Animals in Art and Thought: To the End of the Middle Ages 0367206366, 9780367206369

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Half Title
Frontispiece
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Contents
Illustrations
Editors' Foreword and Acknowledgments
Author's Preface
Photographic Acknowledgments
Part 1 The Ancient World
1 The hunter's art and mythology
The rock paintings and engravings
The mythology of the hunter's ritual
2 Animal art in the ancient near east
The neolithic revolution
Continuity and change in ritual
North Africa and Egypt
Western Asia
Contrasting patterns of spirituality: the New Year festivals
Contrasting types of animal imagery
Gilgamesh and the beast-man Enkidu
The monuments
Prehistoric pottery in Asia and Egypt
Sumerian animal art
Egyptian animal art
Assyrian and Minoan animal art
3 Animal art in the civilizations of Greece and Rome
The classical style sequence
The transition from magic to symbolism
4 Barbaric animal styles
The barbaric style sequence
The Jemdet Nasr seals
The bronzes of Luristan
The Scythian animal style
Early Celtic art
Germanic animal ornament
Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts and crosses
Viking art
Symbolic associations
The social setting
Pre-heroic animal associations in barbaric art
Animal associations of the hero
The convergence of Christian and heroic animal symbolism
Part 2 The early Middle Ages
5 The Carolingian Renaissance
Introduction
The Hexaemeron tradition
Typology
The monuments
6 Late Anglo-Saxon animal art: the 'Caedmon' and 'Aelfric' manuscripts
7 Germany, France and Spain, c. 950-1050; the Apocalyptic tradition
Schools of illumination c. A.D. 1000
The Apocalyptic tradition
Apocalyptic animal symbols and their oriental sources
The pictorial tradition
8 Byzantium and Italy
The Macedonian renaissance
Rome, Monte Cassino, Sicily and Venice
9 Romanesque and early Gothic animal art
Introduction
The survival of the oriental 'heraldic' style
Romanesque adaptations of the oriental 'heraldic' style
Apulia
Lombardy
Lombard animal imagery in Germany
Manuscript sources of Romanesque animal ornament
Spain and Languedoc
Beast imagery in the Norman and Angevin realms
The symbolic character of Romanesque and early Gothic animal ornament
Part 3 The later Middle Ages
10 The scientific revival and the beast fables
The scientific revival
The Latin phase
The transformation of the bestiary text
Greek science retrieved through the Arabs
Adelard of Bath
Giraldus Cambrensis
Thirteenth century zoology
Popular science
Alexander Neckam
Bartholomew the Englishman
Fables and beast satires
Twelfth century fable collections
Nigel Wireker's Speculum Stultorum [Mirror of Fools)
Odo of Cheriton and the Latin sermon collections
The Owl and the Nightingale
The Fox and the Wolf
Political satires of the fourteenth century
William Langland
John Gower
Chaucer
Conclusion
11 English animal art of the later Middle Ages
The bestiary illustrations
Gothic animal art
Manuscripts of the thirteenth century: initials and margins
Birds of the Apocalypse
Manuscripts of the fourteenth century: Psalters and Books of Hours
The Pepysian sketchbook
Naturalism in England and Italy
Domestic art: the Longthorpe Tower
Popular art: roof bosses and misericords
12 Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages
Introduction
St. Francis's sermon to the birds and the Christmas presepio
Frederick II's treatise 'De arte venandi cum avibus'
Animal identifications in chivalry
Heraldry
Courtly love
Courtly hunting rites
Conclusion: the movement towards naturalism
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
General index
Index of animals

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

Volume 28

ANIMALS IN ART AND THOUGHT

ANIMALS IN ART AND THOUGHT To the End of the Middle Ages

FRANCIS KLINGENDER Edited by EVELYN ANTAL AND JOHN HARTHAM

First published in 1971 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd This edition first published in 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1971 Winifred Klingender and Evelyn Antal All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-0-367-22090-7 978-0-429-27322-3 978-0-367-20636-9 978-0-429-26268-5

(Set) (Set) (ebk) (Volume 28) (hbk) (Volume 28) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

Animals in art and thought to the end of the Middle Ages

The Dream of Nebuchadnezzar. Roda Bible. MS. Lat. 6. Early 11th century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

Francis Klingender Edited by Evelyn Antal and John Harthan

JlHiniCllS W UTt

and thought to the end of the Middle Ages

London

Routledge & Kegan Paul

A man hath no preeminence above a beast. Ecclesiastes, 3, 19. Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee. Job, 12, 7. For out of olde feldes, as men seith, Cometh al this new corn from yeer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feith, Cometh al this new science that men lere. CHAUCER. The Parlement of Foules, v. 22-5.

First published in 1971 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, London, EC4V 5EL Photoset and printed in Great Britain by BAS Printers Limited, Wallop, Hampshire © Winifred Klingender and Evelyn Antal 1971 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publishers, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism ISBN 0 7100 6817 4

Contents

Editors' Foreword and Acknowledgments Author's Preface Photographic Acknowledgments

xxm xxv xxvii

Part 1 The Ancient World 1 The hunter's art and mythology The rock paintings and engravings The mythology of the hunter's ritual

3 11

2 Animal art in the ancient near east

28

The neolithic revolution Continuity and change in ritual North Africa and Egypt Western Asia Contrasting patterns of spirituality: the New Year festivals Contrasting types of animal imagery Gilgamesh and the beast-man Enkidu The monuments Prehistoric pottery in Asia and Egypt Sumerian animal art Egyptian animal art Assyrian and Minoan animal art

3 Animal art in the civilizations of Greece and Rome The classical style sequence The transition from magic to symbolism

28 30 30 33 34 35 37 38 38 40 49 60

63

63 82

4

Barbaric animal styles The barbaric style sequence The Jemdet Nasr seals The bronzes of Luristan The Scythian animal style Early Celtic art Germanic animal ornament Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts and crosses Viking art Symbolic associations The social setting Pre-heroic animal associations in barbaric art Animal associations of the hero The convergence of Christian and heroic animal symbolism

Part 2

95 95 95 96 96 100 103 108 112 116 116 117 124 130

The early Middle Ages

5 The Carolingian Renaissance

145

Introduction The Hexaemeron tradition Typology The monuments

145 147 155 169

6 Late Anglo-Saxon animal art: the 'Caedmon' and 'Aelfric' manuscripts 184

vi

7 Germany, France and Spain, c. 950-1050; the Apocalyptic tradition Schools of illumination c. A.D. 1000 The Apocalyptic tradition Apocalyptic animal symbols and their oriental sources The pictorial tradition

202 202 207 210 219

8 Byzantium and Italy

238

The Macedonian renaissance Rome, Monte Cassino, Sicily and Venice

238 244

9 Romanesque and early Gothic animal art

262

Introduction The survival of the oriental 'heraldic' style Romanesque adaptations of the oriental 'heraldic' style Apulia Lombardy

262 268 276 276 284

294 Lombard animal imagery in Germany Manuscript sources of Romanesque animal ornament Spain and Languedoc Beast imagery in the Norman and Angevin realms The symbolic character of Romanesque and early Gothic animal ornament

297 297 307 328

Part 3 The later Middle Ages 10 The scientific revival and the beast fables The scientific revival The Latin phase The transformation of the bestiary text Greek science retrieved through the Arabs Adelard of Bath Giraldus Cambrensis Thirteenth century zoology Popular science Alexander Neckam Bartholomew the Englishman Fables and beast satires Twelfth century fable collections Nigel Wireker's Speculum Stultorum [Mirror of Fools) Odo of Cheriton and the Latin sermon collections The Owl and the Nightingale The Fox and the Wolf Political satires of the fourteenth century William Langland John Gower Chaucer Conclusion 11 English animal art of the later Middle Ages The bestiary illustrations Gothic animal art Manuscripts of the thirteenth century: initials and margins Birds of the Apocalypse Manuscripts of the fourteenth century: Psalters and Books of Hours The Pepysian sketchbook Naturalism in England and Italy Domestic art: the Longthorpe Tower Popular art: roof bosses and misericords

339 339 339 340 344 346 349 350 351 351 354 359 360 360 362 365 366 368 368 372 373 379 382 382 397 397 402 413 421 425 All 432

vii

12 Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

vin

.,„

Introduction St. Francis's sermon to the birds and the Christmas presepio Frederick II's treatise 'De arte venandi cum avibus Animal identifications in chivalry Heraldry Courtly love Courtly hunting rites Conclusion: the movement towards naturalism

439 441 447 450 450 461 468 476

Epilogue

489

Notes

495

Bibliography

540

General index

565

Index of animals

578

Illustrations

The Dream of Nebuchadnezzar. Roda Bible

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

frontispiece

Chapter 1 Hand silhouette with dots, from the frieze of black Horses. Pech-Merle 'Macaroni' tracings with Animal Heads. Altamira Engraved Stag with twisted antlers. Marcenac Elephant with heart showing. Pindal. Asturias The Black Bull. Lascaux Ibexes fighting; carved stone block. Le Roc de Sers, Charente Bison bellowing. Altamira Man gathering honey attacked by Bees. Cuevas de la Arafia Dead Eland lying on its back. Markwe Cave, Inoro, Mashonaland Kangaroo painted on bark in the so-called X-ray style. Arnhem Land, North Australia Men with Animal Heads and noses bleeding, watched by a Woman. Teyateyaneng (Advance Post Cave) Lesotho Headless Bear modelled in clay. Montespan Bear pierced with arrows. Les Trois-Freres Bison wizard-man dancing. Les Trois-Freres Bison wizard-man pursuing animals. Les Trois-Freres Pair of Bisons modelled in clay. Tuc d'Audoubert Hunter linked with woman and shooting game. Oasis of Tiout, Atlas Mts Deer driven from a cliff by unseen beaters and shot at by hunters. Valltorta Ravine, Albocacer (Castellon)

Chapter 2 19 The Goat of Bov Alam, S. Oran, wearing collar and harness. Rock engraving from Moghrar Tahtani, Atlas Mts 20 'The Good Shepherd'. Rock engraving from Moghrar Tahtani, Atlas Mts 21 Domesticated Antelope led by a man with a rope. Rock engraving from Southern Egypt 22 Hunter's Palette. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 23 Hunter's Palette. British Museum 24 Cat sacred to Bastet. Bronze. Ptolemaic, c. A.D. 10. British Museum 25 Anubis as crouching Jackal. Wood. Egyptian (Roman period); after 30 B.C. British Museum

4 5 6 6 7 8 8 9 11 12 15 19 20 20 21 21 22 26

29 29 30 31 31 33 33

ix

26 Soul-Bird. Ba returning to body on Bier. Ani Papyrus. XlXth Dynasty, 1250 B.C. British Museum 36 27a and b Bird Processions; Sialk Pottery. 3rd Period. Before 3000 B.C. 38 28 Stylized Animals. Samarra Pottery. 5th millennium, B.C. 39 29 Animals on Vase. Amratian Pottery. Before 3500 B.C. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 39 30 Guardian Leopards. Wall painting. Proto-Literate period. Uqair, Iraq. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago 40 31 Animal Procession. The Warka Trough. Side-view. Gypsum. Sumerian, 3300-3000 B.C. British Museum 41 32 Calves. The Warka Trough. End-view. Gypsum. Sumerian, 33003000 B.C. British Museum 33a-k, 34 Cylinder Seals 42^14 35 Frieze of Bulls from El 'Ubaid. 2500 B.C. British Museum 45 36 Hero and Lions holding victims upside down. Front end of Silver Lyre from tomb, 'Great Death Pit', in Royal Cemetery at Ur. c. 2500 B.C. British Museum 45 37 Imdugud gripping two Stags. Copper lintel from Temple of El 'Ubaid. Early Dynastic Period. 3000-2340 B.C. British Museum 46 38 Guardian Lion from Gate at Malatya. Basalt. Hittite. 1050-850 B.C. Ankara Museum 48 39 Lion Hunt. Basalt. Hittite. From Malatya. 850-700 B.C. Ankara Museum 48 40 Lion from temple at Nimrud. Assyrian, c. 880 B.C. British Museum 49 41 Man-Bull Guardian from the Palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad. Assyrian. Late 8th century B.C. British Museum 50 42 Procession of Bulls and Dragons from the Ishtar Gate, Babylon, 7th-6th century B.C. Staatl. Museen, Berlin-Ost Vorderasiatische Abteilung 50 43 Lion attacking Bull. Relief from Persepolis. 6th century B.C. 51 44 Beast-hero combat. Relief from Persepolis. 6th century B.C. 52 45 Egyptian Baboon, inscribed Horus. Alabaster. Agyptisches Museum, Berlin-West 52 46a Netting Wild Fowl. From Tomb of Nebamun, Thebes. Egyptian. XVIIIth Dynasty, c. 1400 B.C. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago 53 46b Cat catching three Birds. Detail of above 53 47 Murals. Mereruka Tomb. Vlth Dynasty, c. 2400-2250 B.C. Old Kingdom Period. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago 54 48 Hippopotami Hunt. Detail of 47 55 49 Varieties of Fish. Detail of 47 50 Two Deer feeding from Trough. Limestone Manger. Egyptian; Amarna style. XVIIIth Dynasty, c. 1370 B.C. British Museum 51 Deities in Animal Forms from the Book of the Dead. Ani Papyrus; Egyptian. XlXth Dynasty, c. 1250 B.C. British Museum 52 Anubis as a Jackal above the mummy of Abdou represented by a Fish. XlXth Dynasty, c. 1250 B.C. Tomb of Khabekhnet. Deir el-Medineh 53 Wounded Lion. Detail from Lion Hunt in Ashurbanipal's Palace. Assyrian, c. 650 B.C. British Museum 54 Hunting of Gazelles. Assyrian, c. 650 B.C. From Ashurbanipal's Palace. British Museum

55 57 57

59 60 60

55 'Octopus' Vase. Cretan, c. 1450-1400 B.C. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Chapter 3 56 Animal Procession. 'Orientalizing' Corinthian Vase. British Museum 57 Swan. 'Orientalizing' Corinthian Vase. British Museum 58 Hercules and the Stymphalian Birds. Detail from the 'Vulci' Vase. Athenian. Mid-6th century B.C. British Museum 59 Dogs and Mounted Warriors on vase from Attica. Late 6th century B.C. British Museum 60 The Bull-Calf Bearer. 6th century B.C. Acropolis Museum, Athens 61 Youths setting a Dog on a Cat. Relief, c. 510 B.C. Archaeological Museum, Athens 62 Horses from the Parthenon frieze. 442-438 B.C. British Museum 63 Horses from the Parthenon frieze. 442—438 B.C. British Museum 64a, b, c Greek coins. 5th-3rd centuries B.C. British Museum 65 Plunging Horses from Battle Scene. Alexander and Darius Mosaic at Pompeii of Philoxenos' painting, c. 90 B.C. Museo Nazionale, Naples 66 Sick Greyhound. Marble. 200 B.C. Louvre, Paris 67 Farnese Bull. Roman. 1st century B.C. Museo Nazionale, Naples 68 Hippopotamus, Crocodile and Ducks on the Nile, from mosaic from Palestrina. Roman. 2nd century B.C. Museo Nazionale, Naples 69 Varieties of Fish in the Nile, from mosaic from Palestrina. Roman. 2nd century B.C. Museo Nazionale, Naples 70 Mosaic of Vineyard. S. Costanza, Rome 71 Captured Ostriches. Detail from mosaic pavement. Roman. Villa of Piazza Armerina, Sicily 72 Hunting scenes. Detail from mosaic pavement. Palace of the Byzantine Emperors, Constantinople 73 Orpheus and the Animals. Fragment of Mosaic pavement. Roman. Woodchester, Glos. 74 Orpheus and the Animals. Mosaic pavement. Roman. Horkstow, Lines. 75 Fishes and Birds. Detail from the Creation Mosaic. Byzantine. Early 13th century. St. Mark's, Venice 76 Aesop and the Fox: on Dish of the 5th century B.C. Museo Etrusco Gregoriano, Vatican

Chapter 4 77a Horse-bit. Luristan bronze. Collection Stora 77b Beast-hero combat. Funeral statuette. Luristan bronze. Louvre Museum 78 Lion. Ornamental plate. Gold. Scythian. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad 79a Ornamental plate from a gold girdle-clasp. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad 79b Stag. Ornamental plate from a girdle-clasp. Gold. From Kostromskaya. Scythian. 5th century B.C. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad

61

64 64 65 65 66 67 68 69 70

70 71 73 74 74 75 76 77 79 79 81 85

97 97 98 98 99

xi

xii

79c Stag. Pole-top. Cast bronze. 5th century B.C. Hermitage Museum Leningrad 80 Horse-drawn Chariots and Warriors. Detail from bronze vase from Vix. Greek, c. 500 B.C. Museum, Chatillon-s/Seine 81 Wolf-shaped handle. Lorraine Flask, c. 450 B.C. British Museum 82 Parade-cap for a Horse, from Torrs, Kirkcudbrightshire. Bronze. Late 3rd—early 2nd century B.C. National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh 83 Barbarized 'heraldic' Animals from the Sacramentarium Gelasianum. Folio 132a. Merovingian, c. 750. Vatican Library, Rome 84 Dragon from Shield-boss. Garnet inlay, c. 650. Sutton Hoo. British Museum 85 Hero among Beasts and Hawk swooping on a Duck from Purse-lid. Gold and garnets, c. 650. Sutton Hoo. British Museum 86a Interlinked Boars on hinged clasps. Gold and garnets, c. 650. Sutton Hoo. British Museum 86b Detail of 86a. 87 Stag, Spread-eagle and other Animals from the Canterbury Psalter. Cotton Vesp. A.I. folio 64v. c. 750. British Museum 88 Otter catching Fish. Detail from the Book of Kells. MS. A.1.6. Irish c. 800. Trinity College, Dublin 89 Mice and Cats. Detail from the Book of Kells. MS. A.1.6. Irish, c. 800. Trinity College, Dublin 90 The so-called 'Academic' Animal Mace head. Oseberg Ship Burial, 9th century. Universitetets Oldsaksamling, Oslo 91 Ribbon Monsters from North Doorway of Urnes Church, c. 1050-70, Historisk Museum, Bergen 92 The 'Great Beast' and Serpent from Viking Gravestone from St. Paul's Churchyard. Early 11th century. Guildhall Museum, London 93 Animals and Birds in foliage scroll. Carving. Detail of door jamb of Al Church, Hallingdal. c. 1150-75. Universitetets Oldsaksamling, Oslo 94 The Celtic God Cernunnos between Wolf and Stag. Detail from the Gundestrup Cauldron. Embossed silver-gilt. Celtic. (La Tene period). 1st century B.C. National Museum, Copenhagen 95 Bull-fight. Detail from the Gundestrup Cauldron. Embossed silvergilt. Celtic. (La Tene period). 1st century B.C. National Museum, Copenhagen 96a Boar. Incised Stone. 6th-7th century. From Dunadd, Argyllshire 96b Bronze Stag on Iron Ring. Royal Standard from Sutton Hoo. c. 650. British Museum 97 Torslunda Dies. Bronze, (a) Dancing warriors, one with a Boar's Mask, (b) Two armed warriors with Boar crests, (c-d) Hero-Beast Combats. 7th century. Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm 98 Mounted Warrior. Relief on Bronze Plate attached to Helmet. From Vendel (Grave I). 7th century (second half). Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm 99 Hunting Slab with (top) Female Rider from Hilton of Cadboll. c. 800. National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh 100a Archer shooting at Creatures in foliage scrolls. Detail from the St. Andrew Auckland Cross, Northumbria. 8th century

99 100 101

101 104 104 JQ7 107

110 111 111 113 114

114

115

118

118 121 121

122

124 127 133

100b Birds and Animals inside a foliage scroll. Detail from Ruthwell Cross, c. 670. Dumfriesshire 101 Romulus and Remus suckled by the She-Wolf. Franks Casket. Ivory. c. 700. Northumbria. British Museum 102 Sigurd's Burial, guarded by his Horse. From the Franks Casket. Bargello, Florence. 103a Bird-men and Lion. Pictish Slab. Late 7th century. From Papil, Shetland. National Museum of Scottish Antiquities. Edinburgh 103b Daniel and the Lions. Pictish Slab. Probably after A.D. 843. Museum, Meigle, Perthshire 104 St. Michael and the Dragon. Stone Relief, c. 1000. St. Nicholas, Ipswich, Suffolk 105 St. Michael and the Dragon. Stone Relief. Second half of 11th century. Southwell Minster, Notts.

106 107

108 109 110 111 112

113 114 115

116 117

Chapter 5 Noah and the Ark. Sarcophagus. 5th century. Trier Apocalyptic Vision of Christ and Animal Symbols. Grandval Bible. Add. 10546, folio 449a. Carolingian. c. 840. British Museum Monsters from the Physiologus: Solinus MS. cod. C. 246, folio 57r. 13th century. Ambrosiana Library, Milan Animals, Birds and Monsters from Canon-tables. Gospel of St. Thierry de Reims. MS. 7. 9th century. Bibl. de la Ville, Reims Birds and Beasts facing the Fountain of Life. Godescalc Gospel. 781-83. Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1203. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris Illustration of Psalm CIII (104). Utrecht Psalter, folio 59v. University Library, Utrecht Illustration of Psalm XLI (42): 'As pants the hart.' Stuttgart Psalter, folio 53v. c. 820-30. Wiirttembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart Illustration of Psalm XLI (42): 'As pants the hart.' Utrecht Psalter, folio 24v. University Library, Utrecht Mare and Foal. Detail of Illustration from Psalm LXXII (73). c. 830. Utrecht Psalter, folio 41. University Library, Utrecht Adam feeding the Birds and Christ blessing the Animal Creation. Stuttgart Psalter, folio 9. Psalm VIII (8). c. 820-30. Wiirttembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart Christ between Goat and Sheep. Stuttgart Psalter, folio 6r. c. 820-30. Wiirttembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart Crucifixion. Christ menaced by Lion and Unicorn. Stuttgart Psalter, folio 27r. c. 820-30. Wiirttembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart

Chapter 6 118 Satan fettered; Satan in form of a Serpent. Caedmon MS. Junius XI, page 20. 1 lth century (first half). Bodleian Library, Oxford 119 Adam and Eve. Prohibition of the Tree of Life and Knowledge. Caedmon MS. Junius XI, page 13. 11th century (first half). Bodleian Library, Oxford

133 134 134 135 135 139 139

154

159 167 171 171 175

177 177 178

178 181

lgl

188

190

xiii

120 Story of Cain and Abel. Caedmon MS. Junius XI, page 49. 1 lth century (first half). Bodleian Library, Oxford 121 The Creation of the Birds and Fishes. MS. Claud. B. IV, folio 3v. 11th century (second half). British Museum 122 Creation of Adam. MS. Claud. B. IV, folio 4. 11th century (second half). British Museum 123 Naming of the Animals. God and Seated Adam. MS. Claud. B. IV, folio 6, 11th century (second half). British Museum 124 The Ark. MS. Claud. B. IV, folio 14. 11th century (second half). British Museum 125 Viking Ship and 'Creeping Things'. MS. Regin. lat. 12, folio 108r. 11th century (second quarter). Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Rome 126 Constellation Symbol. Aries. MS. Harley 2506, folio 38. 10-1 lth century. British Museum 127 Constellation Symbol. Capricorn. MS. Harley 2506, folio 39. 10-1 lth century. British Museum

xiv

Chapter 7 128 Creation Scene. Farfa Bible. MS. Lat. 5729, folio 5. lOth-llth century. Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Rome 129 Animals and Birds. Creation Scene. Tapestry. Cathedral, Gerona 130 Christ surrounded by Prophets and Animal Symbols of the Evangelists. Add. 10546, folio 352v. Grandval Bible. British Museum 131 Armageddon. Apocalypse MS. 31, folio 63v. 8th-9th century. Stadtbibliothek, Trier 132 The Three Riders and the Angel's Call to the Birds, from the Apocalypse. Reichenau School, the Bamberg Apocalypse. MS. A.II.42, folio 48v. c. 1000. Stadtbibliothek, Bamberg 133 St. John and the Eagle of Woe, from the Apocalypse. Reichenau School, the Bamberg Apocalypse. MS. A.II.42, folio 21v. c. 1000. Stadtbibliothek, Bamberg 134 The Beast with the Ram's Horns. Reichenau School, the Bamberg Apocalypse. MS. A.11.42, folio 33v. c. 1000. Stadtbibliothek, Bamberg 135 Vision of Isaiah from Gregory's Moralia. A.D. 945. MS. Vitr. 14, 2, folio 2. Bibl. Nac. Madrid 136 Ram caught in a Thicket. From the Sacrifice of Isaac. Bible of San Isidoro of Leon. A.D. 960, folio 21v. Collegiate Church of San Isidoro, Leon 137 Noah's Ark from the Apocalypse. MS. 8, folio 15r. 12th century (second half). John Rylands Library, Manchester 138 Bird and Serpent from the Apocalypse. MS. 8, folio 14r. 12th century (second half). John Rylands Library, Manchester 139 Fox and Cock from Beatus. B.31, folio 197. Bibl. Nac. Madrid 140 Christ in Judgment with the souls of martyrs as Birds, from the Apocalypse. MS. 8, folio 191. 12th century (second half). John Rylands Library, Manchester 141 The Angel's Call to the Birds, from the Apocalypse. Add. MS. 11695, folio 197, A.D. 1091. British Museum

191 193 194 195 196 198 201 201

205 206

221 223

224

224

225 227

227 228 229 230

231 232

142 The Angel's Call to the Birds from the Apocalypse. MS. 8, folio 188r. 12th century (second half). John Rylands Library, Manchester 143 Vision of Ezekiel. Gerona Codex. A.D. 975, folio 219v. Cathedral, Gerona 144 The Madness of Nebuchadnezzar. Roda Bible. MS. lat. 6. Early 11th century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 145 The Four Horsemen. Beatus Silos. MS. Add. 11695, folio 102v. British Museum 146 The Four Riders. St.-Sever Apocalypse. MS. lat. 8878, folio 108v. Mid-1 lth century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 147 The sounding of the Fourth Trumpet and the Eagle of Woe. St.Sever Apocalypse. MS. lat. 8878, folio 141. Mid-1 lth century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris Chapter 8 148 Front of the Veroli Casket. Erotes playing with Animals. Wood overlaid with bone and ivory. Byzantine. Late 10th or early 11th century. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 149 Hunting Scene. Panel from ivory casket. Byzantine. 9th-10th century. British Museum 150 David as a Harpist. Frontispiece. Paris Psalter. Cod. gr. 139. 10th century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 151 Bellerophon and Pegasus. From Oppian's Cynegetica. MS. Cod. gr. 479, folio 8v. 10th or early 11th century. Marciana Library, Venice 152 Adam Naming the Animals with Creation of Eve on right. Genesis II. 19. 20, folio 12v. Smyrna Octateuch (destroyed). llth~12th century 153 Confronting Stag and Pegasus. Fragment of Marble screen. 9th century. S. Giovanni Maggiore, Naples 154 Bees gathering honey. Exultet Roll from Monte Cassino. MS. Add. 30337. 11th century. British Museum 155 Bees gathering honey and the Nativity. Exultet Roll from Gaeta. MS. N.I. 11th century. Cathedral Archives, Gaeta 156a Creation of the Fish and Birds. Ivory plaque of the 11th century from the Antependium of Salerno Cathedral. National Museum, Budapest 156b Creation of the Animals. Ivory plaque of the 11th century from the Antependium of Salerno Cathedral. Metropolitan Museum, New York 157 Creation of the Birds and Animals. Detail from S. Zeno doorway. 12th century. Verona 158 Rebecca and Camels at the Well. Mosaic. 12th century. Cappella Palatina, Palazzo Reale, Palermo 159 Noah lifting Peacock into the Ark. Detail from the Creation Mosaics. 13th century. Vestibule of St. Mark's, Venice 160 Release of Lions and other Animals from the Ark. Detail from the Creation Mosaics. 13th century. Vestibule of St. Mark's, Venice 161 Sermon of St. Francis to the Birds. Berlinghieri Altarpiece. 1235. S. Francesco, Pescia

232 233 234 234 235 237

240 240 241 242 243 245 248 249 252 252 252 254 255 256 260

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162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 xvi

Chapter 9 Persian Lion-Slayer. Shroud of St. Victor. Silk. Byzantine. A.D. 750. Cathedral, Sens Animal Combat scene. Detail. Coronation Cloak of Roger II of Sicily, 1133, later used as Coronation Cloak of the Holy Roman Emperors. Schatzkammer, Hofburg, Vienna Fishes, Ducks and Fruit. Fabric from Tomb of St. Cuthbert from Lindisfarne. Reconstruction of the design of the 'Nature-Goddess'. Silk. Byzantine. 7th century. Cathedral, Durham Eagles with Serpent and Hares in talons. Marble relief. Byzantine from Constantinople. 11th century. British Museum Ceiling decoration, A.D. 711-15. Kuseir' Amra Palace. Heraldic Eagle with Hare in talons. Mosaic. Detail of Vault. 1160—70. Stanza di Ruggiero. Palazzo Reale, Palermo Jonah and the Whale. Pulpit. 12th century. Cathedral, Ravello Eagle Pulpit by the sculptor Acceptus. Early 11th century. Cathedral of S. Sabino, Canosa, Apulia Lion Capital, now used as Font. Early 12th century. Abbey of SS. Trinita, Venosa, Apulia Crouching Lionesses on Bishop's Throne. 1098. S. Nicola, Bari, Apulia Mosaic pavement, laid 1163—6. Cathedral, Otranto, Apulia Confronting Peacocks. Marble screen. Early 11th century. Cathedral of S. Maria Assunta, Tor cello Capital with Rams. 11th century. St. Mark's, Venice Animal Grotesques, c. 1180. West Facade (right doorway). S. Michele Maggiore, Pavia Winged Lion and Dragon on door-jamb. Romanesque. 13th century. S. Fedele, Como Lion supports to Pulpit. 1272. Cathedral, Ravello Lion Aquamanile. North German (Hildesheim). First half of 12th century. Brass. Victoria and Albert Museum, London The Brunswick Lion. Bronze. 1166. Brunswick Detail of Door. c. 1180. St. James's, Regensburg Beast Pillar. Crypt. Before 1205. Cathedral, Freising Capital with Bird. 13th century. Marienkirche, Gelnhausen, Hesse The Bamberg Rider, c. 1230-40. Cathedral, Bamberg Eagle-headed Lions. Carving from Notre Dame de la Regie. 12th century. Municipal Museum, Limoges Birds. Cloister Capital. San Domingo de Silos. llth-12th century. Burgos Lions flanking the Monogram of Christ. Detail from Sarcophagus of Dona Sancha. 11th century. Cathedral, Jaca, Aragon Lion on Cloister Column. 1100. Saint-Pierre, Moissac, Tarne-etGaronne Beast Pillar from Benedictine Abbey, c. 1115. Souillac, Lot. Detail of Beast Pillar from Benedictine Abbey c. 1115. Souillac, Lot. Detail of Beast Pillar from Benedictine Abbey, c. 1115. Souillac, Lot.

