Features

Adam was given dominion over all animals in the Book of Genesis, but there was a sting in the tail – the serpent’s tail. While animals provided food, work, and companionship, they also harbored other traits, which threatened danger in the form of wild beasts or evil as in the snake-like form assumed by the devil in the Garden of Eden. In art, animals figure among the earliest known representations: the painted bison in the caves of Lascaux, or a coyote head fashioned from the pelvis bone of an extinct species of llama in Mexico, or the earliest Egyptian stele with their processions of falcons and other beasts.  A common feature of these earliest representations was a combination of direct observation and magical invocation; with cave paintings, in particular, the undulations of the rock form were employed by the artists to mimic the contours of the bodies of animals, and the carver of the coyote head must have seemed possessed with supernatural gifts to his or her contemporaries.

Art, of course, has the power to evoke images out of nothing, by making connections between medium and the subject represented. This imparted a magical quality to most early representations of animals. It was seen in fabulous beasts like the Egyptian sphinx or the winged bulls of Assyria, resplendent with pinions and the bearded heads of men, and it persists in the anthropomorphic treatment of animals from antiquity to early modern times. Grafted on to the representation of animals were allegorical and symbolic meanings, which are found in both the classical and biblical traditions. Human psychology and character traits were paraded in animal form by the fables attributed to Aesop, and animals play a fundamental role in representations of Christ as lamb of God or the four Evangelists symbolized by the ox, bull, eagle, and angel.

The classical zoological cultures of Aristotle’s Historia Animalium, Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, and late antique works like the Physiologus, contained a mixture of factual observation and folklore to which Christianity added an allegorical gloss. Take the case of the pelican, which became a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice because it was believed to revive its young with the flesh of its own breast. This erroneous observation was woven into a comparison with Christ’s crucifixion, when blood flowed from His side, symbolizing the water of salvation. This was the source of countless representations of the pelican and her offspring in medieval illuminations, ecclesiastical vestments, and stone sculptures. Thus, when one saw such images, one could interpret them in three ways: literally, symbolically, and allegorically. By the same token, the eagle, which adorns many lecterns in Christian churches, was considered the bird that flew highest and closest to God. The psalmist’s invocation to bless the Lord, “who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s [Psalm 103:5]”, contained an allusion to the regeneration of the eagle by the heat of the sun and the cleansing action of spring water.

The medieval bestiary was a major vehicle for transmitting images of animals and their Christological interpretation. As a literary form, the bestiary was a compendium of information and misinformation, enlivened by marginal illustrations of animals. Often these images now need to be deciphered because any resemblance—especially in the case of more exotic animals like elephants or tigers—can be tenuous. They are generally depicted as acting out mythic behavior, such as the lion resuscitating its stillborn cubs by licking them or the even more fabulous unicorn being tamed by a virgin.

Ancient texts were respected for their auctoritas or authority, which was only gradually supplanted by contact with animals and observation of their traits and features. Menageries—both royal and civic—contributed to this shift from symbolic representation to more scientific study: there in one place artists and the general public could watch ostriches, leopards, camels, and a variety of birds. Thus, a Florentine chronicler of the fourteenth century witnessed the birth of live lion cubs, not stillborn as recorded by Pliny and the author of the Physiologus. The charismatic St. Francis of Assisi (c.1182-1226) also fostered a new awareness of animals, and his Canticle of Creatures or hymn to creation was one of the earliest compositions in the Italian vernacular. Likewise, the saint’s interaction with animals became a source of illustration. His miraculous preaching to the birds was depicted in the earliest altar panel dedicated to him in Pescia, near Florence, by Bonaventura Berlinghieri (c. 1235). Seventy years later, a predella panel by Giotto in the Louvre presented the same miracle withan array of carefully rendered images of hawfinches, magpies, and goldfinches, among others.