peafowl is a species of birds that include two Asiatic species (the blue or Indian peafowl originally of India and Sri Lanka and the green peafowl of Myanmar (Burma), Indochina, and Java) and one African species (the Congo peafowl native only to the Congo Basin) of bird in the genera Pavo and Afropavo of the Phasianidae family, the pheasants and their allies, known for the male's piercing call and, among the Asiatic species, his extravagant eye-spotted tail covert feathers which he displays as part of a courtship ritual. The term PEAKOCK is properly reserved for the male; the female is known as a peahen, and the immature offspring are sometimes called peachicks.
The functions of the elaborate iridescent coloration and large "train" of peacocks have been the subject of extensive scientific debate. Charles Darwin suggested they served to attract females, and the showy features of the males had evolved by sexual selection. More recently, Amotz Zahavi proposed in his handicap theory that these features acted as honest signals of the males' fitness, since less fit males would be disadvantaged by the difficulty of surviving with such large and conspicuous structures.
size – 280 mm x 240 mm, (ca 11 x 7⅜”)
weight – ca 3,20 kg
metal – bronze, original artistic patina
In Hindu culture, the peacock is the mount of the Lord Kartikeya, the god of war. A demon king, Surapadman, was split into two by Karthikeya and the merciful lord converted the two parts as an integral part of himself, one becoming a peacock (his mount) and another a rooster adorning his flag. The peacock displays the divine shape of Omkara when it spreads its magnificent plumes into a full-blown circular form. Peacock feathers also adorn the crest of Lord Krishna, an avatar of Lord Vishnu, one of the trimurti.
Ancient Greeks believed that the flesh of peafowl did not decay after death, so it became a symbol of immortality. This symbolism was adopted by early Christianity, thus many early Christian paintings and mosaics show the peacock. The peacock is still used in the Easter season, especially in the east. The 'eyes' in the peacock's tail feathers symbolise the all-seeing Christian God and – in some interpretations – the Church. A peacock drinking from a vase is used as a symbol of a Christian believer drinking from the waters of eternal life. The peacock can also symbolise the cosmos if one interprets its tail with its many 'eyes' as the vault of heaven dotted by the sun, moon, and stars. By Christian adoption of old Persian and Babylonian symbolism, in which the peacock was associated with Paradise and the Tree of Life, the bird is again associated with immortality. In Christian iconography, the peacock is often depicted next to the Tree of Life.
Though the peafowl is native to India, in Babylonia and Persia the peacock is seen as a guardian to royalty, and is often seen in engravings upon the thrones of royalty. Nonetheless, using the peacock as the symbol of royalty has an old and distinguished pedigree in India too. The first great dynasty unifying the Indian sub-continent in the 3rd century BCE were known as the "Maurya", lit. "of the peacock", named after the patriarch Chandragupta Maurya. The word "Maurya" is derived from Sanskrit "Mayura" (lit. peacock). The monarchy in Iran is referred to as the Peacock Throne. Melek Taus (ملك طاووس—Kurdish Tawûsê Melek), the "Peacock Angel", is the Yazidi name for the central figure of their faith. The Yazidi consider Tawûsê Melek an emanation of God and a benevolent angel who has redeemed himself from his fall and has become a demiurge who created the cosmos from the cosmic egg. After he repented, he wept for 7,000 years, his tears filling seven jars, which then quenched the fires of hell. In art and sculpture, Tawûsê Melek is depicted as a peacock. However, peacocks are not native to the lands where Tawûsê Melek is worshipped.
In Hellenistic imagery, the Greek goddess Hera's chariot was pulled by peacocks, birds not known to Greeks before the conquests of Alexander. Alexander's tutor, Aristotle, refers to it as "the Persian bird". The peacock motif was revived in the Renaissance iconography that unified Hera and Juno, and on which European painters focused. One myth states that Hera's servant, the hundred-eyed Argus Panoptes, was instructed to guard the woman-turned-cow, Io. Hera had transformed Io into a cow after learning of Zeus's interest in her. Zeus had the messenger of the gods, Hermes, kill Argus through eternal sleep and free Io. According to Ovid, to commemorate her faithful watchman, Hera had the hundred eyes of Argus preserved forever, in the peacock's tail.
In 1956, John J. Graham created an abstraction of an 11-feathered peacock logo for American broadcaster NBC. This brightly hued peacock was adopted due to the increase in colour programming. NBC's first colour broadcasts showed only a still frame of the colourful peacock. The emblem made its first on-air appearance on 22 May 1956. NBC later adopted the slogan "We're proud as a peacock!" The current version of the logo debuted in 1986 and has six feathers (yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green). On account of the association between NBC and peacocks, it is sometimes nicknamed the "Peacock Network". A stylized peacock in full display is the logo for the Pakistan Television Corporation.
In some cultures, the peacock is also a symbol of pride or vanity, due to the way the bird struts and shows off its plumage.