269 270 271 272 273 274 275 278 279 280 281 286 287 288 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 302 303 304 305 308 309 310

191 Animal Procession from South Transept Porch. 1119-35. SaintPierre, Aulnay 192 St. George and the Dragon. Tympanum, c. 1150. Brinsop, Herefordshire 193 Samson and the Lion. Tympanum, c. 1140-50. Stretton Sugwas, Herefordshire 194 Hare and Hound. Exterior Corbel, c. 1145-50. Kilpeck, Herefordshire 195 Lions and Monsters. Font. c. 1200. St. Mary's, Stafford 196 Lions attacking Bear and wild Boar. Detail from Whalebone carving. English, late 11th century. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 197 Fox playing a Harp. Detail of Doorway, c. 1170-80. St. Mary's, Barfreston, Kent 198 Monkey riding on a Goat. Detail of Doorway, c. 1170—80. St. Mary's, Barfreston, Kent 199 Interior frieze with Animals, c. 1170-80. St. Mary's, Barfreston, Kent 200 Animal Musicians and Monsters, c. 1115-25. Crypt, Cathedral, Canterbury 201 Monsters, c. 1115-25. Crypt, Cathedral, Canterbury 202 Fledgling on Chancel Shaft, c. 1175-82. Iffley, Oxon. 203 Beak-heads, Huntsmen in foliage scroll, and confronting Lions. c. 1141-50. West Front. Cathedral, Lincoln 204 Affronted heraldic Beasts. Detail from West Doorway, c. 1141-50. Cathedral, Lincoln 205 Initial L. Bible of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Martial de Limoges, c. 1070. MS. Lat. 254, folio lO.Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 206 Initial A from Psalm CXIX (120). Psalter, 10th century. Cathedral Library, Salisbury 207 Sinners and Asps. St. Albans Psalter, 1119—46. Library of St. Godehard, Hildesheim 208 David open-mouthed with Birds. St. Albans Psalter, 1119-46. Library of St. Godehard, Hildesheim 209 Sinner menaced by Bulls. St. Albans Psalter, 1119-46. Library of St. Godehard, Hildesheim 210 David inspired by Holy Ghost (Bird). Above, fighting Knights. St. Albans Psalter, 1119-46. Library of St. Godehard, Hildesheim

Chapter 10 211 Parliament of Beasts from Bartholomew the Englishman's De proprietatibus rerum. c. 1480. MS. fr. 9140, folio 323. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 212 Jackal and Bullock from the Bidpai Tales. MS. Arab 3465, folio 62. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 213 Owl mobbed by Birds. MS. Harley 4751, folio 47. British Museum Chapter 11 214 Elephant with Mandrake and Serpent. Folio 19r. 9th century. MS. 318. Physiologus. Stadtbibliothek, Bern 215 Jacob blessing the Lion of Judah. Folio 7r. 9th century. MS. 318. Physiologus. Stadtbibliothek, Bern

311 312 312 313 313 314 316 317 317 318 319 319 320 321 324 324 330 330 333 333

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216 Panther attracting Animals by its Breath. Folio 15r. 9th century. MS. 318. Physiologus. Stadtbibliothek, Bern 217 Serra with Fish in its Mouth. Bestiary. Laud Misc. 247. Folio 141v. Bodleian Library, Oxford 218a Whale. MS. Bodl. 602. Folio 22v. Bodleian Library, Oxford 218b Whale. MS. Ashmole 1511, folio 86v. Bodleian Library, Oxford 218c Whale. Add. MS. 11283. 12th century. British Museum 219a Unicorn. Early Laud Bestiary. Bodl. Misc. 247, folio 149. Bodleian Library, Oxford 219b Panther attracts Beasts with its fragrant breath. Bestiary MS. Ii.4.26, folio 469. University Library, Cambridge 220a Unicorn from a Bestiary. MS. Harley 4751, folio 6v. British Museum 220b The Fox feigning Death. Bestiary. MS. Ii.4.26. folio 16r. University Library, Cambridge 220c Caprae (Goats). Bestiary. MS. Ii.4.26, folio 13r. University Library, Cambridge 221 Pairs of Animals in Roundels. Casket Hispano-Moresque. Early 11th century. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 222 Hedgehogs from Rochester Bestiary. MS. Royal 12F.XIII, folio 45. British Museum 223 Archer and four Magpies. MS. Ashmole 1511, folio 48v. Bestiary. 12th century. Bodleian Library, Oxford 224 Hedgehogs. Bestiary. MS. Ii.4.26, folio 28v. University Library, Cambridge 225 Fallow Deer feeding her Young. MS. Harley 4751, folio 13r. Bestiary, late 12th-13th century. British Museum 226 Reynard carrying off a Goose. MS. Harley 4751, folio 54. Bestiary, late 12th-13th century. British Museum 227 Barnacle Geese. Bestiary. MS. Harley 4751, folio 36. British Museum 228 Gannet Diving. MS. Royal 13B. VII, folio 9. 13th century. Giraldus Cambrensis. British Museum 229a Elephant and Castle. Bestiary (MS. 22). The Library, Westminster Abbey 229b Elephant and Castle. MS. Royal 12F. XIII, folio llv. Rochester Bestiary. British Museum 230 Unicorn and Virgin from the Rochester Bestiary. MS. Royal 12F. XIII, folio lOv. British Museum 231 Knights and two embracing Mules from the Rochester Bestiary. MS. Royal 12 F. XIII, folio 42v. British Museum 232 Eight Beast Musicians. MS. Lansdowne 420, folio 12v. 13th century. British Museum 233 Dancing Bear and Ass. MS. Arundel 91, folio 47v. c. 1100. British Museum 234 Birds and Drolleries. MS. Royal 1 D.I., folio 5. Mid-14th century. British Museum 235 Birds and Archers. Apocalypse. MS. R. 16.2, folio 30v. c. 1230. Trinity College, Cambridge 236 Birds feeding on Corpses. Apocalypse. MS. R. 16.2, folio 23v. c. 1230. Trinity College, Cambridge 237 Birds descending on the fallen Babylon. Add. MS. 17333, folio 36. Early 14th century. British Museum

384 384 385 386 386 387 388 389 390 390 391 392 393 394 394 395 395 396 397 398 399 399 400 400 401 403 404 405

2 J8 Gathering of the Birds at the Angel's Call. Apocalypse. MS. Royal 19B.XV, folio 37v. c. 1320-30. British Museum 239 St. Francis and the Birds. MS. 96, folio 22. Eton College 240 St. Francis and the Birds. MS. 16, folio 66v. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 241 St. Francis and the Birds. MS. Add. 42130, folio 60v. The Luttrell Psalter, c. 1340. British Museum 242 St. Francis and the Birds. Taymouth Horae. MS. Yates Thompson 13. British Museum 243 The Creation of the Birds and Animals. Add. MS. 47682, folio 2v. The Holkham Bible. 14th century (first half). British Museum 244 The Creation of the Birds and Animals. MS. Royal 2 B. VII, folio 2. The Queen Mary Psalter. Early 14th century. British Museum 245 Owl mobbed by Magpies and other Birds. East Anglian Book of Hours. MS.W. 105, folio 10b. Mid-14th century. Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore 246 Seagull and other Birds. Beatus Page. Add. MS. 24686, folio 11. Tenison Psalter. Before 1284. British Museum 247 Hare Hunt. Taymouth Horae. Yates Thompson MS. 13, folio 69v. c. 1350. British Museum 248 Stag Hunt. The Cure'e, Present and Mor. Taymouth Horae. Yates Thompson MS. 13, folio 83v. c. 1350. British Museum 249 The Present, and the Mor. MS. Royal 10E.IV, folio 256. The Smithfield Decretals. Mid-14th century. British Museum 250 Reynard, disguised as a Bishop preaching to Birds; Reynard stealing a Goose pursued by Woman with distaff. MS. Royal 10E.IV, folio 49v. The Smithfield Decretals. British Museum 251 Monkeys pillaging a sleeping Pedlar. MS. Royal 10E.IV, folio 149v. The Smithfield Decretals. Mid-14th century. British Museum 252 The Clever Daughter. MS. Douce 366, folio 72. Psalter, c. 1310-25. Bodleian Library, Oxford 253 Boys with Butterflies. MS. Royal 2B.VII, folio 163v. The Queen Mary Psalter. Early 14th century. British Museum 254 Butterfly Hunt. MS. Bodley 264, folio 135r. Romance of Alexander. c. 1400. Bodleian Library, Oxford 255 Dragonfly. MS. Add. 42130, folio 36v. The Luttrell Psalter. c. 1340. British Museum 256 Kingfisher and Leech. MS. Add. 42130, folio 61v. The Luttrell Psalter, c. 1340. British Museum 257 Sea Monsters at the Last Judgment. MS. Add. 47682, folio 40v. 14th century (first half). The Holkham Bible. British Museum 258 Varieties of Birds. Pepysian sketchbook, folios llv-12r. Late 14th century. Magdalene College, Cambridge 259 Hawking Scene. From the Queen Mary Psalter. Royal 2B.VII, folio 151. British Museum 260 Goat, Hare, Wolf and Leopard from Taccuino di Disegni by Giov. de' Grassi, folio 16. Bibl. Civica, Bergamo 261 Birds and Apostles. Mural. 14th century (second quarter). Longthorpe Tower, Peterborough 262 Wheel of the Five Senses. Mural. 14th century (second quarter). Longthorpe Tower, Peterborough 263 Birds and Beasts around the Tree of Vices. East Anglian Book of

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Hours. MS. W.105, folio 9v. c. 1400. Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore 264 Bird-catching. Fresco in the Pope's Wardrobe. Palais des Papes, Avignon 265 Solitary Swan. Fresco in the Pope's Wardrobe. Palais des Papes, Avignon 266 Pig with Bagpipes. South wall of Nave. Melrose Abbey, Roxburgh 267 White Rabbit. Doorway detail, chancel aisle, St. Mary's, Beverley, Yorks. 268 Two Puppies playing. Misericord. 15th century. Cathedral, Wells 269 Owl clutching Mouse. Misericord. 15th century. Cathedral, Ely 270 Reynard, disguised as a Bishop, preaching to Birds. Bench-End. 15th century. Brent Knoll 271a Basilisk and Weasels holding Rue in their mouths. 15th century. Misericord. Cathedral, Worcester 271b Spoonbills. Misericord. 15th century. Lavenham, Suffolk 272 Lizard. Stone Corbel, c. 1200-10. Cathedral. Wells

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Chapter 12 273a Insects, Cats and Crustacean. From Villard de Honnecourt's Sketchbook. 13th century (first half). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 273b Lion and Hedgehog. From Villard de Honnecourt's Sketchbook. 13th century (first half). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 273c Lion with Keeper. From Villard de Honnecourt's Sketchbook. 13th century (first half). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 274 St. Francis' Sermon to the Birds. By Taddeo di Bartolo, 1403. Niedersachsische Landesgalerie, Hanover 275 Madonna and Child with Goldfinch. By Cenno di Francesco. Kress Collection, Museum of Art, University of Kansas 276 Stork's Nest and Hawks from Romance of Alexander, MS. 264, folio 128r. c. 1400. Bodleian Library, Oxford 277 Elephant with Keeper. From MS. 16, folio IVa. 1255. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 278a Geese Flight in V-formation from Frederick II's Treatise on Falconry. Palat. Lat. 1071, folio 15r. c. 1260. Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Rome 278b Geese Flight. Simon d'Orleans. MS. fr. 12400. c. 1290. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 279 Dragon and Greyhound supporters. Stone carving by Thomas Stockton, 1512-13. King's College Chapel, Cambridge 280 Saints and Animal Companions. Jerome with Lion and Giles with Hind. Painting. Master of the Life of the Virgin. 15th century. National Gallery, London 281 St. Claude admonishing a Bear. Miniature. Latin MS. 164, folio 246v. c. 1430. John Rylands Library, Manchester 282 St. Anthony and Hippocentaur. From the Belles Heures de Jean, Due de Berry. Miniature by the Limbourg Brothers, c. 1410-13, folio 192. Metropolitan Museum (Cloisters Collection), New York

430 431 431 434 434 435 436 436

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440 440 440 443 446 447 448 450 451 454 455 457

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283 Heraldic Lions. Banner of the Talbot-Strange Family. Drawing from MS. B.29. 13th-14th century. College of Arms, London 284 Dunstable Swan. Brooch. Gold and Enamel. Early 15th century. British Museum 285 Mourning Swans at feet of effigy of Margaret de Bohun (d. 1391), wife of Hugh Courtney, Earl of Devon. Cathedral, Exeter 286 'A Mon Seul Desir'. Unicorn Tapestry. 1480—90. Cluny Museum, Paris 287 Hunt of the Unicorn. Tapestry. French or Flemish. Late 15th century. Metropolitan Museum (Cloisters Collection), New York 288 Madonna of the Unicorn. Central panel of Altarpiece. c. 1430. Cathedral, Erfurt 289 Mock Tournament of Monkeys and other Animals. From a Book of Hours by the Master of Mary of Burgundy, c. 1485-90. MS. Douce 219. Bodleian Library, Oxford 290 Unicorn and Elephant. Miniature. Bolognese. 14th century. Mrs. Schilling Collection, London 291 Roe Deer Hunt. Tapestry. Flemish, c. 1450. Chatsworth Tapestries. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 292a Wild Boars from Hunting Book of Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix. MS. Fr. 616, folio 29v. Early 15th century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 292b Foxes from Hunting Book of Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix. MS. Fr. 616, folio 34v. Early 15th century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 292c Hunting Dogs from Hunting Book of Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix. MS. Fr. 616, folio 37v. Early 15th century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 293 Insects and Flowers from a Book of Hours by The Master of Mary of Burgundy. MS. Douce 219/20, folio 171r. c. 1485-90. Bodleian Library, Oxford 294a January - Farmyard Scene. Birds. Calendar picture. Grimani Breviary, c. 1500. Marciana Library, Venice 294b October — Boar Hunt. Calendar picture. Grimani Breviary. c. 1500. Marciana Library, Venice 295 Moths, Butterflies and Flying Ant. Coccharelli Book of Hours. MS. Eg. 3127, folio 1. Late 14th century. British Museum 296a Cheetah. Drawing by Pisanello. 15th century (first half). Louvre, Paris 296b Head of Horse. Drawing by Pisanello. 15th century (first half). Louvre, Paris 297 Procession of the Magi. Detail. Benozzo Gozzoli. 1459. Riccardi Palace, Florence 298 Stag Hunt of the Emperor Maximilian and the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony by Cranach. 1529. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 299 Dromedary, Swan and Monkey. Marginal drawings to Emperor Maximilian's Prayerbook. Folio 42v. Albrecht Diirer. 1515. Staatsbibliothek, Munich 300 Hind between St. Anthony and Paul. Matthias Griinewald. Isenheim Altarpiece. Detail. 1512-16. Unterlinden Museum, Colmar

458 460 461 464 465 466

467 467 473

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475

476 477 477 478 480 481 483

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301a and b (a) Entombment, [b) Owl in Oculus. Details of the Entombment. Altarpiece on wood. Juan de Flandes. 1505. Cathedral, Palencia 302 Birds from The Garden of Earthly Delights. Jerome Bosch. Late 15th century. Prado, Madrid. 303 The Frog and the Bull. Woodcut illustration from Aesop's Fables, Naples, 1485. 304 Birds. Hand-coloured woodcut from Bartholomew the Englishman's Boeck van den proprieteyten den dinghen, Haarlem, 1485. 305 Lion and Samson, symbolizing 'Kraft' (Strength), a pun on the name of the printer Krafft Miiller of Strassburg; the Lion holds a pillar (emblem of fortitude) and Samson the jawbone of an ass. Printer's device from the Chronicon of Conrad, Abbot of Ursberg, Strassburg, 1537/8. 306 The Great Northern Diver. Woodcut from Konrad Gesner's Icones avium omnium, Zurich, 1560.

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492 493

Editors' Foreword and Acknowledgments

Francis Klingender died on July 9th 1955, at the early age of forty-seven.1 Shortly before his death he had completed the typescript draft of a book on animals in art and thought, a subject for which he showed a rare sensibility. An interest inherited from his father, who had been a noted painter of animals, combined with the sociological preoccupations of his earlier career, led him to regard the work as possibly his major achievement. Despite the exclusion of Oriental art, the manuscript provided an exhaustive survey of animals in art from pre-historic times to the end of the nineteenth century, assembling a vast amount of material hitherto widely scattered and not available in any single book. In this considerable undertaking he was encouraged by Sir Julian Huxley whose helpful annotations upon the original manuscript have largely been incorporated by the editors. In a letter to Sir Julian, Klingender wrote that his book was about 'the meaning attached to animal art by its makers in successive periods'. To elucidate this relationship of man with animals an objective inquiry into the latent as well as the manifest meanings of animal art was necessary. In this task Klingender made frequent use of Marxist and Freudian interpretations, but he never claimed that these exhausted all possible attitudes to animals. Of special interest is his thesis that animals assumed a symbolic function in expressing the hidden or secret urges of society, as well as serving simultaneously as the companions or servants of man. But Klingender was equally concerned with the development of scientific natural history, with iconography and the succession and alternation of artistic styles, and with the broad psychological, sociological and mythical implications of the ambivalent relationships of man with the animal world and to the animal in man himself. Much has been written recently about the animal component in human nature, but here the role of the 'naked ape' is reversed and we see, instead, animals in the habiliments of men. In preparing the typescript for publication the editors faced an immediate problem. The draft was virtually complete as far as the end of the Middle 1 For a detailed biographical account of Francis Klingender the reader is referred to the preface by Sir Arthur Elton in the reprint of Klingender's Art and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1968). His Goya in the Democratic Tradition (1948) was re-issued in the U.S.A. in a paperback in 1968 with an introduction by Sir Herbert Read in which he called it 'undoubtedly a classic of art criticism'.

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Ages, but later chapters, from the Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth century, were sketchier in treatment, lacking notes and bibliography. It was decided, therefore, to concentrate on the earlier period closing the survey around the year 1500, and thus fit the material into the limitations of a single volume. To mitigate the abrupt ending caused by this decision, a brief Epilogue has been added, drawn mainly from passages in the later, unpublished sections of the text; this will, it is hoped, indicate the direction which a study of animal art in its later periods might pursue. The editors' aim has been to preserve and to transmit to a wider audience something of Klingender's enthusiasm for his subject (which had infected his immediate circle in the early nineteen-fifties). But they realize that, in shortening the lengthy summaries of literary texts and in making extensive syntactical revisions, the author's original meaning may, in some instances, have been unwittingly modified. In Chapter 12 the section on heraldry has been amplified to explain more fully the links between the science of heraldry as it developed in the later Middle Ages and the much older 'heraldic' animal style which is a recurring theme in the author's analysis. Finally much work has been done on the Notes. These were largely complete for chapters 1-9 and any substantial additions by the editors are shown in square brackets. For chapters 10-12 the Notes existed in fragmentary form only and have been supplied by the editors. They cannot hope in these chapters to have tracked down all Klingender's sources. Throughout the book some attempt has been made to bring both Notes and Bibliography up-to-date by listing the latest editions of books (especially when these contain new or better illustrations) and by including some of the relevant literature published since 1955. It will be obvious that any titles with an imprint of a later year cannot have been seen by the author, but they are included to increase the usefulness of the book. In certain subjects, such as prehistoric art, on which much new material has appeared in the last decade, the editors are aware that Klingender's conclusions were based on literature which may now be superseded by later discoveries. In acknowledging the help of friends and colleagues over a considerable period the editors' greatest debts are to Sir Julian Huxley, who first encouraged the author to embark on the book, and to Mr. Arthur Wheen, sometime Keeper of the Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The latter has at every stage of the work given the editors unfailing help and advice in preparing the final text and has contributed many emendations. Thanks are also due to Lady Cox (M.D.Anderson), to Mr. John Fuller (Victoria & Albert Museum) for constant and ever willing help over illustrations, and to Mr. Peter James (British Museum, Natural History), Dr. Michael Kauffmann (Victoria & Albert Museum), Dr. Elfriede Knauer (Berlin, Staatl. Museen, Antikenabteilung), Mr. Ian Mackenzie-Kerr, Miss Dorothy Miner (The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore), Dr. Ada Polak (Arts and Crafts Museum of Norway), Dr. C. H. Talbot (The Wellcome Foundation), Dr. Frank Taylor (John Rylands Library, Manchester) and to Mrs Steer who typed the revised manuscript. Evelyn Antal October 1969 John Harthan

Author's Preface

The daily work of hunters, trappers and fishermen; stockbreeders, cattlemen, shepherds and butchers; rat-catchers and those who fight insect pests; trainers of horses, dogs and other creatures that work for man - all these activities, and many others like them, represent one aspect of the relationship between men and animals. The companionable relationship with birds and beasts enjoyed by children and adults, the poet's delight in the song and movements of birds, or the beauty artists perceive in animals, represent another. In these contrasting attitudes we encounter, at the very outset of our story, a dilemma. For they illustrate the distinction, often used by Freud, between the reality principle and the pleasure principle. Of these two attitudes the former is rooted in the relentless struggle between man and beast. That struggle had reached a decisive turning point with the cultural advance which also produced the first art; for the palaeolithic hunters were the first men who were sufficiently well equipped to subsist chiefly by hunting big game. Although today we breed animals for meat, we still prey on them and the struggle continues, even if our hatreds are now chiefly confined to pests and microbes. The pleasure principle, on the other hand, ignores all obstacles reality opposes to the satisfaction of desire. It may, of course, make men fancy themselves as mighty hunters or fishermen (though scarcely as matchless butchers), but it could only become the source of an aesthetic delight in animals in so far as it made men ignore the realities of struggle and exploitation altogether, thus transplanting them into a dream-world of wish-fulfilment where all creatures are friends. In that pleasurable world of the imagination men may disport themselves like Lewis Carroll's 'dreamchild in friendly chat with birds and beasts.' Or they may look back longingly to a golden age when they still could do this, in the manner of the Chippewayam hunters from the barren wastes of the Arctic. In the opening lines of their creation myth occurs the phrase: 'At the beginning there were no people, only animals; still they resembled human beings, and they could speak; when the animals could speak it was summer, and when they lost the power of speaking winter followed.' But men have also felt the urge to deny or, at least, make up for their exploitation of animals, most emphatically by naming their own clans after them and claiming them for their kin.

