Exotic birds were a favorite of Jean-Baptiste Oudry. This 1745 painting features, from left, a demoiselle crane, a toucan and a tufted crane.

Across the pond, singer Lily Allen, actress Angela Jolie and professional heiress Paris Hilton are always causing a stir among European paparazzi. But if you flash back 250 years, long before celebrity photographers were stalking the rich and the beautiful, the toast of Europe was a girl named Clara.

OK, beautiful may not be the right adjective to describe a rhinoceros, but there's no denying that Clara, reportedly the first of her kind to visit Europe in 200 years, caused the kind of stir that can only be compared today to red carpet walks by A-list celebs. She had been raised in captivity in India, then brought to Europe by a Dutch sea captain who showed her off — for a price — to enthusiastic crowds in the mid-1700s.

Clara's fame not only spread through that world tour, but also by a wealth of artistic depictions of the horned, leather-armored creature. The most famous painting of Clara is also the best-known work by 18th-century animal portrait specialist Jean-Baptiste Oudry. And thanks to Oudry, not only Clara, but also several of the most rare and attractive animals of King Louis XIV's royal zoo, have been preserved through art.

A new exhibit, dubbed "Oudry's Painted Menagerie: Portraits of Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Europe," is now "roaming" the halls at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Spotlighted are 12 life-size oil paintings from the years 1739 to 1752, accompanied by numerous Oudry drawings. A section of the show is dedicated to the "Clara craze," which began in 1741.

According to Mary Morton, Getty's associate curator of painting, Oudry's name isn't widely known because his primary subjects weren't human. In fact, the exhibition's centerpiece painting of Clara only recently was discovered in the storage room of a German castle, where it had been tucked away for 150 years. It was rescued by Mark Leonard, head of paintings conservation at the Getty.

The painstaking task of restoring the Clara portrait took five years and a too-brief documentary in the final gallery shows the process of returning the faded, chipped and thoroughly damaged 10-by-15-foot masterpiece to some semblance of its original state.

Clara is clearly the highlight of the Getty's Oudry menagerie. A two-level bench some 12 feet from the painting gives visitors a chance to sit and gaze at its detail and exuberance from different heights.

The remaining portraits are equally fascinating. Oudry painted these animal portraits for the surgeon of King Louis XV, who planned to present them to the king as a present. But when the surgeon died, Oudry sold them instead to German Duke Christian Ludwig II.

Oudry, the son of a painter, was trained in the arts from an early age. Although he showed remarkable still life talent, he became the painter of France's Royal hunts, re-creating both the animals that were chased as well as the day's kill. The collection includes one of the game portraits — a dead crane. Its dramatic colors and textured feathers make the crane seem closer to an animal portrait than a still life.

A more active painting depicts a wild-eyed striped hyena battling two hunting dogs that are nipping at its soft, white underbelly.

The majority of portraits depict birds, including the rare cassowary, a vicious bird found in Indonesia and New Guinea, which can kill with its sharp nails.

Oudry, as his sketches show, worked extensively to accurately capture the muscles, fur and expressions of his subjects.

In each case, Oudry's background — in form and color — matches the subject. Clara is painted in a majestic landscape with large rock formations and distant hills, representing both her physical power and her travels throughout Europe.

The gallery depicting Clara's travels, from stories about her unusual and massive appearance, and the other artistic representations about her, gives strong evidence that wherever she went, she was the center of attention.

Oudry was widely considered the finest painter of animals of his time, so it's fitting that with the help of the Getty, he and Clara can continue to be linked centuries later.

— E-mail freelance columnist Jeff Favre at jjfavre@yahoo.com.