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Whatever the precise relationship between men and beasts which the pleasure principle prompts us to imagine, it clearly transforms the real animal by turning it into a symbol on to which human feelings and wishes may be projected and which is therefore liable to evoke those feelings whenever we encounter either the living prototype or its image in art. Our motives, however, are rarely inspired by the reality or the pleasure principle alone. Usually both are present, though one or the other predominates. This is especially true of works of art. Men who live by stalking game, as did the stone-age hunters of western Europe and the South African Bushmen, are apt, if they are artists, to reproduce with unfailing sureness of touch and even in dark caves, the shapes and movements of animals impressed on their minds by a life-time of patient observation. On the other hand, for long periods, both in the history of our own art and in that of other cultures, men felt no need for life-like representation of animals and were content with fantastic or purely formal and generalizing symbols of them; yet there is little evidence in contemporary folklore or literature to suggest that imaginative men were less preoccupied with real birds and beasts than at other times. It is the purpose of this book to suggest possible reasons for such changes of attitude and to attempt some interpretations of these animal images, life-like or fantastic, in the minds of our ancestors since the time when the earliest pictures known to us were made. I shall proceed by comparing representative works of art in each period with contemporary documents of folklore or literature, on the one hand, and with the 'real' relations between men and beasts typical of the time, on the other. Wherever possible I shall use the written documents as if they were the verbal associations evoked by the visual imagery in the artist's mind. Where the evidence is too complex or where no written documents survive for this method, I shall endeavour to obtain a similar result by reconstructing the imaginative climate within which the artist worked. Either approach precludes the discussion of a work of art in isolation from its setting. Men's practical experience of animals as hunters, farmers or scientists, and the relative importance of these activities in the lives of different communities, cannot but affect the ways in which ordinary people dream of animals and artists depict them. Hence neither the real relationship between men and beasts, nor the symbolic meanings attached at various times to beasts should be neglected in an attempt to interpret the ever-changing forms of animal art. Francis Klingender

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Photographic Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material : Alinari for nos. 60, 68, 171-2, 176-7, 297; Archives photographiques de la fondation Egyptologique Reine Elisabeth, Brussels, for no. 52; Ashmolean Museum, Oxlord, for nos. 22, 29, 55; A.T.A., Stockholm, for nos. 97-8; Professor Bandi for nos. 12, 15-16; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, for nos. 205, 211-12, 278b, 292a, b, c; Bodleian Library, Oxford, for nos. 118-20, 217, 218a, b, 219a, 223, 252, 254, 276, 289, 293; Editions Braun, Paris, for no. 286; British Museum for nos. 21, 23-6, 31-2, 33k, 35-7, 40-1, 50-1, 53-4, 56-9, 62-4, 84-7, 96b, 101, 107, 109-10, 121-4, 126-7, 130, 141, 145, 149, 154, 165, 213, 218c, 220a, 222, 225-8, 229b, 230-4, 237-8, 241-4, 246-51, 253, 255-7, 259, 284, 295; Burgerbibliothek, Bern, for nos. 214-16; W. A. Call, Monmouth, for no. 271b; Centre d'Etudes et de Documentation Prehistoriques, Montignac, for nos. 2-4, 6-7; Clarendon Press, Oxford, for no. 11 (from H. Tongue, Bushman Paintings); Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for nos. 240, 277; Courtauld Institute of Art for nos. 104, 169-70, 173, 175, 184-91, 195, 197-203, 269; Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral for no. 164 (from Battiscombe, The Relics of St. Cuthbert); Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey for no. 229a; Provost and Fellows of Eton College for no. 239; Faber and Faber Ltd for no. 100a (from Collingwood, Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age); Gabinetto Fotografico, Florence, for nos. 102, 161; Editions Gallimard for no. 28 (from Parrot, Sumer); Geuthner et Cie. for nos. 27a, b (from Ghirshman, Fouilles de Sialk); Giraudon for no. 80; Mrs E. Goodall for no. 9 (from Summers, Prehistoric Rock Art of Rhodesia and Nyasaland); Gregg International Publishers for nos. 33a—d, f, g, i, j (from Frankfort, Cylinder Seals); Guildhall Museum for no. 92; Historisk Museum, Bergen, for no. 91; Gordon Hull, Southwell, for no. 105; Insel Verlag for nos. 132-4 (from Fauser, The Bamberg Apocalypse); Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique, Brussels, for nos. 301a, b (from Vandevivere, La Cathedrale de Palencia); Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Rome, for no. 71 (from Gentili, La Villa Imperiale di Piazza Armerina); Kohlhammer Verlag for nos. 13, 14, 18 (from Kiihn, Felsbilder Europas); Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, for nos. 163, 298; Edward Leigh, Cambridge, for no. 258; Dr Liibbert for no. 1; Mansell Collection for nos. 157-8, 167; Foto Marburg for nos. 112, 115-17, 179-83;

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M.A.S., Barcelona, for nos. 129, 135-6, 139, 143, 302; Masson et Cie. for nos. 17,19-20 (from Vaufrey, L'Art Rupestre Nord Africain); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for nos. 282, 287; Ministry of Public Buildings and Works for nos. 100b, 103a, b, 266; Miss Penelope Morgan for nos. 192, 193; Musees Nationaux de France for no. 66; National Gallery for no. 280; National Monuments Record for nos. 104, 194, 198, 204, 267, 271a, 279, 285; National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, Edinburgh, for nos. 82, 96a, 99, 103a; National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, for nos. 94-5; C. Naya, Venice, for no. 174; Niedersachsische Landesgalerie, Hanover, for no. 274; Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, for nos. 30, 34, 46a, b, 47-9; Phillips, Wells, for nos. 268, 272; Pierpont Morgan Library and Princeton University Press for no. 33h (from Porada and Buchanan, Corpus of Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections); Edizione d'Arte Amilcare Pizzi, Milan, for nos. 294a, b; Prado Museum, Madrid, for no. 302; Princeton University Press for no. I l l (from De Wald (ed.), The Illustrations of the Utrecht Psalter); John Rylands Library, Manchester, for nos. 137-8, 140, 142, 281; Kurt Schroeder Verlag for no. 144 (from Neuss, Die Katalanische Bibelillustration); Society of Antiquaries for nos. 261-2; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin for no. 45; Stadtbibliothek, Trier, for no. 131; Trinity College, Cambridge, for nos. 235-6; Trinity College, Dublin, for nos. 88-9; Universitetets Oldsaksamling, Oslo, for nos. 90, 93; University of Kansas Museum of Art for no. 275; University Library, Cambridge, for nos. 219b, 220b, c, 224; Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, for no. 300; Victoria & Albert Museum for nos. 148, 178, 196, 221, 291, 303; Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, for nos. 245, 263; Warburg Institute for nos. 207-10; Foto Wells, Bergamo, for no. 260; Professor Zarnecki for nos. 189-90, 195.

xxvm

Part 1 The Ancient World

The hunter's art and mythology

The rock paintings and engravings A history of animal art must begin with the beginning of all art, for animals were the first subject to challenge the artistic faculties of men. But these first artists were already, biologically considered, modern men, of the same stock as our own and the ancestors of the present races of mankind.1 They arrived in northern latitudes, probably from different centres in Asia and Africa, shortly after the last glaciation had passed its peak. Following the migrations of their game as the ice retreated, they occupied all the ice-free country from Siberia to the Bay of Biscay, as well as North Africa and Spain, and gradually replaced the older inhabitants of the Neanderthal type, who were the last more ape-like predecessors of modern man. Works of art produced by these newcomers have been excavated all along the line of their encampments from Siberia to Spain, but it is in the sheltered limestone valleys and gorges of south-western Europe that we find the best preserved specimens of their art. There they embellished the walls of deep caves with life-like paintings and engravings of animals and produced the first works of sculpture on a large scale, arts which flourished in this region until the end of the glaciation and the spread of the forests.2 From the standpoint of the present the age and duration of this first, astonishing phase in the history of art, appear overwhelming. In his survey of the subject published in 1952 the Abbe Breuil spoke of four hundred centuries of cave art, but even on the more conservative estimate which places the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic culture at c. 25,000 and its end at c. 10,000 years ago,3 this first phase lasted about three times as long as the whole period of written history. Yet in the wider setting of human development as a whole, the origin of art among Upper Palaeolithic peoples is seen to be a late and advanced achievement. Poor as the material equipment of people who lacked even pottery and textiles must seem to us, it was far superior to the Mousterian technology of the Neanderthal men; this enhanced command over the material conditions of life, due to greater technical efficiency and to the increased size of the co-operating social group, 4 made art possible. The concentration of the richest finds at a few centres, despite the vast areas occupied by the Upper Palaeolithic hunters, is directly related to this fact: the cave art of south-western Europe expressed

Chapter 1

The hunter's art and mythology

I Hand silhouette with dots, from the frieze of black Horses. Pech-Merle

the spiritual iife of the most advanced prehistoric hunting culture as it developed over an immense period under most favourable conditions. The foremost centres of this cave art are to be found in the departments of the Dordogne and Lot, in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees in France and in the Cantabrian mountains of northern Spain. Another cluster occurs in the Rhone valley, and there are southern outposts near Malaga and Cadiz, in the heel of Italy and on the island of Lavanzo off Sicily. Quite distinct from these cave-sites are the painted rock-shelters of eastern Spain. The development of Franco-Cantabrian cave art passed through three main phases, Aurignacian, Solutrean and Magdalenian, each with subdivisions and local variations. Apart from the true Aurignacians, several peoples, distinct in origin and in the details of their technology, contributed to the first of these phases, especially the Gravettians, who preyed on the mammoth in Siberia and eastern Europe as well as in the west. They also carved the figurines of obese women, the 'Venuses', found on various sites5 in all these areas, sometimes in association with small round drawings. In the Upper Aurignacian art of France (also called Perigordian) this Gravettian tradition of sculpture is combined with the pictorial art of the caves which the true Aurignacians are believed to have initiated. At Castillo, Gargas, Pech-Merle and elsewhere, occur hand-tracings formed by daubing (or possibly, as in northern Australia, spitting or blowing pigment around a hand placed against the rock-face6) [l]. These and the rows of dots sometimes associated with them are believed to be the oldest

The hunter's art and mythology

2 'Macaroni' tracings with Animal Heads. Altamira

markings in the caves. Positive hand-prints are said to be somewhat more recent.7 At La Baume-Latrone near Nimes these occur with meandering parallel lines within some of which the first animal-shapes can be recognized.8 The pigments used in these earliest, as in the later, paintings are chiefly confined to various shades of red ochre and black manganese. Similar entanglements of parallel lines with or without animal details or with whole animals enclosed in them were produced at the same stage of development by tracing them with fingers or sticks in soft clay, as in the caves at Altamira [2] and Pech-Merle.9 In both techniques (of which the second was a rudimentary form of engraving, as the first was of painting) the earliest independent outlines of animals or animal-heads came later. Those traced in clay at La Clotilde in Cantabria and a few in the neighbouring cave of Hornos are still very crude, but at the latter site some specimens show how rapidly the Aurignacians acquired the skill of reproducing the characteristic outlines of their game.10 Here and at other Aurignacian sites the shape of the animal appears, as it had become fixed in the hunter's memory: the feet are often omitted, and horns or antlers invariably reveal their characteristic shapes in three-quarter view, while the heads are in profile [3]. A deeply engraved bison in the cave of La Greze11 near Les Eyzies illustrates both these features, and on a fine elephant outlined in red at Pindal in Asturias even the position of the heart is shown [4] as in the so-called X-ray drawings of Australian aborigines. The twisted perspective of the antlers is generally retained even in the case of the beautiful late Aurignacian animals which abound in the cave of Lascaux; these are no

The hunter's art and mythology

3 Engraved Stag with twisted antlers. Marcenac 4 Elephant with heart showing. Pindal. Asturias

longer mere outlines or silhouettes, but polychrome paintings revealing by skilful shading and even by foreshortening the plastic shape of the animals [5].12 A wide range of more or less conventional signs and sometimes rather crude pictures of masked men are associated with the animal pictures on most Aurignacian sites, while the Venus images continued to be produced, not only in small figurines, but also in the group of four from Laussel, in relief on a larger scale.13 The Aurignacian phase was brought to an end by a new invasion, that of the Solutreans who for a relatively short period occupied a territory stretching from Spain to Hungary; their activity is distinguished by beautifully worked laurel-leaf blades. Except at Parpallo in eastern Spain, these people were not painters, but excelled as sculptors, their finest monument being a stone circle with ibexes fighting head-on, carved in relief at Le Roc de Sers, Charente [6]. 14 In the last and longest phase of Franco-Cantabrian art, the Magdalenian, this fine tradition of sculpture was continued, for example, in the frieze of horses at Cap Blanc or in the bison couple modelled in clay deep down in the cave of Tuc d'Audoubert in the Pyrenees; and in the later stages of this culture weapons and other portable objects were richly carved with animal shapes.10 But in the caves the Magdalenian picture-cycle began anew with simple contours, often in black, and developed on different lines from the Aurignacian, by stressing the interior modelling of the rounded animal forms and their surface texture, rather than their silhouettes. Moreover the Magdalenian artists never employed the twisted perspective of the older style when drawing the animal's horns. The actual presence of the animal, therefore, rather than a memory image, is conjured up in this art, often in a momentary gesture, such as the turn of the head. In the polychrome bisons of Altamira [7] or in the reindeer of the same period of Font-de-Gaume this impressionist art achieved a standard of perfection which was rarely

I '..— :.

;

^ • • •. ' 5 The Black Bull. Lascaux

The hunter's art and mythology

6 Ibexes fighting; carved stone block. Le Roc de Sers, Charente 7 Bison bellowing. Altamira

equalled in any later period.16 Once again, this lifelike animal art is associated, as in the Aurignacian phase, with conventional symbols and, occasionally, with masked men; women however were now chiefly depicted on portable objects, except for the extraordinary group of three life-size torsos discovered in 1949-50 at Angles-sur-L'Anglin.17 Though grouping is not unknown, as for example at Lascaux or, in a Magdalenian setting, at Montespan, it is exceedingly rare in the FrancoCantabrian cave art. Nor is this surprising in view of the total absence of daylight at the painted sites. The overwhelming impression created by the massed imagery in the great halls, especially at Lascaux, where the colours stand out vividly from the white rock, is largely the effect of modern lighting. The dim light of a flare or primitive lamp would chiefly reveal

some individual animal that appeared to leap from the wall, often in a narrow passage or cramped nook, its shape thrown forward and often, indeed, suggested to the artist by the bulging surface of the water-washed rock-face. Moreover, where the pictures are lightly engraved without colours, they are visible only in a strong side-light; on most sites, including Altamira, even the paintings cannot have been intended for aesthetic contemplation, since it often happens that several works of widely different ages are superimposed in utter disregard of the effect created, and are jumbled together regardless of unity of scale or viewpoint. Yet Magdalenian engravings on bones or small plaques of stone where men and animals are grouped in narrative scenes are by no means rare. 18 Hence the absence of grouping in cave art must have been intentional and related to the function the pictures served. The contrast is further underlined by the quite distinct series of paintings discovered in open rock shelters in eastern Spain,19 where they are visible in the light of day. Such shelters are found in the steep gorges intersecting the uplands that rise above the coastal plain from Lerida to Almeria. In them groups of men and animals vividly illustrate scenes of hunting, tracking, game-drives; battles and dances; a man around whom bees buzz angrily is lowered down a cliff to collect wild honey (Cuevas de la Arafia) [8]; in

short the whole daily life of these stone-age hunters is recorded. In the Cueva de Remigia in Castellon20 even a spider catching flies in its web is depicted. In style, too, these eastern Spanish paintings differ entirely from the haunting imagery of the caves, especially the carefully modelled Magdalenian animals. For, in this expressive storytellers' art it is the silhouette, once more, that counts, not the plastic detail, and the twisted perspective of the Aurignacian stags and wild cattle is again the rule. This apart, the animals are highly realistic, and the men too, though conventionalized, are full of action, like their game. Both, however, are usually much smaller in scale than in the caves. The date of these eastern Spanish shelter paintings is disputed. Some authorities consider them post-glacial; others, including Breuil, are convinced of their Palaeolithic origin.21 Links with the Aurignacian are claimed, notably in the twisted perspective common to both styles, and in the presence of certain animal types of a still glacial fauna, such as bison and elk. In accordance with this view the oldest layers of the eastern Spanish paintings are taken to be a local variant of Palaeolithic art, contemporary with Magdalenian. But whereas in the north the life-like animal style vanished with the end of the glaciation and the changes which a dense forest milieu forced upon the hunters' way of life, so that only the abstract symbols on the Azilian pebbles survive on Mesolithic sites, the transition from realism to conventionalization was more gradual in Spain. There abound even in the conventional Third Spanish Style recognizable men, beasts and birds (rare in the older art) as at Las Figuras in southern Andalusia; some sites in eastern Spain must have been used continuously over an immense period, for paintings in both styles appear side by side, as at

The hunter's art and mythology

8 Man gathering honey attacked by Bees. Cuevas de la Arana

The hunter's art and mythology

10

Cogul, where the contrast between the styles is striking.22 Rock paintings in the Third Style continued to be made in many parts of Spain down to the Copper Age, that is to say after agriculture had replaced hunting life. The same is true of the rock art of Scandinavia, with offshoots in North Russia near Lake Onega. For example, on a precipitous granite cliff near the head of the Glomfjord at Fykanvatn, a few miles north of the Arctic Circle, lifelike engravings of game, in the true hunters' style, were followed in the Bronze Age and still in the early Iron Age23 by conventionalized groups of men, animals, sun-discs and even ships and plough-teams. Closer to the hunters' realism, at least in their animal imagery, though much less subtle in style, are the Neolithic rock engravings in the Atlas Mountains and the Central Sahara.24 But on certain sites in North Africa, notably at In-Ezzan west of the Tassili Plateau and in the 'Uwenat Hills on the border between Libya and Egypt, paintings have been discovered of which the oldest correspond both in style and subject matter to the eastern Spanish art, while the most recent date from historical times.25 During the glaciation in Europe large tracts of the Sahara were well watered and teeming with game; their present desiccation began when the temperate climate spread to the north. It is therefore tempting to surmise that some contact existed, even in quaternary times, between the cultures of North Africa and Spain and that these earliest North African rock paintings represent a link between eastern Spanish art and that of the rock shelters in Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Rhodesia, where similar paintings are associated with late Palaeolithic industries.26 Indeed in South and South-West Africa Bushmen were still making rock paintings in the mid-nineteenth century. In East and South Africa, however, also survive large-scale paintings of single animals, especially elands, which exhibit a sequence from silhouettes [9] to shaded polychromes similar to that of the Franco-Cantabrian cave paintings, and of an earlier date than recent Bushman art. Some of these African polychromes are comparable in quality to the finest Magdalenian bisons which they strikingly resemble. On other sites, notably in Griqualand and Botswana, paintings are replaced by equally realistic animals chipped or engraved on rocks, often near water-holes. Conventional symbols also abound, either associated with the animals and narrative scenes, or in isolation; vast tracts, moreover, once occupied by Bushmen, especially in the Kalahari Desert, are devoid of any surviving art. 27 In its range of techniques and styles and in its concentration at the most favourable centres Bushman art offers a close parallel to the late Palaeolithic art of Europe; this parallel extends to the industries of both cultures and to the size of the social group. 28 The resemblance is much closer than that between the ancient hunters and the Australians, whose technology was on much the same level. Life-like rock engravings, especially of fish, abound only on the coast of New South Wales, while the rock paintings and bark drawings of the Northern Territories, though distinguished by their X-ray technique and easily recognizable, are as a rule more conventionalized [10]; the art of the Arunta in the arid centre of the continent, whose culture is known from the classical reports of Spencer and Gillen and of Strehlow, is purely abstract.29 Unfortunately no comparable documentation exists in the case

The hunter's art and mythology

9 Dead Eland lying on its back. Markwe Cave, Inoro, Mashonaland

of the Bushmen, although much that bears on their art is preserved among the records collected by Stow, Bleek and Lloyd from a few survivors of the Bushman massacres in the 1870's.30 There is, however, one further source of the greatest interest; a brief cycle of myths directly related to the paintings of these last stone-age hunter-artists, which it is necessary to consider in some detail. The mythology of the hunter's ritual In 1874 J. M. Orpen published eight stories which a young Bushman named Qing told him in explanation of the paintings in the rock-shelters of his own recently exterminated tribe in the Maluti Mountains.31 Orpen reproduced some details of these paintings, including men wearing antelope-masks and others with large tails. They are men who have died and whose spirits now live in rivers, where they tame elands and snakes, said Qing, adding that 'they were spoilt at the same time as the elands and by the dance of which you have seen paintings'. It was a circular dance of men and women following each other and, Qing said, 'Cagn gave us the song of this dance, and told us to dance it, the people would die from it, and he would give charms to

11

The hunter's art and mythology

10 Kangaroo painted on bark in the so-called X-ray style. Arnhem Land, North Australia

raise them again.' Those 'spoilt' by this dance fell down and became 'as if mad and sick', and blood gushed from their noses, until they were revived by the secret charms known only to the 'initiated men of that dance'. 'Where is Cagn ?' Orpen asked, and Qing answered, 'we don't know, but the elands do. Have you not hunted and heard his cry, when the elands suddenly start and run to his call ? Where he is, elands are in droves, like cattle,' and in reply to Orpen's further questions as to when the elands were 'spoilt', Qing told the following tale:

The hunter's art and mythology

1 Cagn's wife, Coti, took her husband's knife and used it to sharpen a digging stick, and she dug roots to eat. When Cagn found that she had spoiled his knife, he scolded her and said evil things should come to her. Upon this she conceived and brought forth a little eland's calf in the fields, and she told her husband, and she said she did not know what sort of a child it was, and he went to see it, and told Coti to grind canna so that he might enquire what it was. She did so, and he went and sprinkled those charms on the animal, and asked it, 'Are you this animal ? Are you that animal? but it remained silent till he asked it, 'Are you an eland (Tsha)?', when it said 'Aaaa'. 2 Then he took it and folded it in his arms, and went and got a gourd, in which he put it, and took it to a secluded kloof enclosed by hills and precipices, and left it to grow there. He was at that time making all animals and things, and making them fit for the use of men, and making snares and weapons. He made then the partridge and the striped mouse, and he made the wind in order that the game should smell up the wind, - so they run up the wind still. Cagn took three sticks and sharpened them, he threw one at the eland, and it ran away, and he called it back, and he missed with each of them, and each time called it back, and then he went to his nephew to get arrow-poison, and he was away three days. 3 While he was away his sons Cogaz and Gewi went out with the young men to hunt, and they came upon the eland their father had hidden, and they did not know about it. It was a new animal. Its horns had just grown, and they tried to encircle it and stab it, and it always broke through the circle and afterwards came back and lay in the same place. At last, while it was asleep, Gewi, who could throw well, pierced it, and they cut it up and took the meat and blood home; but after they had cut it up they saw the snares and traps of Cagn, and knew it was his, and they were afraid. 4 And Cagn came back on the third day and saw the blood on the ground where it had been killed, and he was very angry, and he came home and told Gewi he would punish him for his presumption and disobedience, and he pulled off his nose and flung it into the fire. 5 But he said 'No! I shall not do that,' so he put the nose on again, and he said, 'Now begin to try to undo the mischief which you have done, for you have spoilt the elands when I was making them fit for use,' so he told him to take the eland's blood and put it in a pot and churn it . . . and he scattered the blood, and it turned into snakes, and they went abroad, and Cagn told

13

The hunter's art and mythology

him not to make frightful things, and he churned again and scattered the blood, and it turned into hartebeests, and they ran away, and his father said, 1 am not satisfied; this is not yet what I want; you can't do anything. Throw the blood out! Coti, my wife! cleanse this pot and bring more blood from the little paunch where they put it, and churn it,' and she did so, and they added the fat from the heart, and she churned it, and he sprinkled it, and the drops became bull elands; and these surrounded them and pushed them with their horns, and he said, 'You see how you have spoilt the elands', and he drove those elands away: and then they churned and produced eland cows, and then they churned and produced multitudes of elands, and the earth was covered with them. 6 And he told Gewi: 'Go and hunt them and try to kill one, that is now your work, for it was you who spoilt them,' and Gewi ran and did his best, and came back panting and footsore and worn out; and he hunted again next day, and was unable to kill any. They were able to run away because Cagn was in their bones. Then Cagn sent Cogaz to turn the elands back towards him, and Cagn shouted and the elands came running close past him, and he threw assegais and killed three bulls, and then he sent Cogaz to hunt, and he gave him a blessing, and he killed two, and then he sent Gewi, and he killed one. 7 That day game were given to men to eat, and this is the way they were spoilt and became wild. Cagn said he must punish them for trying to kill the thing he made which they did not know, and he must make them feel sore. This is a creation myth. It is also essentially dramatic and recalls the structure of a ritual, illustrated in the paintings, the origin and purpose of which it explains. There are, as it were, seven acts: (1) Cagn, the ancestorhero of the Bushmen, known from the Bleek and Lloyd records to have been conceived in the shape of the Mantis, 'creates' the game by begetting it and discovering its name; but the work of creation is not completed until the thing created is made fit for the use of men. This Cagn does by (2) working out the correct tactics and finding the right weapon (arrow poison) for hunting the game. (3) The sons spoil Cagn's work by killing the thing he made, which they did not know, but are overcome with remorse, when they discover that it was his. (4) Cagn punishes them in a manner which was represented in the dance by feigned death and nose-bleeding. But then (5) he restores the culprit's life, and in the reconciliation that follows, Cagn, Coti and the sons all join in repeating the act of creation. After which (6) the father shows the sons how to hunt the elands so that they shall never lack meat. Yet (7) he still says that 'he must make them feel sore' - 'in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life' (Genesis, 3, 17).

14

The manifest purpose of the ritual to which this myth relates was foodmagic enacted by the hunters to secure the fertility of the game and success in the chase. Its two chief elements were sex and killing rites repeated in various symbolic forms. In the myth Coti's mysterious conception of the eland-calf and the churning of the blood in her pot thus symbolize a magic

marriage, which was even more plainly re-enacted in the dance, by the men and women following one another, a scene actually photographed in the Kalahari Desert by Passarge in 1897.3'2 The killing motive similarly appears in the form of a magic hunt first attempted by Cagn himself, then accomplished by his sons, and finally re-enacted by both together. But the sons' first act is deemed a crime, so that the killing also appears in the second form of a retribution exacted by the father, and in this form it was dramatized in the nose-bleeding dance. In Maluti shelter paintings, hunts and the blood-dance are both illustrated [ll]. 3 3 The whole complex of dance, song, myth and paintings thus appears as an elaborate day-dream in which the Bushmen dramatized their food-wishes in a form scarcely less fantastic than the dreams that haunt our sleep. But before this simple food-magic hypothesis (and all it implies for the origin of religion and art) can be accepted as a sufficient explanation of the facts, it is necessary to account for certain details which suggest that here, as in real dreams, the obvious, manifest explanation cannot reveal the sole, or even the most important, meaning. Quite apart from Qing's explicit hint that there were deeper 'secrets' known only to the initiated, it is surely pertinent to ask how a people who were supremely skilled in hunting and often killed their game with savage glee (as stressed repeatedly in eye-witnesses' accounts),34 could ever have come to associate with the act of hunting those feelings of guilt which the expression 'feeling sore' implies and which come to a head in the frenzy of the nose-bleeding dance ? Similarly, in the myth, the father's savage reprisal and, above all, the sons' meek submission to it are surely out of all proportion to their offence. The key to these contradictions can be found in an offence which really merited these attitudes and which was, for that reason, too shocking to be admitted openly and frankly in the myth. On this assumption the publicly proclaimed purpose of the ;

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•

•

The hunter's art and mythology

11 Men with Animal Heads and noses bleeding, watched by a Woman. Teyateyaneng (Advance Post Cave) Lesotho

:

"

•

•

15

The hunter's art and mythology

rite as food-magic would serve, like the manifest meaning of dreams, as a legitimate cover for a deeper second motive which the dreamer cannot admit even to himself and which must therefore be repressed. Turning to Qing's other tales for a clue, one is struck by his reference to the Thorns, who were dwarfs, called 'Cagn-Cagn': And Cagn found them fighting together, and he went to separate them, and they all turned upon him and killed him, and the biting ants helped them, and ate Cagn up; but after a time they and the dwarfs collected his bones and put them together, and tied his head on, and these went stumbling home. . . .

16

With this should be compared an even weirder story collected by Bleek and Lloyd which relates how the Mantis cheated the children by pretending to be a dead hartebeest, 'because he wished that the children should cut him up'. The children jumped for joy, when they found him, shouting: 'Our hartebeest! We shall have great meat.' They broke off stone knives, skinned the hartebeest and cut him up. But the hartebeest's shoulder, placed on a bush, 'arose by itself . . . and placed itself nicely on the bush', the other shoulder 'sat upon a soft portion of the bush, as it felt that the bush pricked it'. The hartebeest's head, carried by a child on its back, began to whisper to the child. The child looked round and screamed: 'the hartebeest has winked at me with the hartebeest's eye!' They dropped the pieces and ran. But the flesh sprang together: the head joined itself to the neck, the neck to the spine, the spine to the back, and the thighs, chest, ribs and shoulder blades all sprang forward and joined themselves together as the Mantis, now a man again, raced the children, 'while he jogged with his shoulder-blade'. When the children got home, breathless, their parents said to them: 'You are those who went and cut up the old man "TinderboxOwner".' 35 Dwarfs, little people, who are called 'Cagn-Cagn' are, surely, children of Cagn. And the children's excuse in the second tale — 'he wanted us to cut him up' - recalls the attitude of people who hunt because the fox enjoys it. In that tale, moreover, the mythical ancestor-hero actually assumes the form of the game, thus recalling the statement in Qing's creation myth that the sons could not kill the elands 'because Cagn was in their bones'. All this suggests that the father had somehow become identified with the game, and that it was Cagn whom the sons attempted to kill - a motive, however disguised, which would really merit Cagn's wrath and the sons' remorse. What could have caused these tensions ? There is a strange reciprocity in several of Qing's stories which appear to be told first from the point of view of one of the main actors, and a second time from that of another. Thus the story of the dwarfs is balanced by another about giants, and while Cagn is the victim of the rebellious 'little people' in the former, his son Cogaz is the giant-fighting hero in the latter. Nor could there be a more apt description of the bogeys which a fear of the father is liable to conjure up in the imagination of little boys at a certain crisis in their emotional development than Qing's account of those giants: they carried battle-axes and were painted with large phalluses; moreover, 'they were cannibals, they cut people's heads off, they killed women and drew the blood out of their noses'. But

at this point the censoring conscience which repressed precisely these feelings of fear and hostility towards the father in the creation myth and disguised them in the other tales, again intervened, so that Cagn was now identified, not with these ogres born of childish fear, but with the compensating image of the all-powerful, wise and kindly elder (or good magician) who invariably comes to the young hero's aid in such fantasies and in the folktales based on them. The story continues:

The hunter's art and mythology

Cagn sent Cogaz to [the giants'] residence to deliver a woman from them, and he lent him his tooth. His toothache had told him to send Cogaz. . . . The giants attacked Cogaz several times, but he used to get on the tooth of Cagn and it grew up to a great height, and they could not reach him. He used to cook his food up there, and then he used to play on his reed flute, and this put them to sleep; and he would go on, and they would wake up, and follow him, and he would get up on the tooth again. At last, when they continued attacking him, he killed some of them with poisoned arrows. . . .

Cagn's method of aiding his son points unmistakably to the hidden root of the latter's hostility towards him: Cogaz envies the father's potency and wants to be as big as he, and in his wish-dream the good father, Cagn, gratifies these wishes by lending him his tooth. Qing's stories exemplify the ambivalent emotions with which children regard their parents at a certain stage in their development, emotions to which hosts of similarly contrasted ogres and kindly fathers, witches and fairy-godmothers owe their origin in the folklore of other nations. Vitally important as they are in one form or another in all known cultures, these emotional conflicts ultimately turn on the question who may and who may not marry whom. The meaning of the whole cycle of myths recorded by Orpen, and of the associated rites and paintings would thus appear to be food-magic, the success of which was conditional upon a strict observance of the taboo on incest. This taboo is the 'primal law' of human society for it compels men to mate outside their own lineage.36 But the extension of social solidarity which it makes possible is bought only at the cost of profound emotional disturbances. The incest taboo, unknown to the lower animals and consequently a cultural achievement of the greatest magnitude, implies a repression of desire and of the aggressiveness that springs from jealousy which children first experience in relation to their parents. To master the deeply rooted conflicts which spring from these inhibitions remains even in our own culture one of the most difficult tasks children must accomplish as they grow up. It is easy to imagine how intense and prolonged the struggles must have been to enforce these inhibitions in the first case, and to understand the emotional frenzy manifested in the Bushman rites (as in the Australian ritual) which echo these conflicts. In these rites, in short, two elementary desires were dramatized: the legitimate one for food and the still uninhibited sex impulses experienced by children and adolescents. The manifest and the hidden meanings of this ritual necessarily correspond, since the lawful food-magic had to provide a morally acceptable form in which the unlawful impulses could be brought to the surface and 'purged', in Aristotle's sense of the term. The unbearable tension, springing from the anti-social urges of incest and parricide, was

17

The hunter's art and mythology

18

released in the sex and killing rites; the manifest meaning of those rites as magic ensuring abundance for the community expressed the joyful relief appropriate to a festival of forgiveness and reconciliation. Hence the contrasting emotions displayed during the ceremonies - terror turning to jubilation - and the taboos attached to the game in one form or another and which can have no other meaning than that of punishment ('feeling sore') for the aggression that has been transferred from the father to his symbolic substitute, the totem: 'The game would not die, if we did not show respect to it,' said the Bushmen. The primary function of this ritual was to provide a sanction for the moral law in which the solidarity of the community is rooted. Hence its importance in the initiation ceremonies. The eland bull dance witnessed by Passarge and again, as late as 1921, by Miss Dorothea Bleek was, in fact, an initiation rite for girls; Passarge also reported that in the dances, which the boys were taught in preparation for their initiation, the movements of male animals during courtship displays were similarly imitated.37 As a means of inculcating the community's moral values in each rising generation this hunters' ritual thus conforms to Durkheim's theory of the sacred as essentially social, in contrast to magic which may also serve private or even anti-social ends - a theory which Jane Harrison adopted in her demonstration of the ritual origins of art. But Qing's stories (and the Australian evidence) show that the observance of this moral law was felt to be indispensable for the proper working of the natural order as well: the game would not be fruitful and it would evade the hunters, or, to use Qing's own term, it would be 'spoilt', if this moral taboo were broken. This natural order that can be 'spoilt' is equated in the creation myth with a world 'made fit for the use of men', that is to say, technologically mastered. The ancestor who invented snares and weapons was thus justly revered as the 'creator' of that world. But since co-operation was necessary for the use of these improved techniques, the moral taboo which ensured it was essential in the act of creation. But this religious (as distinct from strictly technological) conception of a 'universe as a moral or social order' cannot simply be interpreted, with Durkheim, as a projection of society into external nature. Its origin is more aptly described by Radcliffe-Brown, who holds that 'in the fashioning of culture, external nature, so called, comes to be incorporated in the social order as an essential part of it'. 38 Apart from such natural forces as rain or the seasons, the aspect of nature with which peoples in the hunting stage are most intimately concerned is game. At this stage the dual character of a moral law which is at the same time conceived to be a law of nature is thus most fittingly expressed by the symbolic notion of kinship between the human group and its game. That notion, and the ritual centred in the game which expressed it, I take to be the essence of totemism, not the highly sophisticated elaboration of that notion which is found, for example, among the Australian Arunta. The two chief elements which appear in the art and mythology of the Bushmen as fundamental to this totemic ritual are, as we have seen, a ritual marriage and a ritual hunt. To discover whether they are original features of this totemic cult, or late elaborations of it, one must turn to the cave art of Palaeolithic Europe.

The most convincing hunting imagery occurs in the cave of Montespan/59 which recalls Qwanciqutshaa's 'place', as it can only be entered by diving beneath an overhanging rock through a subterranean stream. In a remote chamber of this cave there is a life-size, but headless, bear modelled in clay [12]; the skull of a real bear's head that was once attached to this dummy (probably with the pelt) was still found lying on the ground before it.'10 The whole arrangement recalls the trophy of Cagn's bones made by the Thorns and the Biting Ants, and a small engraving found at Raymonden illustrates just such a scene with a bison as the victim. " The Montespan bear (and probably also the bears' skulls found on now shapeless mounds of clay at Pech-Merle)4- was thus traditional between such hunters' trophies and the pictorial representation of game. It still shows the marks of the hunters' weapons; some other clay figures (which were probably no longer dummies) in the same gallery at Montespan were subjected to even greater violence. The next step is shown more clearly in another chamber deep in this cave: a group of horses running through a stockade towards a pitfall is traced on the clay wall. One is reminded of Cagn teaching his sons how to drive the elands; for these horses, too, are pitted with holes made by the dancers whose footprints are still visible on the floor. Since they are chiefly those of adolescents, we are probably on the scene of an initiation rite.

12 Headless Bear modelled in clay- Montespan

19

The hunter's art and mythology

13 Bear pierced with arrows. Les Trois-Freres 14 Bison wizard-man dancing. Les Trois-Freres

20

In these examples, traced on clay, the image itself could be stabbed in the course of the ritual. But when the game was engraved or painted on the hard rock-face two alternatives were possible. The action of killing the game could also be depicted, as at Montespan, Niaux, Lascaux and Les Trois-Freres,43 by bisons, horses or bears with arrows stuck in their flanks [13]. This line of development culminated in the representation of the hunters as well as the game, as in the Lascaux image of a bison and birdman 44 and especially in the eastern Spanish hunting scenes. Alternatively the action could be confined to the mimic dance, and the image isolated from it as a symbolic 'portrait' of the game; this appears to be the meaning of the large-scale single animals which prevail in the Franco-Cantabrian caves. The monuments referred to at Montespan and Niaux are Magdalenian; the wounded horses at Lascaux are Aurignacian, like the horses associated with hand-stencils at Altamira and Pech-Merle45 which suggest a similar idea. To this early period also belong the oldest records which prove that the European hunters, like the Bushmen, danced at least some of their rites disguised in animal-masks. Any doubt that remains in face of the crude early Aurignacian outlines at Altamira that masked dancers were intended is removed by the ithyphallic bird-man at Lascaux, of late Aurignacian date, and especially by the stag-man - assisted by two lesser bison-men - engraved and painted with Magdalenian realism, who presides over the haunting beast-entanglements in the cave of Les Trois-Freres in the Pyrenees.46

Sex rites, on the other hand, are illustrated in the cave of Les Combarelles and on small stones or bones found in the shelters of Murat at Rocamadour, La Madelaine and Gourdan, where men and women follow each other, as in the Bushmen's eland-dance.47 At Les Combarelles the meaning of the scene is quite clear, since the sex organs of both partners are emphasized, and so, at Les Trois-Freres, are those of the wizard wearing an animal mask [14] and the bison-man who is pursuing a female animal [15].48 One may assume that the same idea is expressed by the male and female bisons modelled in clay in the neighbouring cave of Tuc d'Audoubert [16] (exquisitely finished and unscathed, in contrast to the bear at Montespan) and by the reindeer couple from Bruniquel, now in the British Museum.49 The Gravettian Venus figurines where secondary sexual traits are emphasized probably had a

The hunter's art and mythology

15 Bison wizard-man pursuing animals. Les Trois-Freres

16 Pair of Bisons modelled in clay. Tuc d'Audoubert

The hunter's art and mythology

17 Hunter linked with woman and shooting game. Oasis of Tiout, Atlas Mts

22

similar significance. Those found at Vistonice in Moravia and La Ferrassie in the Dordogne were associated with animal carvings, as were the reliefs of Laussel and the Magdalenian torsos at Angles-sur-L'Anglin.)() At La Ferrassie, moreover, there are later Aurignacian layers in which vulvae and symbolic triangles take the place of women, as they do in other sites in the Dordogne and at Montespan/'1 That many animals at Lascaux and elsewhere appear to be pregnant is a further indication of the meaning of this art,' 2 to which, however, its siting in the deep caves provides the most telling clue. What a 'kloof enclosed by hills and precipices' was to the Bushmen, the cave was to the northern hunters: the magic womb in which the fertility of the totem was maintained. For the art is generally found in remote and often cramped galleries in the caves, difficult and sometimes dangerous of access and unsuited for habitation. Hearth sites have occasionally been found in the entrances to the caves, but more generally at a distance from them in open shelters.03 Thus the decorated sites were sanctuaries, and the evidence already quoted leaves no doubt concerning the symbolic rites enacted in these sacred enclosures. Moreover, those rites are vividly illustrated, in post-glacial settings, by paintings and engravings in which a man and a woman are linked by a line that is carried round them, like a cave or a stone-circle. Such 'marriage-rites', as Breuil called them, are illustrated, to mention a few widely scattered examples,54 at Las Figuras in association with a delightful flock of deer, at Ain Doua in Libya among cattle, on a rock at Cowan in New South Wales in association with fish, and on the shore of Lake Onega in North Russia with swans and elks. Lastly, that this sacred marriage and the sacred hunt were indissolubly linked throughout the whole period now under review is amply proved by: (1) a huge tangle of lines traced in early Aurignacian times on the clay roof of the Pech-Merle cave where several women of the Gravettian Venus type,

animals, including mammoths, and an archer are enmeshed; (2) a bone-point from La Madelaine engraved with a bear's head and with male and female sex-organs; and (3) two engravings found in a microlithic setting on a rock near the Oasis of Tiout in the Atlas Mountains, in both of which a hunter is shown linked to a woman while shooting game [17].55 Archaeological evidence of the Third Spanish style and of certain North African sites shows that important elements of this ritual, including more or less conventionalized representations of animals and ritual scenes in rock shelters, survived among peoples who were already herdsmen or peasants and no longer dependent on hunting for their livelihood. Since the interpretation of this ritual here advanced presupposes that it expressed the spiritual needs of hunting peoples, it is fortunate that a modern parallel exists in which it has been similarly adapted to the quite different needs of a peasant society and that the manner of this adaptation is now fully documented.56 The Dogon tribes who live on the edge of the Bandiagara plateau south of the great Niger bend still decorate rock-shelters near their villages with conventionalized representations of animals, mostly in red ochre, very like the pictograms of the Third Spanish style. These people live by cultivating millet and other crops; the men hunt only for sport. Their religion is a peasant cult expressed in great sowing and harvesting festivals conducted by the tribal chief, who is deemed to be a reincarnation of the tribal ancestor. This peasant religion is not, however, connected with the painted rock shelters. The latter are the sanctuaries of a separate and even rival cult confined to a secret society of the men; this society is known as 'The Masks' and its members deemed to be hunters. Before each festival the initiated men go to their shelter to make the masks, usually some animal, which are to be worn at the dances. The masks are at the same time depicted on the rock shelter wall and it would be courting danger for the dancer to don his mask before painting its 'portrait' on the wall. The purpose of this, as of the dances, is to assuage the spirits of the animals the dancer has killed since the last festival; all ghosts, both animal and human, are thus laid by these rites. Attached to the masks are skirts of red fibres which are considered to be the true source of their dangerous magic power. For the dancers the red fibres were a means of usurping the magic power universally believed, among primitive peoples, to reside in the blood, a belief that probably influenced the use of red ochre in rock paintings, as well as in cosmetics and funeral rites both in ancient and modern times. The function of this modified version of the hunters' ritual among the Dogon is connected with the reinforcement of the patrilineal, kinship grouping on which their social structure is based. Political power, in fact, rests with the elders of the mask-society, for the chief's freedom of action is severely restricted by taboos designed to enhance his ritual efficacy in the life-ensuring agricultural rites; this relationship between the two cults is rationalized in a myth according to which the mask-ancestor, though the first Dogon to die, was actually the son of the /e&e-ancestor who is reincarnated in each successive tribal chief. At the same time the derivation of the

The hunter's art and mythology

23

The hunter's art and mythology

24

mask-cult from the old hunters' ritual is established by the evidence of the beliefs associated with this cult. The fact that the paintings in the Dogon shelters do not illustrate the rites but serve as 'portraits of the masks' may well be part of this older heritage. It is tempting to assume a similar function for the isolated human figure (called a 'sorcerer') discovered at Lascaux in 1949 which may represent, as the Abbe Breuil suggested, a dancer in a fibre-mask disguise like those of the Dogon.57 The object of providing a substitute body, or 'portrait', in which the spirit of the mask may take up its residence, would accord perfectly with the realism of these FrancoCantabrian images, with their repeated renewal and superimposition, regardless of appearances and, above all, with their placing as isolated images on the walls, ceilings or even floors of the cave-sanctuaries without grouping or any attempt to create the illusion of a setting in space. The problem of space - a key problem in all later art in which three-dimensional actuality is projected on to a flat surface - does not, indeed, arise even in the other type of image in these caves of which the bear and the spear-pitted horses of Montespan are examples; for these were really props on a ritual stage, tangible objects in the same real space as the dancers who attacked them. This is brought out even more vividly elsewhere in the Montespan cave, in a narrow passage on one wall of which four bisons are engraved: three are freely galloping away, but the flight of the fourth is arrested by an arrow stuck in its side. Once again, therefore, the living hunter is presumed to play an essential part in the action, not, indeed, necessarily a victorious part, for behind him, on the opposite wall, a fifth beast, boldly foreshortened, advances to attack him from the rear. This sense of actual presence at a rite persists in front of the eastern Spanish shelter paintings and the related works of the Bushmen where dancers and their game are shown together. For it is not an imaginary picture-space through which these stags and archers bound with flying leaps: without the hint of a groundline or limiting frame, they move on a living rock-face, the unevenness of which is invariably utilized in the composition, and which serves like a back-drop to the ritual precinct, the living dancers' stage. Two possible interpretations of this evidence and of its enduring influence, to be traced in the following chapters, may be suggested. In 1854, the classical scholar Bachofen, whose discovery of mother-right was a milestone in the study of human culture, remarked that there are two roads to all knowledge. One, the slow and arduous road of rational demonstration; the other, an instantaneous intuitive grasp of truth under the direct impact of the ancient monuments. Knowledge gained by the second road is far more vivid and colourful than the products of reasoning.08 Myth, religion and art, which rely chiefly on images to transmit the truth, appeal in this second way to our intuition. The basic similarity of the rites and symbols which have given consolation in all religions, the link that binds the Totem-ancestor not only to the Dying God, but to King Oedipus, and Hamlet, no less than to inventors of fairy-tales and primitive storytellers 'in friendly chat with bird and beast' - is summarized in Jung's doctrine of archetypes and the collective unconscious.59 From such mythological thinking science differs in that it approaches

truth simultaneously by both the roads mentioned by Bachofen. Science confronts the image with the reality by asking whether it works; for the act of creation is only completed when the thing created is made 'fit for the use of men', as the Bushmen said. I suggest, therefore, that it is worth trying to understand the origin and continuity of this imagery, without recourse to the mythical concept of a group mind, conscious or unconscious, in terms of the hypothesis of evolution. On this hypothesis man is linked to the lower animals in a continuous process of development, so that social evolution is seen to be an extension of biological evolution but by other means.60 Ever since the extinction of Neanderthal man all human beings have been members of a single species, Homo sapiens, and are born, even today, as animals of that species. Social evolution therefore deals, not with organic change, but with cultural patterns expressing the mental and physical behaviour of Homo sapiens in different environments in the course of time. It begins with the first modification he was able to make in his biologically conditioned behaviour. The formation of social groups both larger and more varied than the biological unit of family or herd was the fundamental achievement. We have seen that this would have been impossible without that repression and redirection of animal impulses which we call the incest taboo. The necessity of imposing this inhibition on every new generation of human beings in a form appropriate to the type of society into which they are born suffices, in my opinion, to account for the continuity of the Totem-ancestor-Oedipus-Hamlet pattern; moreover, the differences between Cagn and Hamlet at the same time provide a measure of man's spiritual growth. But, as Darwin saw, a theory which links biological and social evolution raises another question: when and why did it become necessary to modify the biologically conditioned pattern of the Homo sapiens group in the first place? 61 It would be erroneous to think of man emerging from some lower animal form in a sudden leap, complete with all his social virtues. Since the animal within us is our abiding heritage, that transition has never, indeed, been completed. It is a process of exceedingly uneven development spread over an immensely long period during which men have modified their behaviour now in one sphere and now in another. The earliest change of which there is evidence occurred in technology. By inventing and improving weapons and tools man altered the balance of power between himself and rival species: Cagn made the animals fit for the use of man by 'creating snares and weapons'. But there is no reason for assuming that the first tools made by man could not have been used efficiently in the type of grouping still found among the lower primates. The limitations of the biological group would begin to make themselves felt only when co-operation on a larger scale became necessary for the efficient use of greatly improved equipment, in such operations as the game-drives whose magnitude is implied by the accumulation, however gradual, of the remains of 100,000 horses at Solute in the Dordogne.62 Such a battue is thought to be illustrated in the scene of a chase from Valltorta (Castellon) where hunters shoot arrows into a herd of deer driven from behind a cliff by unseen beaters [18]. Permanent cooperation between primates is impossible either when the unit-group consists

The hunter's art and mythology

25

The hunter's art and mythology

18 Deer driven from a cliff by unseen beaters and shot at by hunters. Valltorta Ravine, Albocacer (Castellon)

26

of a single male, one or two females, and their immature offspring, or in larger herds such as those of the baboons studied by Zuckerman, which are thrown into anarchy about once a fortnight by ferocious sex-fights between the dominant males and the 'bachelors'. 63 The need to enforce a modification of such deeply ingrained behaviour patterns, the contradictions between them and the co-operation required to implement more efficient methods of obtaining food (for which the technical means had already been created) must have impressed themselves on the minds of men over a long period, possibly under the pressure of hunger in a worsening climate. Zeuner refers to the great importance of the improved Levallois flaking technique in producing the first efficient meat-cutting and skin-scraping tools; 64 the period which elapsed between its introduction and the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic era might be regarded as a time of tribulation during which this contradiction became more and more pressing until it was finally resolved. That it had been solved in the cultures of the Upper Palaeolithic peoples is apparent from the character of their ritual as reflected in their art. If this sequence of events be postulated it explains how food rites connected with hunting could serve as a harmless, indeed beneficial outlet for those anti-social impulses of desire and aggression which had been repressed. Human society did not on this hypothesis begin with the act of revolt to which our children still secretly aspire while they are in the grip of the

Oedipus conflict, but with its far more difficult sequel: the renunciation and redirection of natural impulses which ended what was virtually a state of perpetual revolt in the primate group. This way of looking at the matter may imply a shift in the emphasis generally placed on Freud's theory, but the main burden of my argument was published in 1913 in Totem and Taboo.65 Its foundation is the concept of development, as applied both to society and to its individual members. Since society does not exist, except as a collective of individuals, social evolution can operate only through the modifications it imposes on individual development in such collectives. Here, as in biology, ontogeny and phylogeny are complementary aspects of a single process. Not until Freud had established the pattern of individual development in our own culture did students of social change begin to appreciate the full significance of the fact that there are children as well as adults in every society. Nor was it realized how deeply the spiritual values of any culture are involved in the task of helping its children to grow up from their original animal-state to mature participation in social life.

The hunter's art and mythology

Freud also confirmed the observation made half a century earlier by Marx that no important advance is ever achieved until conditions are ripe for it. 66 Individual maladjustment can be traced back time and again to some major problem with which a child was confronted before it was mature enough to face it. That is why Frazer's final view of totemism is difficult to accept, for it implies a rational compact between the branches of a primeval kind of co-operative society, each pledging itself, in the interests of increased efficiency, to provide one kind of game for the exclusive benefit of the other branches.67 Such a view, in my opinion, is incompatible with the stage of emotional maturity which may be presumed to have been reached at the time, and above all, with the fierce conflict of passions which it was the function of the food magic and hunting rites to bring out into the open and subdue. For the same reason the emphasis Miss Rachel Levy places on the concept of 'participation' in her profound analysis of the Palaeolithic ritual seems unduly spiritual. That the hunters' attitude to their game may be expressed in terms of participation I am prepared to admit, but only on the level on which children conceive that term, when, for example, they 'embody' an admired creature's strength and virtues in themselves by eating it. This point of view by no means implies a denigration of our early ancestors. To have created the moral sanctions which enabled man permanently to escape from the pattern of group relations imposed by this biological inheritance was a cultural achievement without equal in the later development of mankind. What greater claim can there be to our gratitude than to have laid the foundations on which the whole splendid edifice of human culture and human spirituality could rise securely in later ages? But to attribute to this first awakening what properly belongs to its maturity is to reject the hypothesis of evolution in favour of the mythological concept of a Golden Age.68 27

Chapter 2 Animal art in the ancient near east

The neolithic revolution The artistic remains of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages in most of Europe present a startling contrast to the Palaeolithic caves with their haunting animal pictures. At first sight no trace of interest in organic nature can be discerned in the megalithic tombs, the stone circles or the geometrical pottery of these later periods. The makers seem rather to have been preoccupied with abstract problems of 'harmony, order and proportion.'1 Only a complete reorientation of man's deepest interests can account for this change, and such was, indeed, the cumulative result of the technical revolution which made the Neolithic a peasant culture and enriched it with the basic industrial crafts, notably basket-making, spinning, weaving and pottery. For the peasant's abiding concern is with the hidden, rather than with the manifest, aspects of life, above all with the cycle of the seasons which determine the rhythm of the farming year. And the peasant designer's preoccupation with geometrical pattern, with balance and rhythm, can likewise be traced back to the new technical processes, such as the coiling of clay in shaping a pot, or the interlacing of fibres in basketry or weaving, which were introduced in the Neolithic period. Hence the clean-cut precision of these designs, as compared with the shapeless Palaeolithic signs or with the pictograms derived by simplification from the life-like imagery of the hunters. 2

28

The contrast between the hunters' and the peasants' styles does not, however, seem so absolute if one turns from Europe to the 'Fertile Crescent' stretching from Egypt through Palestine and Syria into Mesopotamia, where the new techniques and the new forms of art first emerged.3 These regions, vast in extent and prolific in surviving monuments, many of which have been discovered only in recent decades, form the subject of the present chapter. In the ancient orient, comprising these lands of the Near East and North Africa, the first great civilizations arose; but though there were many fertilizing cross-influences these civilizations were not homogenous. Egypt and Mesopotamia (or Sumer as it was formerly called) provided a polarity which exerted a powerful attraction for peripheral regions but which attained a synthesis only with the Greeks. In the following pages an attempt will be made, firstly, to trace the religious beliefs of these civilizations and, secondly, to examine the monuments through which these beliefs received

Animal art in the ancient near east

ll) The Coat of Bov Alain, S. Or.m, wearing collar and harness. Rock engraving from Moghrar Tahtani, Atlas Mts 20 'The Good Shepherd' Rock engraving from Moghrar Tahtani, Atlas Mts

29

Animal art in the ancient near east

artistic expression, especially by means of the animal imagery which is our chief concern. A secondary theme in this complex story is the emergence of the first urban centres out of the peasant, agricultural communities which succeeded the nomadic, hunting groups discussed in chapter 1.

Continuity and change in ritual North Africa and Egypt

In rock paintings of the Eastern Spanish style in the Ahaggar district of Libya, including illustrations of the 'marriage rites', noted in the last chapter, domesticated cattle already appear.4 In rock engravings in the Atlas Mountains some of the creatures associated with beasts of prey or with game no longer seem to be wild, since they wear collars or strange head-dresses [19]. Indeed, in an engraving at Moghrar Tahtani the man who carries an animal on his shoulders must be the earliest known example of the 'good shepherd' in art [20].5 In Upper Egypt, too, domesticated cattle, as well as wild beasts, are represented in rock paintings close to the Eastern Spanish type; we reproduce the man leading an elegant gazelle with a rope round its neck [21], which comes from Hosh on the left bank of the Nile. Engravings exactly resembling animal motifs appear also incised on pottery of the Amratian culture in this area, and thus more recent than the oldest geometrical Egyptian pots of the preceding Tasian and Badarian cultures.6 In prehistoric North Africa and Egypt, archaeological evidence which has since come to light has strikingly confirmed the explanation of the totemic residues in early Semitic ritual which W. Robertson Smith gave in 1889 when he wrote: 'As the various clans began to breed cattle and live on their milk, they 21 Domesticated Antelope led by a man with a rope. Rock engraving from Southern Egypt

30

Animal art in the ancient near east

/

>*

i V,

22 Hunter's Palette. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

23 Hunter's Palette. British Museum

Animal art in the transferred to their herds the notions of sanctity and kinship which formerly ancient near east belonged to species of wild animals.' No less revealing is another observation by Robertson Smith 'that primitive religious beliefs are practically indestructible, except by the destruction of the race in which they are ingrained, and thus we find that the new ideas of what I call pastoral religion overlaid the old notions, but did not extinguish them'."' For both in Egypt and in western Asia the continuity of the two main elements in the old hunters' cult, as described in the last chapter, is attested in the earliest agricultural settlements by female figurines, on the one hand, and by animal imagery, including even human dancers in beastmasks, on the other.8 But an entirely different emphasis was placed on these traditional elements in the two areas, and their later religious development was marked by profound contrasts. One of the most remarkable features of Egyptian religion is the tenacity with which totemic associations with animals, wild as well as domestic, were retained down to the Christian era. In the prehistoric culture sequence, bird- or ibex-shaped ivory combs and handles are already found, with female figurines, on Badarian sites; 9 while in the next phase, the Amratian, beast, bird and fish shapes appear not only on pottery and rock engravings, but also in the form of small statuettes of ivory or clay, necklace pendants, and slate palettes for the grinding of cosmetics.1 ° The latter are now thought to have served as votive offerings in the temples of Hierakonpolis rather than as practical toilet articles [22, 23]. That at least some of these animals were totemic clan emblems is suggested by their use on standards in ships and in paintings on pots of the Gerzean culture which marks the end of the prehistoric period.11 Similar standards are also carved on the large palettes and ceremonial mace-heads of the proto-dynastic phase, about 3000 B.C., on which are recorded the struggles between the clans and the final victory of the falcon-chief who 'devoured' all his rivals and became the first Pharaoh of the united realm of Egypt. Perhaps related to an earlier phase of the same struggle are the ivories on which rows of animals always appear in the same order headed by the elephant, later the emblem of Elephantine, the first 'nome' or province of Upper Egypt.12 In the historical period the nomes and their capital cities retained these old animal emblems. Just as the reigning Pharaoh came to be identified with Horus, the falcon-god, so the gods associated with the provincial centres are depicted in their appropriate animal shapes: the cobra-goddess Buto of Lower Egypt, for example, or Bastet, the cat-goddess of Bubastis, or Anubis as a crouching jackal, as in the very late but expressive wooden statue in the British Museum [24, 25]. Others were merged in greater deities, such as Hathor, the cow manifestation of the sky- and mother-goddess Nut, while the sun-god Re and the divine Pharaoh himself might assume the animal forms linked with the various sub-divisions of the realm, appearing on occasion as a bull, a lion, a crocodile or a jackal. Through these and other elaborations, which were adopted side by side with the older notions, Egyptian religious imagery assumed that bewildering multiformity which caused the same deities to be represented now as animals of various kinds, 32 now as men, now as men with animal-heads.13

Western Asia While female figurines and animal images are no less prominent among the earliest finds from peasant settlements in Western Asia, the continuity with the older hunters' imagery is more marked in the case of the mother-figures. These have been found on Syrian sites in forms closely resembling the Palaeolithic Venus type, while others from Ur have beast- or serpent-heads and sometimes hold an infant in their arms. 14 The earliest versions of Sumerian myths, found among the Nippur texts, confirm this shift of emphasis from the totemic beast-identifications to the ritual marriage and mothergoddess aspects of the old hunters' cult, while underlining the extraordinary continuity of the original pattern. One of these texts records the creation of eight useful plants by the mother-goddess Ninhursag and the fertility god Enlil. As in the Bushman myth of Cagn and the elands, the act of creation is accomplished by means of 'marriage' and naming rituals, and here too the thing created is 'spoilt' while still unknown, thus introducing ideas of guilt and atonement. This latter idea is emphasized by setting the action in an earthly Paradise, the land of Dilmun, where 'the raven utters no cries', 'the lion kills not', and 'the wolf snatches not the lamb'. But now it is the father Enlil himself who sins. Lying in the swampland he sees the plants sprouting one by one from the soil. 'What is this, what is this ?' he asks his 'messenger' Isimud, and as each is named, he plucks it off and eats it. For this he is cursed by the mother-goddess, who vanishes after smiting him with eight pains, one for each plant eaten. Doomed to die, Enlil is bewailed by the other gods who are powerless to save him, until the fox unexpectedly appears on the scene (a wise animal, older and more powerful than the anthropomorphic gods) and offers a reward to assuage the goddess' wrath. She heals Enlil's pains, and he completes the work of creation.15

Animal art in the ancient near east

24 Cat sacred to Bastet. Bronze. Ptolemaic, c. A.D. 10. British Museum 25 Anubis as crouching Jackal. Wood. Egyptian (Roman period); after 30 B.C. British Museum

Animal art in the ancient near east

34

Contrasting patterns of spirituality: the New Year festivals Thus both in Egypt and in Western Asia important elements of the old hunters' cult survived in forms adapted to the needs not only of peasant cultures but even of urban civilizations. But the elements selected differed according to the social structure of the united realm of Egypt in the Old Kingdom, on the one hand, and the Sumerian city states on the other. The profound implications of this contrast for the later religious and artistic development in these two main areas, and the widely differing role of animal imagery in each can best be appreciated by comparing their ritual systems in the mature forms they assumed by about 2000 B.C.; for this no better subjects could be found than the great New Year Festivals. In these the passion of the Dying God was celebrated throughout the ancient East with rituals which served at one and the same time: (1) to mark the change of the seasons; (2) reaffirm the social order; and (3) restore the fertility of flocks and crops.16 The Asiatic form of these festivals is illustrated by the rites at Byblos and those in Babylon celebrating the death and revival of Marduk, the restoration of his power by the assembled gods, the renewed victory over the forces of chaos and his reunion with the mother-goddess. The rites began in a mood of deep mourning and ended with the 'day of judgment' on which the destiny of the land was determined for the coming year in the conclave of the gods.17 Although the myth of Osiris is as dramatic as those of Tammuz, Marduk, Baal and other Dying Gods of Asia, the aspect of conflict and mourning was not stressed in the Egyptian New Year rites which lasted for only two days. The interment of Osiris was rather an occasion for rejoicing since it was identified with the sowing of the corn on the recently inundated fields, while the raising of his sacred pillar, the djod, signified his translation to the land of the immortals whence he would cause the seed to grow and the Nile to rise again at their appointed times. In the year when a king had died his body was interred on the eve of the festival, so that the Osiris rites also marked the culmination of the royal funeral service; for in Egypt the dead Pharaoh was always identified with Osiris, and his son, the reigning Pharaoh, with Horus, son and avenger of Osiris. Thus on the first day of the festival the dead Pharaoh-Osiris resumed control of the natural order, thereby ensuring the growth of the crops that sustained his people, while on the second day his son, the living Pharaoh-Horus, reaffirmed the social order it was his duty to maintain as divine ruler over the united realm of Egypt.18 This division of functions is remarkably similar to that between the /e&e-chief, who ensures the growth of the crops, and the mask-elder, who maintains order, among the Dogon tribes of Bandiagara; chief and elder respectively represent an ancestral father and son. The similarities go even further, for when the /efte-chief is installed, his family go into mourning, as if he had died; and just as the lebe ancestor, the first Dogon to die as a man, was always reincarnated in a man (the lebe-chief), so Osiris is one of the very few Egyptian gods who was never depicted in animal form. Horus, on the other hand, appears as a falcon and functions, like the Dogon mask-elder, in his animal disguise.19

Thus again we find that in Egypt the new religion 'overlaid, but did not extinguish', the old totemic notions. Not only did the animal-shaped totemancestor now become a god, and survive side by side with the anthropomorphic fertility god, instead of being replaced by him, as in Asia, but the hostility between father and son, which the hunters resolved in their rites of atonement ('feeling sore'), though surviving in the contrast between the dead and the living Pharaoh, was now transmuted into a harmonious reconciliation, death being accepted as a condition for the renewal of life. For it was the dead Pharaoh who made the crops grow for the people his living son was guarding, as the herdsman guards his flocks, and it was only through death that the father-king became united with Osiris and attained immortality.

Animal art in the ancient near east

Contrasting types of animal imagery

Only in the light of this unique transmutation of the totemic heritage in Egypt can the peculiar, but immensely important, position of animals in Egyptian art be understood: they appear, firstly, as already mentioned, as monumental images of the gods and secondly, in their natural forms depicted in vivid detail, among the representations of daily life in the habitations of the dead - the Pharaohs' funerary temples and the tombs of the great dignitaries who were allowed to share their masters' immortality. These illustrations of earthly life gradually disappeared from the tombs in the later periods of Egyptian history, when the original concern for the renewal of the life-sustaining crops was overshadowed by the longing for a personal immortality all might share. But the animal-shapes of the gods were retained, and with them another image from which men derived consolation long after Egyptian civilization had come to an end: the souls of the blessed depicted as birds. From the necropolis of Memphis the soul-birds fly for shelter and food to a sycamore-tree which embodies the mother-goddess Hathor, on the fringe of the desert.20 And in the Book of the Dead the soulbird hovers over the mummified body illustrating the 're-uniting of the soul to the dead body' described in the text [26]. This soothing image is in utter contrast to the Babylonian vision of the soul seized by a lion-headed demon with eagle's talons and dragged forth

On the road whose path leads not back, To the house of those who dwell in darkness, Where dust is their food and clay their sustenance. They are clad like birds with garments of wings. . . . 21 For the ancient notion of conflict was accentuated rather than transmuted in the religions of Mesopotamia. Here, as later with the alternately childdevouring and parent-slaying protean deities of Greek cosmogony, an ordered universe could not come into being until the primeval demons of chaos,

35

Animal art in the ancient near east

26 Soul-Bird. Ba returning to body on Bier. Ani Papyrus. XlXth Dynasty, 1250 B.C. British Museum

36

above all Tiamat, had been defeated by their own offspring, the creatorgods, in a cosmic battle; as we have seen, this terrible conflict was annually repeated with the change of the seasons in the New Year rites. In Western Asia therefore one of the artists' foremost concerns was to elaborate symbols of this conflict. The forces of destruction are generally represented in these symbols as beasts or monsters - the great serpent, the lion, the wild bull. The gods usually appear in human form (apart from echoes of their old pastoral associations, such as the sacred bulls of Ur), but their part was often taken in battle by human or semi-human heroes, such as the bull-man, or even by beasts or monsters; for after fighting the gods, some of these creatures were believed to have been subdued by them to become their emblems or 'messengers'. Thus the bird Zu, that stole the tablets of destiny, and Labbu, the lion of chaos, may have become fused in the lion-headed eagle Imdugud, who was associated now as an emblem, now as a messenger, with the fertility god. In a similar manner, the winged lion, the winged bull, the winged man and the eagle were later to be associated with the Evangelists in Christian art of the Middle Ages. In the Mesopotamian beast-fight imagery beasts may fight beasts, or men or monsters, and the survival of the old rituals in which men danced with animal-masks may well have contributed to the evolution of the latter. Such masked dancers appear on at least one proto-historical Egyptian palette (in the Ashmolean Museum) [22] and repeatedly in Mesopotamia, as on a shell plaque that stood between the legs of the divine bull in a grave at Ur, as well as on several seals of the Early Dynastic and Sargonid periods; in Assyrian art, these composite monsters also appear assuming the terrifying aspect that still haunts us in the visions of Ezekiel, Daniel and the Apocalypse.22

Gilgamesh and the beast-man Enkidu

Animal art in the s

Inherent in this general approach was the Mesopotamian idea of death as a fearful calamity, utterly incompatible with life, instead of complementary to it. The advance in spirituality which led in Egypt from fertility magic, through the deification of Pharaoh, to a longing for immortality which at first only the great nobles, but ultimately all good men might share, was therefore frustrated in ancient Mesopotamia. For in Mesopotamia even the king was deemed to be a man, and as such debarred from that blessed immortality which was the jealously-guarded privilege of the gods. Whereas the Osiris cult was a direct source of inspiration for the later mystery religions, such religions could arise in Asia, as Robertson Smith pointed out,23 only through the break-up of the old national cults. An epoch-making advance was nevertheless first accomplished in Mesopotamia while the old religious system still held sway: the emancipation of art from ritual. For the heroic acceptance of man's mortality is the theme of the first great epic poem in world literature, which tells of the friendship between Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu: of how they slew the monster-guardian of the cedar-forests and Ishtar's fiery Bull of Heaven, and of how the gods punished their hybris by causing Enkidu to die. What makes this poem relevant to the present argument, however, is its use of the old theme of the sacred marriage as the means of emancipation from the animal-state. While Gilgamesh is 'two-thirds god, one-third human', Enkidu is a beast-man: 'shaggy with hair is his whole body' and 'garbed is he like Sumuquan' (the god of cattle): he is depicted on Sumerian seals as a bull-man. The gods created him in the wilderness as a rival to Gilgamesh, whose pride they sought to curb: 'He knows neither people nor land', 'with the gazelles he feeds on grass, with the wild beasts he jostles at the watering-place.' There he destroyed the hunter's trap and pitfalls, setting the captive creatures free. The hunter complained to Gilgamesh, at whose command he took a temple-harlot to the watering-place, hoping that she might estrange the beast-man from his animal companions. Overwhelmed by her charms, Enkidu embraced the girl and stayed with her for seven days, during which period the goddess Ninsun, 'the wild cow of the byres', 'versed in all knowledge', revealed to her son Gilgamesh in two dreams that Enkidu would become his comrade. When Enkidu turned from the girl the gazelles ran off, The wild beasts of the steppe drew away from his body. Startled was Enkidu, as his body became taut, His knees were motionless - for his wild beasts had gone. . . . it was not as before; But now he had wisdom . . . The girl then led him 'like a mother' to the shepherds' board and placed the food and drink of men before him to complete his transformation. 'He was uneasy, he gaped and he stared', but he ate and drank. 'His heart exulted' and he 'became like a man':

37

Animal art in the ancient near east

He took his weapon To chase lions, That shepherds might rest at night. He caught wolves, He captured lions, The chief cattlemen could lie down; Enkidu is their watchman . . . Only then did the girl take Enkidu to Uruk, where he curbed Gilgamesh's oppressive rule, as the gods had decreed. They wrestled with one another and became friends. 24

The monuments We now turn from this brief sketch of some relevant aspects of the great religions of the Ancient Orient, so profoundly divergent despite their common origin in the rituals of hunters and herdsmen, to the monuments which reveal a similar diversity in the course of a history of some three thousand years. 25 Since animal imagery is our subject, our story begins with the pottery first made about the middle of the fourth millennium B.C., in chalcolithic settlements; some of these are on sites occupied many centuries earlier by Neolithic villagers who had only just begun to supplement their hunters' diet with cultivated grain and the produce of a few domestic animals and whose pottery was plain or decorated with only abstract patterns. On the chalcolithic pottery of Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Iran, however, recognizable animal-forms re-emerge from these geometrical designs.

Prehistoric pottery in Asia and Egypt

27a and b Bird Processions, Sialk Pottery. 3rd Period. Before 3000 B.C.

The Asian series is sufficiently represented for our purpose by its richest sub-group, the pottery of the so-called Highland Culture which spread from the mountains of western Persia as far as Baluchistan and Russian Turkestan. At Sialk in western Iran the second and third cultures have yielded buffcoloured pots painted in black with designs which, while still essentially geometrical, include the shapes of serpents, birds, ibexes and other animals.

Animal art in the ancient near east

28 Stylized Animals. Samarra Pottery. 5th millennium B.C. 29 Animals on Vase. Amratian Pottery. Before 3500 B.C. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The makers of these pots thus attempted to reconcile the representation of organic life (the hunter-artists' sole concern) with the geometrical peasant style, which aimed at covering the whole surface of a pot or woven fabric with a harmonious, rhythmically articulated pattern. This they achieved either by placing the animals singly in frame-like panels or else by grouping them in repetitive friezes round the rim of a bowl, or in vertical rows, one above another, on the sides [27a and b]. Such a solution remained purely decorative; no attempt was made to suggest the animals' plastic volume, their forms being more or less distorted to fit them into the geometrical framework. Yet these two objectives presented a latent tension, for the finds reveal a progressive stylization of the animals until they were reduced to mere triangles or chevrons, after which the desire for representation re-asserted itself. The trasition from figurative to abstract animal shapes is strikingly illustrated in pottery from the Samarra site, north of Baghdad [28]. At Susa, where the most beautiful examples of this ware have been found, a perfect resolution of this conflict was occasionally achieved, for example, on a beaker in the Louvre: its composition with tall panels surmounted by two friezes is well attuned to the shape and function of the vessel, and although the ibex in the panel is as radically distorted as are the hounds and long-necked wading birds above, the sweep of its horns and the taut arch of the body vividly express the alert and agile nature of the mountain goat.26 On Egyptian pots of the Amratian culture the plain red body serves as a background for bold designs in white cross-hatchings. Some are purely geometrical, others suggest plant-forms; but animals also frequently occur [29]. Though flattened by cross-hatching, they are generally larger in scale and less distorted than those of the Highland style. Elephants or hippopotami march around the rim of a bowl, for example, or a flock of goats are spread over a tall vase. This function of the plain surface as a background is even more marked in the case of the slightly later 'decorative' Gerzean

39

Animal art in the ware. A buff ground is decorated with red designs of spirals, zig-zags or ancient near east even of boats, men, birds, animals and tree-like shapes which, though distorted, are so lively that they suggest a deliberate grouping in narrative scenes. The same motifs reappear in the earliest Egyptian mural painting in a pre-dynastic tomb at Hierakonpolis. Animal figurines in clay or ivory, as well as handles, pendants, amulets, combs and palettes shaped like beasts, birds or fish belong also to this early phase.27 But it was only in the following proto-dynastic period that the more distinctive features both of Egyptian and of Mesopotamian art began to emerge. Sumerian animal art The proto-literate phase of Mesopotamian archaeology is known as the Uruk period from remains found on the site of Gilgamesh's famous city, the biblical Erech and modern Warka. At this stage writing was invented; and henceforth richly decorated temples, mural paintings and works of sculpture were to replace pottery as the main documents of a now definitely urban artistic life. Yet the prevailing theme of this early Uruk work was still serenely pastoral, in marked contrast to the later subjects of Mesopotamian art. Its main theme, the sacred temple-herd, already occurred in the earliest painted temple, at Uqair, fifty miles south of Baghdad, where a frieze of cattle was depicted along the walls, and beasts of prey guarded the altar: these consist of two leopards boldly outlined in black, with touches of solid colour to mark their eyes, spots and other details [30], and a lion. The 30 Guardian Leopards. Wall painting. ProtoLiterate period. Uqair, Iraq. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

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Animal art in the ancient near east

31 Animal Procession. The Warka Trough. Side-view. Gypsum. Sumerian, 3 300 3000 B.C. British Museum 32 Calves. The Warka Trough. End-view. Gypsum. Sumerian, 3300-3000 B.C. British Museum

colours used were red, orange and black on a white ground.28 A tall alabaster vase found at Uruk shows a similar procession of rams and ewes following a file of men carrying food-offerings to the mother-goddess, who receives them at the gate of her sanctuary. On a shallow gypsum trough, probably from the same site, now at the British Museum, animals walk in two converging files towards a byre from which lambs emerge to greet them [31, 32]. This byre, too, is sacred to the mother-goddess, for it is surmounted by her emblem, the looped ribbons. Uruk-Warka has also yielded another type of carving in high relief on limestone vessels; some of these are decorated with similar processions of cattle, others show fighting scenes: a lion attacking a bull, heroes, aided by eagles, subduing wild cattle. Lion-fighting heroes (possibly the king at two successive stages of a contest) are carved on the fragment of a basalt stele from the same city. 29 The range of subjects on these few larger monuments is amplified, though not greatly extended, by the rather more numerous cylinder seals of the Uruk period - the earliest of a vast sequence of seals which provide a continuous record of the changing fashions in Mesopotamian art for almost three thousand years, from the middle of the fourth millennium to the collapse of the Persian Empire in the fourth century B.C. These small stone cylinder seals, which preceded the invention of writing, originated as ownership and trade marks. Engraved in intaglio on the outside of the seal was a design from which an impression was taken when the cylinder was rolled over a piece of clay. The clay tablets thus marked were used to seal

41

Animal art in the ancient near east

33a Procession of Bulls. Cylinder seal. Uruk period. 3rd millennium B.C. Louvre, Paris

33b Processions of Goats. Cylinder seal. Uruk Period. 3rd millennium B.C. Staatliche Museen, Berlin

33c Bulls feeding from a 'sacred tree'. Cylinder seal. Uruk period. 3rd millennium B.C. Staatliche Museen, Berlin

33d Lion attacking Bull. Cylinder seal. Uruk period. 3rd millennium B.C. Louvre, Paris

33e Fighting Men and Beasts. Cylinder seal. Sumerian, c. 2500 B.C. Staatliche Museen, Berlin

33f Hero and Bull-man (Gilgamesh and Enkidu) grasping rampant Bulls. Cylinder seal. Sumerian, c.2200 B.C. British Museum

Animal art in the ancient near east

33g Hero and Bull-man (Gilgamesh and Enkidu) in beast fights. Cylinder seal. Sumerian, c.2500 B.C. Oriental Institute, Chicago

33h King standing on crouching Sphinxes and holding two Lions upsidedown. Cylinder seal. Assyrian, 6th cent. B.C. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

33i Hero grasping two winged and rampant Bulls. Cylinder seal. Assyrian, 8th-7th cent. B.C. British Museum

33j Intersecting Ibexes between a palm tree and worshipper of Ishtar, goddess of war. Cylinder seal. Assyrian, 7th-6th cent. B.C. British Museum

33k Beast-hero combats. Cylinder seal. Sumerian, c. 2500 B.C. British Museum

Animal art in the ancient near east

bales of merchandise or storage jars. Later, after the invention of writing, the chief function of the cylinder seal was as a signature or form of witness on clay documents. It then sometimes carried the name and rank of the owner and would be worn as a pendant to a necklace, on a wristband, or stuck on a pin for fastening a cloak. Owing to the cylindrical shape the design is more easily recognized from an impression than from the seal itself and is usually reproduced in this form.30 The Uruk carvings on these seals, and on the larger objects which show their influence, are of remarkably fine quality. They appear, apparently without antecedents, simultaneously with the development of town life in

34 Procession of Goats in abstract 'Brocade' style. Cylinder seal. Sumerian, 3rd millennium B.C. Oriental Institute, Chicago

Mesopotamia. The designs show a predominance of religious scenes and ritual, including many connected with the mother-goddess, but the most conspicuous feature is the use of animals. Priests feed barley to the cattle of the mother-goddess, and other animals sacred to the fertility god moufflon rams with intertwined serpents and the eagle Imdugud - are also shown. There are also animal groups (and some Elamite seals with monsters) to which no definitive or ritual meaning can be assigned.31 The feeling for organic structure with which the animals are exquisitely modelled challenges comparison with Palaeolithic art, whilst their grouping is distinguished by as fine a sense of rhythm and balance as that of the Highland potters. This epoch-making achievement of harmonious designs which do no violence to the animals' organic forms came about spontaneously through the use of certain elementary principles of grouping natural to the pastoral themes of Uruk art. So vital are these groupings to an appreciation of the evolution of cylinder seals, and to an understanding of the development of animal design and imagery in succeeding epochs, down to the Middle Ages, that it is desirable to give a summary of the basic types, together with some reference to their appearance in forms other than cylinder seals.

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1 The first of such groupings is the animal frieze in which a group of beasts moves gravely in one direction, usually in single file [33a, 35]. To give the necessary balance two files, moving in opposite directions, may be placed one above the other [33b].32 On the Uruk-Warka trough in the British Museum, already mentioned, which may have been used to water the temple herd, complete symmetry is achieved by a convergence, on the same groundline, of both files upon the byre whence calves run towards them [31]; two calves reappear on the semi-circular end-pieces of the trough, back to back,

Animal art in the ancient near east

35 Frieze of Bulls from El 'Ubaid, 2500 B.C. British Museum

with the emblems of the goddess between them, in another symmetrical composition [32].:33 2 These reliefs on the Warka trough illustrate the development towards the second basic-grouping in which pairs of animals are combined, usually by confrontation, in an ornamental manner reminiscent of the 'supporters' of heraldic coats-of-arms [33f]. The top plaque in our illustration from the lyre found in the Royal Cemetery at Ur is a further example of this grouping [36]. Another source of these heraldic groups of antithetic animals is to be found in the elaboration of the motif of feeding the sacred herd. On several seals animals move in procession towards a priest who offers them ears of barley or rosettes. On another, an upright man in the centre holds flowering branches whilst a ram rises up symmetrically from each side to pick the blossom [33c].34 This heraldic pattern is repeated on another seal where a nude hero and bull-man, possibly Gilgamesh and Enkidu, grasp rampant bulls confronting the sacred tree [33f]. Alternatively, a hero may grapple

nil ' simultaneously with a beast on either side, thus forming a triad representing a kind of fighting antithesis to the tree-of-life [33k]. 3 Combining the animal file and the beast-hero combat is the third basic grouping which consists of a continuous frieze of fighting creatures, usually lions and other beasts of prey attacking cattle, with herdsmen defending their flocks [33d, e]. These scenes are enriched when heroes come to the latter's rescue or themselves grasp the beasts. The rampant beast-of-prey, prototype of so many heraldic animals in the Middle Ages, originated in these scenes. This is clearly illustrated in the lions with forepaws raised on the backs of bulls. When in their turn attacked by heroes, herdsmen or other animals

36 far left Gilgamesh wrestling with two Panthers left Lion seizing a Bull. Front end of Queen Pu-abi's Lyre from tomb 'Great Death Pit', in Royal Cemetery at Ur, c. 2600 B.C. British Museum below Lions holding victims upside-down. Front end of Silver Lyre from tomb, 'Great Death Pit', in Royal Cemetery at Ur, c. 2500 B.C. British Museum

37 Imdugud gripping two Stags. Copper lintel from temple of El'Ubaid. Early Dynastic Period. 5000 2340 is.c. British Museum

46

from the rear, such creatures, glancing backwards 3 ' and snarling in selfdefence, still cling with one paw to their victims [33e]. Although the device of stringing together fighting groups in continuous friezes largely postdated the Uruk artists, a few seals of this early period already show rampant beasts away from their natural setting and grouped in pairs, moving alternately towards and away from each other, in purely heraldic patterns.:3(i These, however, were exceptions to which might be added the majestic spread-eagle Imdugud gripping two stags on the great copper lintel of the temple of El'Ubaid [37]:37 and the line of oxen ranged along the temple-wall, one of which we illustrate [35]. In typical Uruk designs, as on the beautiful copper reliefs, limestone mosaics, shell-plaque inlays, bronzes and gold objects of the Early Dynastic period from Ur and El'Ubaid, the animals generally remain in a meaningful pastoral setting and still lack the detachment proper to heraldic designs, although they have already assumed the appropriate poses. Detachment was achieved when the life-like Uruk animals were subjected to renewed distortion in purely decorative settings on seals, a regression first evident on designs of the Jemdet Nasr phase (that intervenes between the Uruk and Early dynastic periods); this probably reflects the taste of the barbarians who invaded Mesopotamia at this time, for wholly abstract patterns also reappear on some of their seals. The seal-cutters of the first Early Dynastic period were still affected by this shift of interest from narrative to decorative design, for they discarded the fine modelling of the Uruk period in favour of a purely linear treatment in which stylized animals are grouped in repetitive patterns known as the 'Brocade' style [34].38 These artists were, however, increasingly attracted by the beast-fight motif, now detached from its original setting; and the next few centuries of Sumerian seal-design are marked by ceaseless experiments in heraldic grouping to

enhance the expressive power of this motif as a symbol of cosmic strife. To emphasize his victory the hero may hold the beast upside down, [33g, h] a motif found also on the shell-plaque inlays from the lyre in the British Museum, where lions also are found holding their victims in this manner [36]. Intersecting rampant animals [33j], twin bodies joined to one head, human torsos mounted on lions instead of legs, and other bold devices served to introduce further variety into the entanglements of fighting heroes, beasts and monsters, presented upon tightly packed friezes, so long as the style remained predominantly linear.39 Gradually, however, there re-emerged a sense for plasticity more appropriate to the idea of embattled force. On the seals dating from c. 2500-2400 B.C., the period of the first all-Mesopotamian empire founded by Sargon of Akkad, true monumentality was achieved. The elementary heraldic groups, such as the triad, antithetic animals or intersecting rampant beasts, were now set off with striking effect against blank backgrounds, or placed, like heraldic supporters, to either side of inscribed panels. At the same time the animals themselves finally assumed those attitudes of force and violence frozen into immobility, which have served ever since, through later Mesopotamian and Assyrian art [33i] down to medieval heraldry, to symbolize the military virtues of strength and aggression.40 Besides being the commonest and most utilitarian objects to survive from the ancient Orient the Mesopotamian cylinder seals profoundly influenced the art of the future. 'While Egypt invented plant design', wrote Henry Frankfort, 'Mesopotamia subjected the animal kingdom to art. And this conquest was of a two-fold nature, the one decorative, the other imaginative. In Mesopotamia, for the first time, animal shapes were used not for what they represented but as pure decoration. In the second place, creatures were conceived which had no physical existence but which were so vividly imagined that they could take their place among the images of nature and have proved convincing to generations, sharing nothing with their creators but the acceptance of these monsters. It is by this fantastic fauna that Europe's artistic indebtedness to Asia can be traced'. Apart from the royal hunting reliefs in Assyrian palaces, to be considered later, animal art of later civilizations in Western Asia was wholly under the sway of this achievement. It is echoed on a gigantic scale in the lions guarding the gates of palaces and temples, or bearing gods or huge columns on their backs, and hunting scenes at Boghazkoy, Yasilikaya, Malatya [38, 39] and other Hittite sites, and the human-head bulls and lions or animal-headed demons set up by Assyrian kings at Nimrud or Khorsabad [40]. A feature of these human-lion colossi is the addition of a fifth leg so that they appear complete when seen from the sides as well as from the front [41]. Later still, similar creatures carved or fashioned in coloured tiles appear in Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, or in the palaces of the Persian kings at Susa and Persepolis.41 In the temple of Marduk at Babylon the animal frieze achieves monumental expression in the heraldic 'lions passant' which line the processional way to the Ishtar Gate (7th~6th century B.C.) upon which superimposed rows of bulls and dragons, the attributes of the gods Marduk and Adad, appear in coloured relief against a background of blue tiles [42]. From the staircase of Persepolis we reproduce a relief of a lion attacking a bull, a magnificent

Animal art in the ancient near east

47

Animal art in the ancient near east

I

38 Guardian Lion from Gate at Malatya. Basalt. Hittite. 1050-850 B.C. Ankara Museum

example of the rampant beast of prey motif which originated, as already discussed, in Sumerian cylinder seal designs [43]. Also from Persepolis is the relief of the royal hero Xerxes stabbing a rampant griffin monster, armed with horn and scorpion tail, which fiercely confronts its attacker in a strikingly heraldic 'rampant' attitude which derives from the now familiar beast-hero combat groups [44]. In the minor arts of these regions, in textiles, pottery and metal-ware, heraldic animal patterns invented by the Sumerians continued to prevail, despite the temporary incursion of Graeco-Roman influences, far into the Middle Ages. Their influence on other great styles is no less remarkable: they contributed decisive elements to the arts of early Greece, 39 Lion Hunt. Basalt. Hittite. From Malatya. 850-700 B.C. Ankara Museum

48

Animal art in the ancient near east

40 Lion from temple of Ishtar-belit-mali at Nimrud. Assyrian, c. 880 B.C. British Museum

the later Roman empire, Sassanid Persia, Byzantium, the Muslim world and medieval Europe. The animal style best known from the Sumerian finds was widespread, even in the third and second millennia B.C. Bulls closely resembling those of Ur have been found at Maikop in southern Russia, and the walking animal of the beast-file type was, in fact, a stock motif in all the great Bronze Age civilizations from the cities of the Indus Valley with their beautiful animal engravings on seals, to Egypt and Mycenean Greece. The Mesopotamian beast-fight triad was also for a time adopted in proto-literate Egypt, as in the mural at Hierakonpolis, already mentioned, or on a knifehandle from Gebel 'Araq (Louvre). But the main development of Egyptian animal art in the historical period followed a different course.42

Egyptian animal art Whereas Mesopotamian art was chiefly devoted to the exaltation of cosmic strife and to the commemoration of great historical events, such as the victories of Naram-Sin or the code of Hammurabi, Egyptian artists of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, up to c. 1550 B.C., ignored time and change in works which exalt the peaceful round of daily life and its sustaining rituals. In both areas, however, these characteristics only began to appear after a prelude during which the opposite mood predominated; for the protodynastic art of Egypt, which is only slightly more recent than the serene pastoral scenes of the Uruk phase, is a record of violent struggles preceding

49

Animal art in the ancient near east

41 Man-Bull Guardian from the Palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad. Assyrian. Late 8th century B.C. British Museum 42 Procession of Bulls and Dragons from the Ishtar Gate, Babylon, 7th-6th century B.C. Staatl. Museen, Berlin-Ost Vorderasiatische Abteilung

50

Animal art in the ancient near east

43 I.ion attacking Bull. Relief from Persepolis. 6th century B.C.

the unification of the realm. Its most distinctive monuments are the slate palettes and mace-heads from Hierakonpolis, commemorating those struggles either by means of beast fights and hunting groups or in scenes where bulls, lions, or birds-of-prey, as well as human figures, triumph over slain or captive human enemies. Although the details are vivid, especially on the splendid Hunters' Palettes [22, 23], the illusion of actuality is destroyed when captives are led, as on the Oxford fragment of the 'Lion' Palette, by human arms that emerge from the poles of animal-headed royal standards. The historical events alluded to are not, in short, illustrated in the same realistic manner in which similar events or ritual scenes are represented on Uruk seals. What is provided here is a pictographic record employing animal symbolism as a kind of shorthand notation. With the achievement of national unity and the deification of the king specific events became less and less the artist's concern; the gesture 'slaying enemies', for example, tended to be used as a general symbol of the Pharaoh's role as protector of the realm.43 The shift of interest from history to ritual in the art of the Old and Middle Kingdoms becomes intelligible in the light of the country's early history culminating in the assumption of divine status by the victorious Pharaoh (traditionally identified with Menes-Narmer). This deification is expressed in the vast series of works, notably monumental sculpture in the round, in which the kings and other gods are portrayed in their animal forms. The series begins with the splendid alabaster baboon, 52 inches high, inscribed with the Horus-name of King Narmer, in the Berlin Museum [45], and includes such supremely beautiful works as the Hathor-cow from Queen Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri (c. 1500 B.C.).44 This new preoccupation is also reflected in the representation of daily life, including vivid hunting, fishing, fowling and farmyard scenes, in the monuments devoted to the cult of the dead.

51

Animal art in the ancient near east

44 Beast-hero combat. Relief from Persepolis. 6th century B.C. 45 Egyptian Baboon, inscribed Horus. Alabaster. Agyptisches Museum, Berlin-West

52

The surviving Egyptian monuments of the Old and Middle Kingdoms are mostly confined to royal funerary temples or the private tombs of great dignitaries of the realm. The primary purpose of the representation in these temples of daily life in all its details, above all of the activities concerned with food production, was to aid the dead Pharaoh-Osiris in his essential role as initiator and sustainer of these activities. Subsidiary to the Pharaoh's principal ritual function, and related to it, was the secondary role of this art as a magic means of perpetuating the food offerings which the dead, in their turn, required to sustain them in the after-life. During the political upheavals which brought the Old Kingdom to an end and in which the local magnates usurped much of Pharaoh's power, these separate roles became blurred, but they must be borne in mind in assessing the peculiar character of this funerary art. 45 In the private tombs of the Middle Kingdom, after 2000 B.C., the consistency of this conception of the renewal of life through the Pharaoh's ritual power was increasingly undermined by a growing preoccupation with personal immortality. The activities of daily life were more intimately associated with the deceased by surrounding him in his tomb with toy-like wooden models of the servants and workers who would minister to his needs, or by allowing him to participate actively in the hunt.

46a Netting Wild Fowl. From Tomb oi N'cbamun, Thebes. Lgyptian. XVIIIth Dynasty, c. 1400 B.C. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago 46b Cat catching three Birds. Detail of above

53

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47 Murals. Mereruka Tomb. Vllh Dynasty, c. 2400-22 50 B.C. Old Kingdom Period. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

54

In his painted tomb near Beni Hassan, Khnumhotep, Governor of the Oryx or the XVIth name of Upper Egypt, himself hunts wild game with bow and arrow, spears fish and nets water-fowl in a scene enlivened by gaily coloured groups of birds, which include a hoopoe, redstart and shrikes, perched in the branches of a delicately drawn acacia tree. Another fowling scene, packed with incident, from the tomb of the scribe Nebamun, shows the owner with three herons in his hand as decoys and accompanied by his wife and daughter rousing a flock of birds from a papyrus thicket; he is aided by an agile cat which contrives to catch three birds at once, while fish and butterflies increase the animation of a crowded scene [46a, b]. The impression of liveliness made upon the modern spectator by Egyptian funerary art is chiefly due to the unsurpassed realism of the details. At Saqqara, for example, in the tomb of Mereruka, vizier to one of the last rulers of the Old Kingdom, the reliefs which represent fishing, wild-fowling and hunting of hippopotami in the marshes of the Nile, contain anatomically correct illustrations of no less than thirteen different varieties of fish alone as well as hippopotami and crocodiles, and all manner of birds, which the ichneumon and wild cat stalk in the papyrus thickets [47, 48, 49]. Similarly, in the desert reliefs, various kinds of game appear with hounds

and hunters in pursuit as well as small creatures not directly concerned, such as grasshoppers and hedgehogs. Nor is this exceptional: wild creatures of marsh and desert, as well as poultry and farmyard animals of every kind are depicted in the same profusion in other private tombs at Saqqara, notably those of Ti and Ptahotep, while in Sahure's royal funerary temple near Abusir, exotic animals sent as tribute by subject peoples are added to the stock illustrations of country life. The animals are shown, moreover, in typical situations: some, among oxen and asses walking patiently across the threshing-floor, are stubborn and refuse to work; cows are milked and geese forcibly fattened, bulls fight, cattle ford a stream while the herdsman casts

Animal art in the ancient near east

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Animal art in the ancient near east

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a spell to keep the crocodiles at bay. Lastly the slaughter of the animals is recorded, in the same matter-of-fact way as is the netting of wild-fowl, the spearing of fish, and killing of game on the hunting field. Illustrations of hunting and farming have, of course, delighted many peoples in other periods of history, but these were not the values to which the Egyptian artists primarily appealed. For their art is not episodic or anecdotal rural genre; it is a documentation of the complete life-cycle of the main foodplants and animals, from birth to death, as is impressively confirmed by the dramatic illustrations of the parturition of the cow in the Old Kingdom tomb of Ti at Saqqara and again in a Middle Kingdom tomb at Meir.4 - OftlDlUAlCtkiHJSADiOU Mt

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this period. In the selected drawing boys play with a bird and butterflies to which they have tied strings [253].38 Another version of the butterfly hunt, appealingly portrayed in the Romance of Alexander (Bodley MS.264), is here reproduced for comparison [254]. This manuscript, it should be noted, was probably executed in Bruges around 1340, possibly for an English client; in addition to a note inside the lower cover recording the book's purchase in London in 1466 by Richard Woodville, father-in-law of Edward IV, there is evidence to suggest that the volume was already in England in the second half of the fourteenth century soon after it was written. 39 Although the insects in the Queen Mary Psalter are indeed not very lifelike, it is noteworthy that realistic drawings of insects and other small creatures, such as snails and lizards, do turn up here and there in

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254 Butterfly Hunt. MS. Bodley 264, folio 135r. Romance of Alexander. c. 1400. Bodleian Library, Oxford

255 Dragonfly. MS. Add. 42130, folio 36v. The Luttrell Psalter, c. 1340. British Museum

419

English animal art of the later Middle Ages

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opcrdnue m fiOf. ltjgir mifai(otDiam t tuOtattm: 256 Kingfisher and Leech. MS. Add. 42130, folio 61v. The Luttrell Psalter, c. 1340. British Museum

420

manuscripts subsequent to the Tenison Psalter of 1284. The use of butterflies and ladybirds placed alternately on the ornamental frame of f. 147b in the Ormesby Psalter is especially pleasing. The dragonfly here reproduced, at which a semi-human monster is making faces, comes from the Luttrell Psalter [255].40 The other illustration reproduced from this famous manuscript (f.61) shows a large kingfisher watching a leech bleed a patient [256]. This curious group forms the pendant to the picture on the facing page already mentioned, of St. Francis preaching to the birds [241]. By portraying birds as huge as the Brobdingnagian larks which to Gulliver seemed nine times as large as a full-grown turkey the artists of these manuscripts distinguished their birds from the drolleries. The Luttrell illuminator, indeed, went further, and in combining a large, but otherwise vividly realistic bird with minute human figures in a single action he strikingly anticipated the method used a century and half later by Jerome Bosch in the most dreamlike of all his visions, The Garden of Earthly Delights of the Prado Museum (see Chap. 12, p. 487 and [302]). The artist's delight in depicting large creatures, freed from the cramping restrictions of initial letters, is seen in the inflated monsters which embellish, or rather perhaps disfigure, the later pages of

English animal art of the later Middle Ages

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257 Sea Monsters at the Last Judgment. MS. Add. 47682, folio 40v. 14th century (first half). The Holkham Bible. British Museum

the Luttrell Psalter, and which are found also in other manuscripts of the early fourteenth century. Differing in context from the Luttrell Psalter and apocalyptic in dramatic effect is the vision of the braying sea monsters rising out of their element, one of the Fifteen Signs of the Last Judgment (attributed to St. Jerome) illustrated in the final pages of the Holkham Bible, written c. 1325-30 [257]. The Pepysian sketchbook

The Luttrell and Smithfield books mark the end of the great period of English illumination. After the mid-fourteenth century there is a gap of some twenty years to which no surviving English illumination of importance can be assigned. The next works, a group of manuscripts of the 1370's, associated with the Bohun family, not only lack the vigour and freshness of the earlier school, but differ from it in aesthetic aim.41 Nevertheless a few realistic bird drawings and grotesques do survive even in these books (for example on f. 581 of the Vienna MS. 1826); and there is at least one manuscript of the 1380's or 1390's in which the magic of the older margins is to some extent recaptured: the Sherborne Missal, now in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, which was illuminated by the Dominican monk John Siferwas.42 A curious feature of the birds in this manuscript is that some of them are labelled; for example, a starling is identified as 'A Stare' on a scroll at its side, so that a new realistic and didactic note is introduced that is ultimately incompatible with the dreamlike atmosphere of the earlier works. The same feature reappears in the Pepysian sketchbook in Magdalene College, Cambridge, another volume contemporary with the Sherborne Missal, and especially precious as the only pattern-book of an English medieval artists' workshop that survives.43 Except for the absence of architectural designs, the sketchbook has some resemblance in its miscellaneous choice of subjects to the thirteenth century sketchbook of the French architect Villard de Honnecourt.44 Thus seventeen pages are filled with figure

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258 Varieties of Birds. Pepysian sketchbook, folios 11 v 12r. Late 14th century. Magdalene College, Cambridge

422

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studies, the models of which are by no means all contemporary, but drawn from various periods over the preceding hundred years. Interspersed between these figure studies are four pages with beasts and monsters drawn in outline, including Reynard and Physiologus motifs and a large sample of the half-real, half-imaginary fauna familiar to us from the early fourteenth century marginal grotesques. Another page contains more or less grotesqueheraldic beasts in red or reddish-brown colour-wash. But the most interesting part of the book is a central sequence of eight consecutive pages (ff. 10-13v) which are tightly packed (except for an occasional insect or mammal) with birds. All these birds are well observed and painted in their natural colours, some are labelled : 'jay', 'pertriche', ''goldfyncti, 'woodcocke', 'malard', 'hawke', 'bwollfy(nc)h', 'pokcoc'. Other birds that can be identified are the owl, wren, robin, chaffinch (male and female), goose, cock, heron, yellow bunting, green woodpecker, nightingale, lark, cuckoo, shovellerduck, moorhen, kingfisher, landrail, ringdove, sparrow, pheasant and rook [258]. The only exotic bird in the book is the parrot, long familiar to Englishmen. Although the range of species here assembled is probably greater than the selection found even in the most lavishly illustrated earlier books one does not find any obvious newcomers among them. Moreover, some of the bird and beast drawings in the Pepysian sketchbook were unmistakably based on the same models as drawings which appear in earlier English works. Thus the bat at the top of f. llv, though somewhat more accentuatedly gothic in the treatment of its spread wings, can trace its descent through a

bat in the Luttrell Psalter (f. 164) back to the Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University MS.24) of the twelfth century (f. 51b). The fighting cock in the centre of f. 11 occurs no less than three times in a remarkably similar form in the Queen Mary Psalter (ff. 142b and 187b), which also contains practically the same drawing of the lion breathing on its cub (f. 86b) as the Pepysian sketchbook (f. 19b). The splendid gull from the Tenison Psalter, which is about a century older than the sketchbook, reappears in the sketchbook with only slightly different markings (f. llv). But the design which establishes the continuity between the Pepys manuscript and the earlier tradition of English painting beyond any doubt (at least for some of its motifs) is a group of a hawk swooping on a drake in the centre of f. 12r. This highly distinctive group in which the hawk stands awkwardly on the victim's back, while the drake is drawn with open beak and wings swept back to its body, appears in this identical form in no less than three English manuscripts of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The version nearest in time to the sketchbook is probably the hawking scene on f. 151 of the Queen Mary Psalter [259]; the hawk and drake group incongruously included, as we have already pointed out, in the Creation page of the Bible at Holkham Hall comes next; while another hawking scene in the Tenison Psalter (f. 14b) contains the earliest English version of this motif known to us. It is also the closest to the sketchbook version, for here even the markings of the birds are identical. That an English workshop should have thought it worth while to include a number of bird designs (of which some at least are drawn from the older native tradition) in a pattern book compiled at a time when birds had virtually ceased to be as fashionable among illuminators of manuscripts in this country as they had been half a century earlier, need cause little surprise. In the first place, the eclipse of English book illumination and monumental sculpture, coincident with the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century,

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English animal art of the later Middle Ages

259 Hawking Scene. From the Queen Mary Psalter. Royal 2B.VII, folio 151. British Museum

7

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English animal art of the later Middle Ages

260 Goat, Hare, Wolf and Leopard from Taccuino di Disegni by Giov. de' Grassi, folio 16. Bibl. Civica, Bergamo

424

was offset by a splendid development of wood-carving, organized in urban workshops, in which the old grotesque and beast motifs continued to flourish as vigorously as ever until the early sixteenth century. But, secondly (and perhaps more relevant to our enquiry) the demand for bird designs continued undiminished among embroiderers, whose work enjoyed an especial fame all over the Continent precisely because of these bird and animal designs. It is referred to in surviving inventories of cathedral treasuries, including the list of vestments belonging to Pope Gregory XII, drawn up as late as 1411. Mrs. Christie, who studied the surviving English

English animal art of the later Middle Ages

261 Birds and Apostles. Mural. 14th century (second quarter) Longthorpe Tower, Peterborough

embroideries of this period, discovered among their embellishments a number of motifs that reappear in the Pepysian sketchbook;40 these include once again the hawk and drake group (on the Lateran Cope); also the landrail from f. 12v and the cat from f. llv (on the Cope of St Bertrand de Comminges). Naturalism in England and Italy Like the figure studies and grotesques, the bird designs in the Pepysian sketchbook thus prove unquestionably its continuity with the earlier

425

English animal art of the later Middle Ages

426

English tradition; but one must ask whether they may not at the same time, have been affected also by the powerful new trend of naturalism that spread from northern Italy in the years around 1400 through all the main schools of book illumination in Europe. There was a great demand for realistic bird and beast designs in fashionable court circles of northern Italy at this time. They appear in manuscripts and as decorative details also in religious paintings, such as the Adoration of the Magi; and many drawings and even entire sketchbooks filled with vivid animal studies survive, notably the sketchbook of Giovanni de' Grassi, now in the Communal Library at Bergamo [260] (see p. 479). It was in this North Italian court art of the decades around 1400, in the work of Michelino de Besozzo, Grassi and their school, that the greatest animal painter of the following generation, Pisanello, had his roots. Dr. Pacht, who has examined the links between this Italian movement and the naturalism of the great Northern book illuminators of the fifteenth century, 46 is inclined to regard the Pepysian sketchbook to a large extent as an offshoot of that movement, and there are designs in the Cambridge volume which seem to establish a connection between them. For instance, the hawks at the top of f. 12 look very like Italian drawings, and the little leopard in the top right corner of f. 19 has the same curious mannerism as leopards drawn by Grassi or his assistants. Dr. Pacht has shown also that a continuous tradition can be established, through the animal illustrations in medical and scientific books, between North Italian animal art of 1400 and the realistic bird- and animal-pictures made in southern Italy and Sicily in the thirteenth century; and that the Emperor Frederick II's treatise on falconry was one of the main sources of the later style. Since therefore an undercurrent of naturalistic animal design can be traced in Italy over the whole period from the mid-thirteenth century onwards, during which realistic birds are a striking feature in English art, our enquiry into the sources of the bird designs in the Pepysian sketchbook raises the further and wider problems, whether the English and Italian movements were not linked from the start, and what importance may be attached to the English bird-art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for the development of European naturalism in general. In this context the hawk and drake motif, which represents a standard design copied again and again by English artists for over a hundred years, assumes a new significance. If the earliest version in the Tenison Psalter is examined carefully one cannot fail to notice that it is a degree more conventional than the other bird drawings in the volume. The drake is lifelike enough, but an artist who placed the dove and gull and the other birds as naturally on their perches as he did (on f. 11 of this manuscript), would, had he followed his own observation, have made the hawk clutch its victim equally realistically, instead of setting it on the drake's back like a stuffed specimen. Is it not possible that this version too was copied from an earlier pattern ? Its designer had not yet, moreover, achieved the same degree of mastery in the representation of birds that distinguishes the Tenison painter's original work. Since the design in question relates to the noble and fashionable sport of hawking, one naturally thinks of the pictures in the greatest contemporary treatise on the subject, Frederick II's De arte venandi cum

avibus (see pp. 447 ff.). Indeed, the hawk in the Tenison Psalter has just the degree of formality, derived from the romanesque heraldic tradition, that still separates bird pictures in the earliest surviving copy of De arte venandi^' from pure naturalism. Though model illustrations of hawking based on Frederick's treatise may have been current in England by 1280 there is no evidence to prove this or to show precisely how the influence was transmitted. It was not, in any case, a major factor in the development of English bird design. The English tradition of representing realistically native birds and other small creatures (such as the hedgehogs) quite unrelated to hunting began long before Frederick's time as a modest undercurrent within the 'heraldic' style of the later twelfth century bestiaries, as we have seen (p. 392).

English animal art of the later Middle Ages

These realistic birds pass about the middle of the thirteenth century out of the bestiaries into the margins of psalters and other religious books written for noble laymen, which represent the mainstream of the English illuminators' art. They form a distinctive but inseparable part of that dreamimagery of the manuscript margins, which so faithfully mirrors the moods and interests of the contemporary nobility, and are, in this period, like contemporary nature lyrics, the result more of an emotional, poetic approach to nature, than of any conscious scientific pursuit. For, curiously, the advance towards naturalism, which is so striking in the pictures of birds and animals in these English religious books, did not, apparently, influence contemporary illustrators of medical and scientific books, where animals were customarily depicted, particularly in the section on medicines derived from animal substances, which is generally attached to the herbals. The animal pictures in the twelfth century herbal published by Dr. Singer (Bodl. Douce 130)48 still follow the tradition of the Anglo-Saxon scientific treatises, which were based on Carolingian models; while the thirteenth century illustrations in the herbals49 are even less lifelike and follow the 'heraldic' bestiary style. Nor do two Aristotle manuscripts, one of the late thirteenth, 50 the other of the early fourteenth,51 century yield better results. For though there are marginal grotesques and birds in both, they have nothing to do with the text, and the pictures that do have relevance are confined to little scenes of the Philosopher teaching, disputing with his pupil Alexander, pointing out the stars, and so on. A tentative answer may now be given to the question: What significance is to be attached to the older English bird art of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in the wider context of European culture? Though linked in its origins with the scientific revival of the twelfth century, it developed mainly as an expression of the new feeling for nature, at court and in the castles of chivalry. It was analogous to the contemporary nature poetry and to the splendid bird and foliage sculpture in contemporary gothic buildings. But it did not, apparently, have direct bearing on the naturalism of the fifteenth century, which was linked with the renewed scientific revival of the Renaissance, Domestic art: the Longthorpe Tower The discovery (in 1946) of a complete scheme of mural decorations in a

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262 Wheel of the Five Senses. Mural. 14th century (second quarter). Longthorpe Tower, Peterborough

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vaulted room in Longthorpe Tower, a fortified manor of the barony of Peterborough held by knights in the service of the abbey, has thrown a flood of light on the relationship between the marginal illuminations in manuscripts and the domestic art of the East Anglian nobility in the early fourteenth century. No comparable example of medieval secular painting of this date is known in England. The whole scheme, though confined to a smallish chamber thought to have been a bedroom, is a compendium of sacred, moral and secular subjects with which a well-bred knight of the fourteenth century might be expected to be familiar.32 The paintings, which were probably made in the second quarter (before 1340) of the century for Robert de Thorpe, steward of Peterborough Abbey from 1310, cover the vault and walls of the rooms from floor level upwards, and exhibit the same continuous flow of parallel themes as contemporary East Anglian manuscripts. There is, first, a dado of large birds, the extant parts of which show mostly Fenland species, including a bittern, heron (?),

curlew, goose and swan (?), but also an owl and a peacock. Sacred compositions, and pairs of Apostles holding scrolls bearing Latin sentences from the Apostles' Creed, appear above [261]. On the north wall, flanked by heraldic shields, are two enthroned figures representing Edward II or III and Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, respectively the suzerain and most important tenant of Peterborough Abbey. Also depicted on the wall are several compositions illustrating the moralized or encyclopedic teaching of the Middle Ages. These comprise the Labours of the Months, the Three Living and the Three Dead, a morality on the vanity of earthly rank and riches, the Seven Ages of Man and, a much rarer subject, the Wheel of the Five Senses. In the latter, a king rotates a five-spoked wheel on whose rim stand five creatures representing the senses - a boar with pricked ears (hearing), a cock (sight, since he announces by his crowing the first appearance of dawn), a monkey eating a bun (taste), a vulture (smell), and a spider in its web, the latter signifying by an analogy both simple and exquisite, the sense of touch. The king may symbolize Reason, controller of the senses [262]. The theme of the Five Senses is taken from a passage in Thomas of Cantimpre's De natura rerum, one of the three basic encyclopedias of the later Middle Ages discussed, together with those of Bartholomew the Englishman and Vincent of Beauvais, in chapter 10. The subject was rarely depicted in art but received poetic illustration in the tapestries of La Dame a la licorne (see pp. 463—4) now in the Cluny Museum. Besides the naturalistic birds on the dado and the creatures on the Five Senses wheel, Longthorpe Tower includes another animal subject, this time taken from the bestiary. Beneath the enthroned figures of Edward III and Edmund of Woodstock is an imperfect representation of the mythical bonacon, a stag-like creature which, when hunted, had the unpleasant though effective habit of discharging the contents of its bowels into the faces of its pursuers. Its inclusion here is puzzling; it may be a simple drollery, or possibly some form of political satire is intended related to the disturbances following Edward II's atrocious murder and the beginning of Edward Ill's reign with which Edmund of Woodstock was fatally involved. On the east wall, another puzzling mural shows a hermit-like figure and birds on a tree, very like the illustrations of St. Francis preaching to the birds, except that the figure has its back to the tree and is facing two persons in front of him. One is a rustic seated on the ground making a basket, the other a standing figure behind him, the upper part largely effaced. This scene has been interpreted as representing a story from Book V, Verba Seniorum, of the De Vitis Patrum, a collection of popular anecdotes of the Fathers, in which St. Anthony Abbot (patron saint of basket-makers) meets an angel alternately working and praying who says to him 'Do this and you will be saved'. This literal representation of the injunction 'Laborare est orare' shows all the figures in secular, working dress; the birds and rabbits in the background indicate the animal companions of the saint in the wilderness. As with the manuscripts of the East Anglian School, the birds and beasts at Longthorpe abound in the marginal spaces between the main subjects,

English animal art of the later Middle Ages

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English animal art of the later Middle Ages

263 Birds and Beasts. around the Tree ol Vices, hast Anglian Book of Hours. MS. W.105, folio 9v. c. 1400. Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore

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as well as playing their part in the allegories. Most of the birds and figures in the room stand out as silhouettes from the plain background, as they do from the white vellum of manuscript margins. But the lower part of the south wall, below Edward III and Edmund of Woodstock, is covered with a diaper of heraldic lozenges enclosed by a dark red border on which a dragon, birds and flowers are interwoven, as in a tapestry. There is another panel on the east wall, below St. Anthony Abbot, enclosed at the top by a similar

border in which an owl and magpies replace the dragon and birds. These tapestry-like borders are of great interest, for they foreshadow later developments of courtly mural art on the Continent. They may be paralleled elsewhere in England bv a fragment from the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey which was decorated in gesso with a design of birds and oak-leaves by the King's Painter, Master Walter, in 1300-1. The leaves are almost as densely spread as in the later verdure tapestries; but that they derive from the foliage scrolls in contemporary English manuscripts is evident, when they are compared with the thicket of oak, maple and holly through which hunters pursue their game on f. 14 of the late thirteenth century Peterborough Psalter in the Brussels Library. The next steps may be followed on two pages of the East Anglian Book of Hours of c. 1350, already mentioned (p. 413), now in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. On f. 10b the oaktree and birds are no longer confined to the margin but share the page, as we have already mentioned, in equal proportions with the main subject, a head of Christ [245]. But on f. 9v the tree covers the whole page, forming a background of verdure for allegorical figures, birds and beasts that are scattered over its branches [263]. It has here grown into the Tree of the Vices in whose branches sit personifications of each vice with Luxury (an embracing man and woman) in the middle and Pride gazing at himself in a mirror at the top. Of more immediate interest here are the birds which hold inscriptions in their beaks identifying the vices while two mice gnaw at the base

264 Bird-catching. Fresco in the Pope's Wardrobe. Palais des I'apes, Avignon 265 Solitary Swan. Fresco in the Pope's Wardrobe. Palais des Papes, Avignon

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of the tree watched by a lion and unicorn. The latter creatures suggest a reference to the story of Barlaam and Josaphat as related in Voragine's Golden Legend where the unicorn and mice appear as figures of death around the great pit or Hell-Mouth into which the evil man who has surrendered himself to vice must fall when his tree of life is felled. There is an echo, too, of the menacing lion and unicorn in Psalm XXI which we have already seen in an illumination from the Stuttgart Psalter (see p. 181, pi. 117).53 Whatever the precise significance of these two pages from the Walters Book of Hours it seems but a short step from the type of design here employed to the mysterious (because spaceless) two-dimensional forest and garden scenes in which sharply defined and vividly coloured birds, beasts, knights and ladies move as in a dream. That step seems first to have been taken at the papal court in Avignon, where Provencal, French and Italian influences combined to fashion the canons of late medieval chivalry, for the frescoes with hunting scenes in the Pope's wardrobe at Avignon are probably the earliest and most exquisite of these verdure landscapes.'^4 In a setting of dense woods and undergrowth a stag hunt, hawking, bird catching [264], ferreting and fishing are depicted with a sharpness of observation that focuses with sudden intensity on details such as the solitary swan in a thicket [265]. This style, which expressed so perfectly the mood of waning chivalry with its emphasis on vivid detail in dreamlike settings, came to England as a foreign importation from the Continent. Consideration of this final phase in medieval animal art, expressed so exquisitely in the richly refined world of French and Flemish tapestries, with their constant reiteration of courtly love and the chase, and in the illustrated hunting books prepared for the feudal nobility, must be reserved for our concluding chapter. Popular art: roof bosses and misericords

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Our discussion of late medieval art has been confined thus far mainly to artistic equivalents of the romances, rather than of the fabliaux, to Chaucer's Knight's Tale, rather than to the Reeve's or the Miller's Tales. The precious manuscripts and murals, which we pass in review, were made for princes, noblemen or for wealthy churchmen. But the moods and interests of the craftsmen and merchants, members of the new bourgeoisie which established itself as a separate social group from the nobility and the peasants after the Black Death, were no less vividly expressed in varied though less sumptuous art forms. The secular, satiric, sometimes coarse, attitudes of the town bourgeoisie of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are vigorously depicted in the numerous misericords, the choir-stall carvings and the roof-bosses (of which Mr. Cave photographed eight thousand) 55 which remain in the cathedrals, parish churches and chantry chapels. The unobtrusive positions in which these carvings are usually found has aided their preservation, but before turning to this material a few words on gothic animal sculpture in England generally are needed. In the north and east of England the first gothic churches were as bare of sculpture (except foliage) as had been the first Norman churches a century

earlier. This is specially noticeable in the otherwise so romantic ruins of the great Cistercian abbeys in the North, the stern simplicity of which reflects Bernard of Clairvaux's denunciation of the prolific imagery which the humanists of Cluny and their followers had lavished on church and cloister. In the West of England, however, this puritanical trend never prevailed; there the taste for rich decorative sculpture continued without interruption through the late Norman and first Gothic styles, as shown in the early thirteenth century work at Wells Cathedral. By about 1250 decorative and figure sculpture reappeared also in other regions. Capitals, corbels, roofbosses and the exterior decorations of the churches were once more enlivened with the 'filthy apes, fierce lions, monstrous centaurs, half-men, spotted tigers, fighting soldiers and horn-blowing hunters' that St. Bernard had denounced (see p. 335). Indeed, as the Middle Ages drew to a close both the grotesque character of these carvings and the secular and satirical undercurrent in them grew more and more pronounced.06 During the thirteenth century, on the other hand, the foliage decorations, and the birds and beasts, and little men that move in them, are still graceful and restrained, and a joyful affirmation of nature is reflected in their exquisitely lifelike detail. A lizard from a corbel in the north choir-aisle at Wells [272] which dates back to the beginning of the century; the charming fox-cub hiding among huge leaves and blossoms on a capital in the nave of Lichfield (c. 1270); and the beautiful falcon-capital on the west side of the muniment room at Westminster Abbey 57 suffice to show that such work is the equivalent in sculpture of the birds and beasts in such manuscripts as the Tenison Psalter. From the end of the thirteenth century a change becomes noticeable in the treatment of beasts and beast-stories in the churches. The finial-figures and gargoyles on the outer fabric become more and more grotesque, verging often on caricature, while animal subjects tend to disappear from the more visible parts of the masonry in the interior, to lead a secret life on the remote bosses high in the vaults. Though many of these bosses continued to be cut into the keystones to the end of the Middle Ages, the majority are in wood and were applied to the roofs only after they had been finished in the workshop. This is important, for it was in woodcarving, on misericords, poppy-heads and bench-ends, that the rich medieval imagery survived with undiminished (one is tempted to say, increased) vitality to the Tudor period, despite the collapse of the English tradition of book illumination in the midfourteenth century. 58 So faithfully, indeed, was the old imagery preserved that the choice of subjects seems sometimes even conservative, as compared, for example, with the East Anglian manuscripts. Thus bestiary subjects of all kinds (and not merely the fashionable unicorn) would seem to occur more often and later in the carvings than in the illuminations.59 Besides the bosses in Queen Camel church in Somerset, published by Mr. Druce,60 on which no less than seventeen members of the bestiary menagerie reappear, Mr. Cave lists several instances. He stresses also the importance for the bosses of motifs from folklore which go back to the remote pre-Christian past especially the man's head with leaves sprouting from mouth or forehead, which is found repeatedly, and represents the 'Green Man' and 'Jack-in-

English animal art of the later Middle Ages

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266 Pig with Bagpipes. South wall of Nave. Melrose Abbev, Roxburgh 267 White Rabbit. Doorway detail, chancel aisle. St. Mary's, Beverley, Yorks

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the-Green' of folk-tales, or the 'Green Knight' in the poem of Sir Gawain.(il Other, more obvious, fertility images are also found; the curious and charming design of three rabbits linked in a roundel so that they have only three ears between them, though each, seen in isolation, clearly has two, may have similar age-old associations though it is more likely that to the carvers the design appealed primarily as an amusing trick (two examples, one at North Bovey, the other at Sampford Courtenay are reproduced by Mr. Cave).6- In addition to dragons and lions, all the usual beasts and beast-tales are to be found on the bosses, from the twelfth century onwards. The fox and the geese, the sow and her litter, pigs playing the bagpipes (found in the twelfth century at Barfreston and at Melrose Abbey) [266] are very common. Fine examples of bosses are also found at St. Mary's church in Beverley.613 Here, by the way, is the stone carving, in the chapel dedicated to St. Michael, of a rabbit walking upright with pilgrim's staff and satchel on which Tenniel is said to have based his illustrations of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland^4 [267]. Dogs, apes, stags, squirrels and horses also figure on many bosses; a bat at Croscombe has the same shape as the bat in the Pepysian sketchbook. It is remarkable that birds, though numerous, are apparently less frequent than beasts. But the bird motifs are the familiar ones: the owl mobbed by small birds, for instance, is splendidly represented on a boss at Sher borne.6'5 The series on misericords in the choir-stalls begins in the third quarter of

the thirteenth century with the beautiful work at Exeter (1255-79). The English animal art of misericords at Christchurch and Hemingbrough with dragons and foliage the later Middle Ages scrolls, are even earlier. Production continued through the fourteenth and fifteenth into the first third of the sixteenth century, when, for example, the great series at Westminster (1509), Beverley Minster (1520) and King's College Chapel, Cambridge (1533) were produced; at Durham cathedral and Bishop Auckland are two sets, carved even after the Civil War, in 1665.66 The more important stalls carved in the first half of the fourteenth century still followed the courtly style of contemporary manuscripts. Those in Wells cathedral (1330), here represented by a carving of two puppies playing [268], are as noteworthy for their elegant figure- and beast-designs as for their exquisite foliage,6' while the Ely stalls (1338) are no less enchanting than the East Anglian illuminations which they resemble closely. We reproduce the wonderful owl lurking among ivy leaves with a mouse in her claws, while what must, surely, be the nightingale and her supporters watch from a 'waste thicke hegge' of maple on either side [269]. A third example, a cat and mouse, is somewhat earlier; carved in 1305 it comes from the stalls in Winchester cathedral.68 Of great elegance, too, though often more grotesque, are the misericords at Chester (1390) and Carlisle (1401). From the later fourteenth century onwards the designs tend to be more crowded, gaining in spontaneity and humour what they lose in formal distinction. Similarities in style and repetition of motifs, as in the case of the Chester, Carlisle, Lincoln,09 and Manchester70 group; also Ripon71 and Beverley Minsters (belonging to this latter group), and in a group of smaller Norfolk churches, suggest that many of these later stalls were produced in large workshops supplying wide areas with their carvings. Others, including the delightful bench-ends with illustrations of the Reynard epic in Brent Knoll, Somerset, would seem to be work of local craftsmen [270].72 The themes of these carvings embrace the entire range of medieval imagery, and present, as Lawrence Stone has said, 'the most convincing evidence of the 268 Two Puppies playing. Misericord. 15th century. Cathedral, Wells

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269 Owl clutching Mouse. Misericord. 15th century. Cathedral, Ely

270 Reynard, disguised as a Bishop, preaching to Birds. Bench-End. 15th century. Brent Knoll

English animal art of the later Middle Ages

271a Basilisk and Weasels holding Rue in their mouths. 15th century. Misericord. Cathedral, Worcester

secular preoccupations of the late fourteenth century artist'. 73 Further examples are Langland's theme of Belling the Cat from Malvern Priory, the Ape and Pedlar group from Beverley Minster, and the Clever Daughter from Gloucester. Bestiary illustrations continued popular; we reproduce from Worcester an unusual example of the basilisk between two smaller creatures with leaves in their mouths. These must be weasels which, alone among animals, could attack the basilisk with impunity after eating rue [271a].74 As illustrations of vivid naturalism in smaller churches may be quoted a squirrel from Stowlangtoft, a frog from Edlesborough and a misericord in Lavenham church on which spoonbills do duty for the ibis in the account of that bird's habits as a scavenger on the banks of the Nile, which the bestiary writers took from Pliny [271b]. But these subjects on the later misericords are seen through the eyes of the Wife of Bath rather than of the Knight, witness the greater emphasis which is placed on popular proverbs, 271b Spoonbills. Misericord. 15th century. Lavenham, Suffolk

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English animal art of the later Middle Ages

272 Lizard. Stone corbel c. 1200^10 Cathedral, Wells

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such as Shoeing the Goose, Putting the Cart before the Horse; and on the frequent, vivid illustrations from daily life, especially that most popular theme, the utter antithesis of courtly love, the Battle for the Breeches between man and wife, with the wife belabouring her husband while he tries to wind a ball of thread on a frame.70 The vivid naturalism of the misericords, bench ends and roof bosses, reviewed in this section, was a vigorous, if provincial, manifestation of the trend towards naturalism found in the older English animal and bird art. A parallel movement in the same direction in the courtly arts is seen in the tapestries and hunting manuals which we are about to consider in our concluding chapter.

Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

Introduction The history of the later Middle Ages is marked by increasing tension in every sphere of life. The hierarchic structure of feudal society was strained and finally shattered by the growth of national states and the rise of new social classes. The unity of the western church, menaced first by heresy, was finally disrupted by the Reformation. Art and learning, inconceivable in the early Middle Ages apart from service to religion, progressively emancipated themselves as independent approaches to truth. Everywhere, in short, as forces nurtured by the great synthesis of the twelfth century matured, the old framework could no longer contain them.1 In an attempt to make their symbolic image of the universe conform more closely to the facts of observation, scholars, such as Albertus Magnus, were increasingly driven, even in the thirteenth century, to supplement the contemplation of universal truths with the description and classification of particular facts through which the universals manifest themselves. In the subsequent dispute between realists and nominalists the objective existence of universals as such was called into question. And finally science, as the appropriate method of exploring particulars by observation and experiment, was accepted in its own right as distinct from philosophical speculation concerning universals. The growth of naturalism in late medieval art, as seen in English bestiary illustration considered in the previous chapters, passed through similar stages. In early gothic art the desire to replace conventional heraldic beast and plant forms by more authentic records is vividly illustrated, for example, by Matthew Paris' drawings of the first elephant to be brought to England and of the crossbills that invaded this country in 1251.2 It is also shown in the animals, including insects and crustaceans, Villard de Honnecourt scattered among the architectural and figure subjects of his sketchbook (c. 1250) and by his comment on two drawings 'know well that this lion was drawn from life' [273a,b,c].3 In the mature gothic style which spread through Europe from northern France in the later thirteenth century exquisite leaves of the vine, oak, hawthorn or maple are spread over the capitals of churches and the margins of illuminated manuscripts; the birds and beasts that inhabit them, at Lichfield or Southwell, for example, or on the capital from Gelnhausen, reproduced above [182], are enchantingly alive.4 Here, however, as in the writings of the great scholastics, those lovingly observed details still appear in a purely ideal context, represented either

Chapter 12

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273a Insects, Cats and Crustacean. From Villard de Honnecourt's Sketchbook. 13th century (first half). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 273b Lion and Hedgehog. From Villard de Honnecourt's Sketchbook. 13th century (first half). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 273c Lion with Keeper. From Villard de Honnecourt's Sketchbook. 13th century (first half). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

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by the decorative unity of a page-design, with its symbolic overtones, or by the formal and spiritual harmony of a gothic cathedral. The dramatic tension which distinguishes the gothic style springs from this reconciliation of spiritual and earthbound elements. Yet the perfect harmony achieved in the late thirteenth century was not maintained, and the changing forms of gothic art in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reflect the ever-shifting balance between these antithetic components. To understand how certain pioneers could resolve this contradiction in the early fifteenth century by creating a new style in which the work of art was made to mirror nature through its structure as well as its details, it is necessary to contrast the northern gothic approach to nature through details with the contemporary development in Italy. In the latter country the ancient monuments which still survived could provide increasingly instructive exemplars, once the desire for a revival of naturalism had taken root. Thus in Italy that revival could begin at a more advanced level than in the north, where a sensibility still strongly influenced by barbaric art had first to be disciplined through heraldic forms imported from the east. Though widely adopted during the twelfth century in the south as well as in the north, the 'heraldic' animal style was less important for the further development of Italian art than the great narrative picture cycles of the Early Christian and Byzantine traditions which the mosaic-makers simultaneously reintroduced in their church decorations, from Sicily to Venice. In these compositions later-antique illusionism was more diluted and therefore more intelligible to the medieval artists than in the pagan monuments; all the same they served to direct their attention, from the first, to the fundamental problem of representing the dramatic interplay between living beings in a given spatial setting. To solve this problem convincingly was the main preoccupation of the most advanced Italian artists in the early fourteenth century, notably of Giotto, but also of the Sienese painters, whose solution was less austere than Giotto's and whose stress on expression of emotion was more akin to the gothic sensibility of the north. The Sienese therefore profoundly influenced northern art from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, when they replaced the older French painters in the decoration of the papal palace at Avignon; the experiments which followed and which make the art of the later fourteenth century appear full of contrasts cleared the ground for the simultaneous creation of a consistently naturalistic style in the early fifteenth century by Masaccio and his circle in Florence and by the brothers van Eyck in the north.

Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

St. Francis's sermon to the birds and the Christmas presepio

The role which animal imagery played in this dramatic development is best illustrated by means of its most typical example, the birds, and by the forms gothic bird imagery assumed under the influence of two outstanding, but utterly opposed, figures of the thirteenth century: St. Francis of Assisi (1180/1-1226) and the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II (1194-1250), heir to the Norman kings of Sicily. Examples of illustrations in English manuscripts of the saint's sermon to the birds have already been described (see Chap. 11, p. 407), but the significance of the legend in its wider, European

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context must now be taken into consideration.0 For his earliest Italian biographers the sermon of St. Francis to the birds epitomizes the 'rapture of devotion' with which he embraced all nature and which he himself expressed in his Hymn to the Sun. 'In beautiful things he recognized Him who is supremely beautiful', Thomas of Celano wrote, 'everywhere he followed the Beloved by the traces He has impressed on all things; he made for himself of all things a ladder whereby he might reach the throne.''' This awareness of the divine presence in nature was expressed in the sermon, one of the most famous, if briefest, ever recorded, which Francis preached near the village of Bevagna, two leagues from Assisi, in the presence of Brothers Masseo and Angelo in 1216. Observing flocks of birds in the trees about him the saint turned from his path and addressed them: 'Brother birds you ought to praise and love your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flying, and all that is needful for you. He has made you the noblest of all his creatures; he permits you to live in the pure air; you have neither to sow nor to reap, and yet He takes care of you, watches over you and guides you' . . . And as St. Francis spoke the birds began all of them to open their bills and stretched out their necks and spread their wings and reverently they bent their heads to the ground and by these acts and by their song they showed the joy their Father gave them.7 To understand the special message conveyed by this sermon it is necessary to examine the relationship between the chivalrous cult of love and Francis's own spiritualized version of it.8 In a society accustomed to sacrifice personal feelings with callous brutality to the interests of feudal status the troubadours of Provence had been the first to awaken the emotions of romantic love. St. Francis satisfied all the longings of his time for a personal faith which the hieratic Church could not provide, when he transferred that same love from its earthly objects to Christ and, especially, to the Mother of Christ: To the Mother of Jesus he bore unspeakable love (wrote Thomas of Celano)9 for that she made the Lord of Majesty our brother. To her he rendered peculiar praises, poured forth prayers, and made offerings of love, the number and quality whereof the tongue of man could not express.

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The documents leave no doubt as to the sources of this attitude. Like the troubadours Francis rejoiced in birds, stars, and flowers, as tokens of God's love; and many details recorded by his followers show how thoroughly, as a rich merchant's son in Assisi and before his conversion, he had steeped himself in the cult of chivalry: how, for example, he sought renown by feats of arms; how, even in later years, he referred to his friars as 'minstrels of the Lord' and 'my knights of the Round Table'. When deeply moved he 'burst out into a French song of joy', a habit perhaps explained by the tradition that his mother, who was of noble birth, came from Provence. For Celano, who wrote his first life of Francis in 1228 for the saint's canonization, the birds were still an emblem of nobility. This probably accounts, at least in part, for the curious distribution of the bird sermon in picture cycles devoted to the Franciscan legend. Though painted as early as 1235 by Berlinghieri on the Pescia altarpiece [161] and included in most

Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

274 St. Francis' Sermon to

the Birds. By Taddeo di Bartolo, 1403. Niedersachsische Landesgalerie, Hanover

of the Italian cycles of the thirteenth century, such as the predella panels by Taddeo di Bartolo, now in Hanover [274], and especially at Assisi, the sermon was omitted from the frescoes Giotto painted early in the fourteenth century in S. Croce in Florence for the merchant family of the Bardi, as well as from most later Italian cycles devoted to this saint, with the notable exception of Benozzo Gozzoli's markedly courtly work at Montefalco. By combining the gospel of love with exaltation of poverty Francis had given an edge to the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore, foretelling the end of the world and arrival of the New Christ who would end oppression, which could not be countenanced either by the Papacy or its allies, the great merchant families who were about to seize power from the Ghibelline nobles in the leading Italian cities; it is not surprising therefore that a symbolism so profoundly congenial - though for differing reasons - to both the nobility and to the, as yet scarcely articulate, masses of the humble and oppressed, should have been suspect to the Pope and his allies. But in the north the sermon continued to be illustrated in mural and glass paintings, as well as in manuscripts and on seals, down to the fifteenth century. 10 It was, moreover, virtually the only Franciscan subject, apart from the miracle of the stigmata, that northern artists illustrated at all. Whereas in their churches the Italian city-folk were eager to follow the saint's life in

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Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

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all its main details so that even the earliest (1235) works devoted to it contain six scenes, and the cycle of c. 1300, in the upper church at Assisi, no less than twenty-eight, northern admirers of St. Francis were content to confine themselves to the two essentially symbolic subjects in which its message was epitomized and which were closely associated in their minds; for if the sermon to the birds expressed the saint's love of Christ, the stigmata through which he identified himself with the Saviour's sacrifice were the supreme token of that love. The two symbols are explicitly linked in the legend which related that when Francis arrived on Monte La Verna to receive the stigmata, he was greeted by a jubilant chorus of birds. Finally, when he lay dying in a hut near the chapel of the Portiuncula, the sanctuary of the Franciscan Order in the forest near Assisi, a flock of larks, his favourite birds, kept vigil and at the moment of his death 'made a wheel like a circle around the roof, and sweetly singing, seemed likewise to praise the Lord'.11 The sermon to the birds indicates the importance symbolism can assume in art in certain situations. It was so profound and lasting in its appeal just because it meant so many different things to different people, and even to the same people at different times or on different levels of awareness. The meanings thus imaginatively linked ranged from the greatest issues of the time to the highest flights of mysticism, from associations with chivalry, which explains why the sermon was so attractive to the nobility, especially in the north, to those intimate experiences, timeless and personal, through which every admirer of St. Francis could identify his own emotions with those of the saint. As the central figure round which these several symbolisms cluster, Francis assumed his historic role of moral leader, patron of animals and the most universal of all the saints. While the sermon to the birds maintained its perennial appeal as a symbol of love it was gradually replaced by another which was of the greatest importance for the development of narrative art. This had been foreshadowed by St. Francis himself when, while celebrating Christmas in a small chapel in the woods near Greccio in 1223, he improvised what was virtually a nativity-play representing the Child of Bethlehem in a manger, with a real ox and ass and the countryfolk as witnesses. To dramatize the childhood of Christ in homely terms, so that all could identify themselves with His joys and sufferings, henceforth became the central theme of religious art in the South. Thus the ancient theme of a Holy Family and a Dying God was translated into the setting of a carpenter's shop in Florence or Siena. From these homely dramatizations of divine love and sacrifice the beasts were not excluded. The ox and the ass, on their knees like Mary and St. Joseph before the Christ Child, warmed the chill stable with their breath, becoming thereafter essential participants in the Nativity story as portrayed in popular art and literature. But St. Francis was not the first to bring them around the crib. Their presence, though not specified in the brief account of the Nativity in St. Luke's Gospel, dates back to an early Church tradition deriving from Isaiah's prophecy: 'The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib' (Isaiah, I, v. 3). They had already been depicted on Roman sarcophagi (examples in the Lateran Museum, Rome) and on the so-called sarcophagus of St. Ambrose in Milan (where they appear without Mary and

Joseph) of the fourth and fifth centuries; and their roles had been propounded in the homilies of Origen, the sermons of Gregory Nazianzen and the fifth century apocryphal gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. But in introducing living animals around the Christmas presepio at Greccio St. Francis effectively removed the dumb beasts out of allegory and symbol. They became, as Bonaventura recorded, fellow creatures of man, sharing the same divine origin and a part of that mystic unity of the universe which he taught so strongly. By presenting the Infancy and Passion of Jesus to the people in such homely ways Francis and his preaching friars transformed the character of religious art in Italy. Even in that new setting the little birds that had charmed both Francis and the troubadours before him did not, however, wholly disappear. In the unpretentious pictures of the Mother and Child which lesser citizens bought for their devotions in the home, a goldfinch often appears as a toy in the Infant's hand [275];12 while in the folk-tales of the robin, stained on its breast with a drop of the Saviour's blood, or the crossbill whose twisted beak was caused by vain efforts to pull the nails from the Cross, the association of birds with the Passion was presented to the humble in simple and direct terms without symbolic disguise. The new approach to nature, released by St. Francis's teaching, was but one expression of the contemporary culmination of naturalism in gothic art. This is reflected especially in decorative sculpture and in manuscript illumination. But whereas in many of the carvings the exquisite leaves which suddenly burgeoned on the capitals at Rheims, Sainte-Chapelle, Southwell, Naumburg and elsewhere are the only decoration, in the manuscripts they are generally enlivened by drolleries, animals and birds. The ivy-leaf borders, extending from the initials of the text into the margins of the pages, become populated by a varied menagerie. The liveliness of these creatures is due less to their silhouettes, a feature which distinguishes the vigorous outline drawings of the bestiaries and apocalypses of the previous age than to the artist's success in rendering their plastic shapes. This new naturalism, based on exquisite modelling, is prominently displayed in the birds. These occupy a key position in most of the designs, particularly, as has been seen, in English gothic art. But they are found also in French and Flemish manuscripts, including some from the workshops of Jean Pucelle and his followers, and in the Romance of Alexander at Oxford (Bodleian MS. 264), probably illuminated at Bruges around 1340, which M. R. James described as one of the great picture books of the Middle Ages.13 Birds appear on nearly every leaf, perched on ivy-leaf borders or in the drolleries and genre scenes at the bottom of the pages. On f. 128r is a delightful picture of a stork's nest, perilously exposed on a chimney top between an attack from a bird of prey above and flames rising from a fire beneath, round which falconers warm themselves; more hawks and the falconers' gloves rest on hanging perches on either side [276]. A tendency to distinguish the birds from the drolleries may, however, be observed from the nature of the species depicted. Whereas owls, hawks, herons and ravens are often treated as drolleries, as are apes, hares, goats and foxes, the birds encountered in these manuscripts are chiefly wrens,

Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

445

275 Madonna and Child with Goldfinch. By Cenno di Francesco. Kress Collection, Museum of Art, University of Kansas

446

robins, finches, larks, woodpeckers and kingfishers, with an occasional wood pigeon or seagull; that is to say, they represent the same harmless species as those mentioned in Celano or Bonaventura's account of the bird sermon of St. Francis. Yet, curiously, whatever Franciscan influence may have contributed to this fashion, these harmless birds in the margins of northern manuscripts of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries can also be traced back, by direct descent, to a work by the Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, whom many early Franciscans believed to be the Antichrist.

Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

Frederick H's treatise 'De arte venandi cum avibus' At Frederick's court in Sicily chivalry and learning were still inseparably linked. The treatise he began to write, probably in 1244 and left unfinished at his death in 1250, On the Art of Hunting with Birds, an Analytical Inquiry into the Natural Phenomena manifest in Hawking, vividly illustrates the manner in which both these attitudes were fused in its author's mind.14 Exalting hawking as the noblest sport, worthy of the greatest princes, the treatise is a guide of unprecedented thoroughness to the whole practice of falconry, and as such enjoyed the highest prestige to the end of the Middle Ages. But since in Frederick's view, learning, too, was a mark of nobility, he held that falconry should appeal to men of rank also as a branch of natural history, since it deals with bird life, and affords 'attractive manifestations of the processes of nature'. To the two hundred chapters dealing with practical problems Frederick therefore added a theoretical introduction of sixty-three chapters devoted to the feeding, mating and nesting habits of the main classes of water-, land- and 'neutral' birds; to their migrations; and to the anatomy of their chief organs. Although in many points he followed Aristotle, Frederick accepted only what agreed with his own observation. How far, with this objective approach, he was in advance of his time is best seen by contrasting these chapters with the uncritical accounts of animal behaviour in the ancient hunting books which served as models for quanr rcUelcuoit p g t taunt ptu» uennttllc qtic rofcteroficr -p arfclesUatucurs fcft-Atcsap&ncr p or f « m « futtwutfttmna ccftca feucrtfr ftnr wfqu au ewr C&m Ic toi» auotr Ic tvaic jKcmur

276 Stork's Nest and Hawks from Romance of Alexander, MS. 264, folio 128r. c. 1400. Bodleian Library, Oxford

AWMTcntanteus IOJ pamgc amitim 8 l f c f t f f i f f r \ qmteftfcfeuent nwltlnttigarte tenner MC iflloufic tar tcte paroto monter 'C aflanfenfomft- fi^iincnd) ?za cefi«Tfttftm a attorn* oz ce qut a iwlotr la.rfjofcamanttr

Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

277 Elephant with Keeper. From MS. 16, folio IVr. 1255. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

other medieval writers, notably Oppian's Cynegetica (dedicated to Caracalla, A.D. 211-17), of which an illustrated Byzantine copy of the eleventh century survives at Venice. To illustrate this gulf Frederick's description of the cuckoo may be quoted: The bird commonly called the cuckoo neither builds a nest nor lays its eggs on the ground (nor does she ever feed her young), but deposits her eggs in the nests of other birds, such as blackbirds and others of this type. These foster-parents hatch the cuckoo's eggs and feed the young until they reach maturity. We have verified this fact from actual experience. A nest of the small bird known as praeneus]b was once brought to us for inspection. In the nest were the young of this bird together with a diminutive creature of dreadful, of misshapen aspect that offered no resemblance to any avian species. This featherless mite had an immense mouth and was covered with long, thick hair-like down over its whole head, obscuring its eyes and beak. That we might eventually establish the identity of this strange nestling we fed it carefully along with the other young birds; and, behold, on maturity, we saw that it was a young cuckoo. By this experiment we established the fact that these birds do not build nests of their own but make use of those of other birds in which to lay their eggs.

448

By similar experiments Frederick tested other statements he found in the authorities and exploded many superstitions, including the legend of the barnacle-geese, popularized in England by Giraldus Cambrensis and Alexander Neckam (see pp. 349 and 353) which he attributed to ignorance of their remote nesting places. On his many progresses and campaigns Frederick was surrounded by a Saracen bodyguard and followed by a train of scribes and astrologers,

huntsmen and falconers, and it was he who set the fashion, thereafter followed by great princes, of keeping exotic menageries in which the creatures that then became the symbols of chivalry, seemed, as it were, assembled in the flesh to do homage to the King. In November 1231 he arrived in Ravenna with a train of 'elephants, dromedaries, camels, panthers, gerfalcons, lions, leopards, white falcons and bearded owls', and in 1245, 'the monks of Santo Zeno at Verona, in extending hospitality to the Emperor, had to entertain with him an elephant, five leopards and twenty-four camels.' One is reminded of the endless trails of exotic beasts and huntsmen that follow the three Magi from the East to the crib at Bethlehem in paintings of the following period. Indeed, in Frederick's own time one of his lions was 'drawn from the life' by the French architect, Villard de Honnecourt, whose sketchbook survives; and the first elephant ever to be seen in England, sent to Henry III in 1255 by St. Louis (in imitation of the fashion set by Frederick) was similarly 'drawn from life' by Matthew Paris in his Chronica Majora, alongside the magister bestie, Henricus de Flor' the keeper, from whose size, so Matthew wrote, 'the dimensions of the beast here figured may be imagined' [277].16 Frederick's own draft of his treatise vanished during the rout he suffered before Parma in 1248. What survives is King Manfred's reconstruction of the work made from notes left by his father at some date before his own death in 1266. These probably included some at least of the sketches for the nine hundred and fifteen coloured drawings of birds with which the margins of Manfred's manuscript (Vatican, Palat. Lat. 1071) are embellished. Though most of them relate to hawks and hawking, many other species are also depicted, and whole pages devoted to the various forms of the beaks, heads, shoulders and feet of different kinds of birds; to the manner in which they protect their young; and to their flight-formations in migration [278a] - scientific documents, unquestionably based on first-hand observation, to which there is no parallel before modern times. It was this quality of freshness, not its execution (often still hampered by the thick outlines of the mid-thirteenth century style), that mattered most, when about 1270 Manfred's manuscript passed by inheritance to northern France, there to be translated (c. 1290) by order of Frederick's grand-niece Isabeau de Brienne Eu and her husband Jean, Lord of Dampierre. In this French translation (Bib. Nat. Fr. 12400) all the original illustrations were copied page for page by an artist who signed himself Simon d'orliens enlumineur dor. Although Simon and other accomplished northern gothic illuminators achieved a more sensitive naturalism than Frederick's draughtsmen, they were as yet unprepared for, and failed to understand, his scientific approach, as is evident from many tell-tale details of Simon's seemingly painstaking copies in the French translation: thus, by rearranging the flying storks on f. 26, he has lost the V-formation which the original drawing was designed to illustrate [278b]. Moreover, in approaching animal art once again emotionally, rather than scientifically, these artists re-adapted it to the symbolic outlook of the gothic North, and to those elaborate animal identifications in heraldry, courtly love and hunting rites which characterize the later phases of European chivalry.

Continental animal art of the later Middle Ages

449

«rtmcm \enumr.

278a Geese Flight in V-formation from Frederick II's Treatise on Falconry. Palat. Lat. 1071, folio 1 5r. c. 1260. Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Rome

tino

If

II > 6 musicians 312, 315, 200, 321, 326, 327, 398, 399, 232, 434, 266 pairs (and birds) 45, 46, 194, 257, 285, 307, 315, 323, 331, 389, 221 performing 71, 76, 307 quadricorporate 5264f> relations with man 139, 140, 450, 280, 458, 459, 51352 twin-headed 278 Ant 16, 19, 165, 492, 295 Antelope 21, 59, 498 43 Ape 176, 315, 199, 335, 353, 362, 386, 433-5 passim and Pedlar 437 Aquila 200, 327 Aries 126, 327 Asp 306, 330, 207, 331, 333, 342, 51931 Ass 55, 68, 91, 140, 164, 166, 175, 195, 215, 289, 191, 315, 199, 327, 347, 354, 358, 361, 368, 373, 378, 380, 444, 457 Balaam's 170 dancing 399, 233

Baboon 25, 51, 45, 92 Badger 140, 473, 510K5 Basilisk 331, 346, 271a, 437 Bastet 32, 24 Bat 93, 165, 213, 422, 423 Bear 12, 19, 20, 13, 23, 24, 75, 89, 91, 118, 119, 122, 127, 129, 130, 140, 214, 257, 282, 306, 196, 315, 367, 371-3 passim, 395, 281, 457, 459, 472, 473, 53831 dancing 94, 326, 399, 233 Beasts (general references; see also Animals and Birds) 36-7, 33k, 45-7 passim, 90-1, 85, 108-9, 116, 134 et seq, 211-17 passim, 234, 303, 188-90, 310, 204, 331, 334-5, 263, 432 et seq 'Anglian beast' 112, 133 biting 106, 108, 132, 190, 215, 280, 307, 323, 326 clean 243 fighting 46, 48, 49, 51, 44, 71, 72, 74, 76, 95, 97, 99, 101, 106, 109, 123, 134, 163, 270, 272, 278, 288, 289, 307, 196, 314, 315, 415, 290, 468 gripping or interlaced (or birds) 112, 113, 306, 308, 312-14 passim, 322 of prey 40, 45, 48, 74, 99, 164, 215, 247, 331 ram-horned 225, 134 ribbon-beast 105, 106, 108, 112, 91, 115, 120, 123, 132, 199 unclean 213, 214, 243, 335, 51936

Beast-fables 399 et seq, 435 Beast-grotesques 267, 268, 7 75, 289-92 passim, 295, 326, 424, 433 Beast-hero combat 45, 44, 47, 48, 96, 77b, 101, 105, 106, 116, 123, 130, 137, 299, 453, 454, 459, 470 Beast-magic 118, 124, 125, 460 Beast-man 37, 93, 134-5 passim, 217, 140 Beast-satires [see Satire in general index) 339, 359 et seq, 462 Beast-symbols 86, 87, 216, 219, 220, 130, 375, 376, 379, 429, 432, 449, 452, 456, 459, 461, 471, 487, 489 Beaver 92, 349, 396 Bee 8, 8, 64, 90, 129, 140, 153, 164, 165, 154, 248, 249, 155, 250, 356-8 passim, 378, 380, 479, 492 queen 90 Beetle 165, 363, 479, 519:!6 Behemoth 210, 212

Birds (general references to unspecified) 9, 38, 27a, b, 46a, b, 54, 56, 72, 75, 89, 93, 100, 140, 109, 110, 115, 231, 740-2, 234, 161, 182, 185, 308, 312-15 passim, 202, 208, 330, 359, 213, 365-6, 370, 374-6, 392, 402, 235, 236, 237, 400 et seq, 239-42, 245, 412-13, 246, 420 et seq, 258, 261, AllS passim, 263, 430-4 passim, 270, 441 7 passim, 452, 459, 479, 482, 484, 487-8 302, 304 Angel's call in the Apocalypse 230, 141, 142, 404, 405, 238, 406, 408 apocalyptic 402 et seq association with the Passion 445 catching 56, 264, 432 creation 148, 121, 212, 156a, 157, 253, 243 depicted as the dead 35, 26, 58, 231, 330 fight with serpent 230, 235 heraldic 268, 273, 167, 277, 305 of prey 51, 98, 125, 132, 214, 352, 373, 376, 380, 404, 445 on horseback 118, 5O83G Stymphalian 64, 58, 165, 196 symbols of sinners 409 unclean 213, 404, 409 Bird-initials 83a, 105, 109, 133, 169, 172, 325 Birdman 20, 135 Bison 5, 6, 7, 10, 20, 76, 24 Bison wizard-man 20, 14, 15 Bittern 213, 428 Bjarki (Norse bear) 129 Blackbird 140, 448 Boar or wild boar 98, 101, 86a, b, 108, 120, 94, 96a, 120-5 passim, 128, 130, 164, 177, 179, 215, 216, 796, 262, 315, 331, 334, 358, 367, 370, 373, 416, 429, 470-2 passim, 473, 292a, 484, 5O836, 510^, 538 31 Caledonian 64 cult 119 Dunadd 121, 96a Twrch Trwyth 128, 452 with pricked ears 429 Boar's head 97, 123, 131, 416,470 Bonacon 429 Bov Alam, goat of 7 9 Buck 374 Bull 5, 32, 36, 33a, c, d, f, i, 35, 45, 47, 49, 42, 43, 51, 55, 57, 61, 92, 95, 95, 96, 108, 112, 120, 121, 212, 215, 216, 218, 219, 247, 250, 276, 282, 283, 289, 209, 212, 369,

578

370, 303, 538 31 Burghead 103 Farnese 68, 67 human-headed 47 Indian 479 Bull-calf bearer 64, 60 Bull-light 95 Bull-man 36, 33f, 45, 41, 93 Bull of Bashan 331 Bull of Heaven 37 Bullfinch 422 Bunting, yellow 422 Butterfly 54, 71, 165, 253, 419, 254, 420, 293, 295, 479, 482 hunt 254, 419

Caladrius 5281 Calf 32, AA, 210, 216, 217, 233, 366, 378 Camel 168, 193, 195, 215, 251, 158, 255, 270, 763, 328, 449, 480, 484, 51936 Capricomus 127, 372 Cat 32, 24, 46b, 54, 62, 64, 67, 92, 99, 89, 112, 292, 358, 369, 370, 373, 394, 425, 435, 273a, 473, 50723 Belling of the 369-70, 400, 437 Caterpillar 293, A79 Cattle 9, 13, 30, 32, 40, 41, 44, 45, 55, 56, 93, 95, 117, 154, 164, 174, 195 Centaur 64, 67, 68, 133, 170, 172, 200, 273, 306, 315, 322, 335, 336, 433, 456, 50972 Chafer 140 Chaffinch 422 Chameleon 352, 519:!fi Chaunticleer 376-9 passim, 399 Cheetah 413, 296a, 480, 484 Chimaera 164, 172, 241, 757, 244 Chough 375 Cicada 84, 479 Cobra 32 Cocatrice 51931 Cock 91, 136, 770, 180, 182, 139, 315, 354, 362, 367, 368, 373, 375, 378, 422, 423, 262, 429, 52928, 53276 black 300, 539 61 emblem of Church doctors 353 Colfox 376 Colt 372 Coney 176, 369, 519;!1 Coot 349 Cormorant 109, 213, 349, 375, 50723 Cow 32, 37, 51, 55, 56, 62, 128,

579 215, 370, 378 Meh-urit 58 Crab 646, 152, 164 Crane 86, 89, 140, 152, 170, 192, 255, 257, 305, 375, 392, 404, 405, 413, 246 'Creeping things' 82, 725, 199, 214 Crocodile 32, 54, 56, 72, 68, 82, 92, 165, 340, 5281 Crossbill 351, 403, 439, 445 Crow 89, 92, 125, 363, 365, 372, 375, 409, 477, 53964 Crustacean 72, 439, 273a, 479 Cuckoo 141, 213, 375, 376, 422, 448, 53715 emblem of avarice 353 Curlew 429 Cygnus 200

D Dabchick 370 Daun Burnel (the ass) 361-2, 378 Daun Russell (the fox) 376 Deer 22, 25, 18, 50, 98, 99, 119, 121, 128, 140, 164, 257, 372, 225, 394, 453, 470, 472, 510 8s fallow 473 red 473 roe 349, 472, 473 hunt 291, 473 Diver 306 Doe 277, 470, 49618 Dog 64, 59, 61, 71, 91, 125, 128, 215, 216, 247, 331, 344, 373, 378, 403, 434, 456, 292, 483, 484, 487, 301a Dog-ticks 85 Dolphin 105, 106, 165, 247 Dove 80, 82, 92, 93, 153, 158, 179, 194, 204, 205, 231, 253, 283, 284, 310, 364, 374, 426 as Spirit of God 82, 158 Dragon 47, 42, 84, 106, 123, 125, 130, 131, 137, 104, 165, 199, 207, 208, 210, 213, 214, 218, 230, 282, 283, 176, 291, 192, 314, 315, 326, 327, 331, 334, 373, 400, 403, 430, 434, 435, 454, 279, 456 head 192, 195, 199, 313 of the sea 207, 211 Dragonfly 255, 420 Drake 375, 423, 425, 426, 484 Dromedary 449, 480, 299, 487 Duck 56, 58, 72, 68, 82, 85, 106, 172, 199, 257, 268, 271, 164, 323, 352, 375, 376, 378, 404, 405, 413, 472, 487, 302 eider 349 shoveller 422 Dunnock 53715

Eagle 41, 64c, 89, 103, 87, 110, 121, 125, 207, 213-18 passim, 133, 225, 230, 234, 236, 239, 246, 251, 257, 270, 272, 165, 273, 167, 169, 277, 282, 288, 289, 298, 303, 306, 352, 371, 372, 374, 375, 376, 452, 453, 53834 formel 375, 376 lion-headed 36, 44, 268, 278, 303 tercel 375 Eagle of Woe 1 33, 230, 147 Eel 199, 349 Eland 10, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 33, 452

Elephant 5, 4, 32, 39, 153, 164, 172, 125, 199, 215, 270, 277, 282, 293, 373, 214, 396, 397, 439, 277, 449, 466, 290, 468, 480, 5281 and Castle motif 396, 229a, b symbolizing Christ 397, 229b Elk 22, 97 Ewe 41

Falcon 215, 349, 350, 352, 374, 376, 433, 449, 472, 484 hunt 32, 34, 35 Fawn 64, 119, 120, 128, 49618 Ferret 51936 Fieldfare 375 Finch 447, 479 Fishes (general references to unspecified) 54, 49, 52, 72, 69, 80, 75, 88, 121, 165, 176, 199, 156a, 271, 164, 335, 350, 353, 374, 217 Fish-initials 105, 109, 133, 169 Flea 354 Fly 9, 71, 373 Foal 75, 114, 178 Fowl 46a, b, 56, 82, 112, 118, 148, 153, 172, 174, 175, 179, 189, 192, 199, 211, 212, 213, 234, 257, 359, 370, 371, 373, 375-7 passim, 379, 403-5 passim, 408, 409 water 54, 170, 375, 376, 380, 464, 472 Fox 16, 33, 34, 78, 84, 76, 85, 86, 89, 93, 153, 215, 216, 139, 257, 282, 307, 315, 197, 342, 359, 363, 366-8 passim, 373, 378, 379, 383, 387, 220b, 394, 226, 399, 417, 433, 434, 445, 466, 470, 51O85 and Cock 230, 327 and Crow 305 clan 118 Frog 214, 373, 392, 437, 303

Gannet 395, 228, 396 Gazelle 37, 57, 59, 54, 61, 62, 74 Gerfalcon 449, 480 Glede 213 Goat 19, 39, 33b, 34, 75, 89, 92, 120, 136, 176, 179, 116, 191, 193, 212, 234, 283, 307, 315, 198, 335, 347, 368, 220c, 389, 418, 260, 445 Little Goat clan 118 Goldfinch 405, 422, 455, 275, 482, 487, 302 Goose 55, 75, 89, 92, 118, 257, 307, 368, 373, 375, 376, 378, 394, 226, 417, 250, 422, 429, 434, 278a, b, 53276 barnacle or tree 349, 353, 389, 227, 395, 396, 448 Goshawk 352, 374 Grasshopper 55, 92, 273a, 479, 51936

'Great Beast' 113, 92, 115, 137, 210, 402, 403, 404 Grebe 349 Greyhound 68, 66, 109, 148, 372, 454, 279, 456 Griffin 48, 76, 77, 74, 97, 99, 164, 170, 219, 226, 268, 273, 282, 283, 293, 294, 303, 306, 307, 322, 334, 413, 453 Guinea-fowl 257, 482 Gull 413, 246, 423, 426, 447

Index of animals

H

K

Halcyon 152 [see also Kingfisher) Hare 59, 64c, 74, 72, 89, 110, 87, 118, 164, 172, 193, 725, 199, 149, 257, 272, J65, 273, 167, 286, 295, 315, 199, 323, 349, 361, 363, 396, 260, 445, 471, 473, 485, 51936 hunting 416, 247, 482 symbol of Luxuria 471 Hare-and-hound motif 102, 280, 194, 313, 315, 323, 482 Hart 93, 130, 174, 112, 113, 178, 179, 334, 371, 372, 374, 453, 471 Hartebeest 14, 16 Hawk 74, 85, 106, 125, 178, 213, 254, 271, 277, 312, 313, 327, 344, 351-3 passim, 358, 362, 363, 365, 380, 408, 413, 422, 423, 426, 427, 445, 276, 480, 484 and drake group 258, 259, 423, 425, 426 Hedgehog 55, 85, 93, 153, 165, 343, 384, 385, 222, 392, 224, 394, 427, 273b Hedge-sparrow 536 1 ' Heifer 67, 215 Hen 91, 257, 368, 377-9, 51491 Heron 54, 72, 118, 170, 199, 257, 375, 422, 428, 445 Hind 93, 119-21 passim, 128, 174, 349, 374, 453, 280, 456, 458, 470, 300, 487, 5 3964 hunt 126, 470, 484 Hippocamp 102, 133, 5O972 Hippocentaur 282,459 Hippopotamus 39, 54, 48, 58, 72, 68, 92, 165, 286 Hoopoe 54, 83, 92, 405, 487, 302 Horse 1, 19, 20, 24, 25, 61, 63, 64, 59, 67, 62, 63, 65, 91, 97, 100, 80, 82, 101, 102, 106, 124, 125, 133, 102, 153, 164, 165, 168, 178, 193, 212, 214, 215, 218, 225, 230, 236, 241, 247, 254, 268, 296, 183, 307, 315, 335, 344, 347, 350, 361, 363, 369, 370, 371-3 passim, 403, 434, 454, 457, 508 36 bit 77a, 178 cap 82, 101, 102 racing 71, 76 tribes 505''" 'White Horse of Uffington' 102, 121 Horus 32, 34, 51, 44 Hound 54, 57, 109, 125, 126, 130, 178, 196, 239, 254, 271, 323, 358, 370, 374, 377, 464, 468, 473, 484 breeds 5O55!' Hybrid 164, 327 Hydra 165 Hyena 59, 92, 215

Kangaroo 70 Kid 210 Kingfisher 405, 413, 246, 256, 420, 422, 447, 487 Kite 213, 215, 216, 372, 409 Kitten 370

Ibex 6, 6, 38, 39, 33j, 96, 97, 473 Ibis 92, 437 Ichneumon 54, 47 Imdugud 36, 44, 37, 46 Insect 112, 164, 165, 247, 419, 422, 439, 273a, 475, 293, 476, 479 Iylgja (beast-shape) 119

Jack 349 Jackal 32, 25, 58, 52, 272 Jackdaw 257 Jay 373, 375, 413, 422, 487, J02

Labbu (lion of chaos) 36 Ladybird 420 Lamb 33, 41, 80, 81, 84, 132, 133, 158, 210, 212, 215, 216, 284, 331, 334, 456 Lamprey 152, 349 Landrail 422, 425 Lapwing 213, 375 Lark 351, 371, 374, 422, 444, 447 Brobdingnagian 420 Leech 256, 420 Leo 327, 456 Leopard 40, 30, 73, 74, 210, 214, 257, 274, 359, 373, 260, 426, 449, 459, 53834 Leviathan 176, 179, 199, 208, 210-12 passim, 331 Lion 32, 33, 36, 38, 40, 41, 33d, h, 36, 45, 47, 38, 40, 43, 51, 59, 53, 61, 74, 76, 77, 73, 74, 82, 86, 89, 93, 95, 97, 78, 101, 102, 112, 123, 125, 134, 135, 703a, b, 153, 170, 172, 180, 777, 182, 208, 211, 214-16 passim, 218, 219, 239, 250, 760, 257, 270, 273, 276-9 passim, 171, 291, 776, 7 77, 7 78, 294, 295, 298, 299, 784, 302, 786, 787, 305-7 passim, 309-13 passim, 196, 314, 315, 203, 322, 323, 326, 327, 331, 333, 334, 336, 342, 346, 359, 362, 363, 368, 373, 379, 389, 400, 413, 414, 423, 432, 433, 434, 439, 273b, c, 449, 451, 453, 456, 459, 464, J05, 53834 aquamanile 7 78, 295 Brunswick 7 79 column-bearing 293 heraldic 47, 110, 113, 270, 288, 306, 456, 283, 459 hunt 39, 59, 53, 74, 133 multi-bodied 101, 278, 280, 283, 290 portal-guarding 267, 277, 293-5 passim, 303, 333, 453 Lion of Judah 306, 333, 275 Lions'Den (Daniel) 131, 134, 103b, 226, 282, 298, 299, 322 Lion-slayer (Persian) 762 Lizard 71, 414, 419, 433, 437, 438, 272, 51936 Locust 164, 215, 235, 402, 51936

M Magpie 257, 375, 392, 223, 403, 405, 409, 245, 413, 431, 477 Mallard 422 Mammoth 23 Mandrake 274 Mantis 14, 16, 479 Mare 75, 164, 774, 178 Meadow pipit 53715 Merlin 89, 374, 376 Mermaid 275, 315 Merman 176, 199 Minotaur 164 Mole 165, 394, 51936 Mollusc 72, 479 Monkey 164, 275, 306, 315, 798,

Index of animals 580 386, 403, 251, 417, 262, 429, 466, 289, 299, 487 Monsters (see also beasts) 36, 37, 44, 47, 60, 63, 74, 106, 116, 120, 123, 128- 30 passim, 133, 135, 136, 164, 165, 108, 170, 109, 111, 173, 212, 219, 222, 225, 230, 244, 247, 266—8 passim, 275—8 passim, 282, 283, 289-92 passim, 295, 300, 302, 307, 312-16 passim, 200, 201, 321, 325, 327, 333-5 passim, 382, 385, 387, 398, 400, 415, 420, 487, 490 Moorhen 72, 422 Moth 295, 479, 50723 Mouse 13, 71, 89, 112, 153, 164, 213, 358, 369, 370, 373, 431, 432, 435, 269, 5O723, 519 s6 Mule 164, 168, 178, 396, 231 Musket 351

N Nightingale 83, 3 59, 365-6, 402, 422, 435

o Octopus 55, 62 Ogre 129 Onager 76 Onocentaur 282 Osprey 153, 213 Ossifrage 213 Ostrich 57, 71 Otter 88, 112, 349, 472, 473, 5072r>

Ousel 452 Owl 64a, 89, 101, 152, 179, 213, 214, 257, 292, 191, 312, 363-6, 213, 374, 402-6 passim, 245, 413, 418, 422, 429, 431, 434, 435, 269, 445, 449, 452, 480, 301a, b, 487, 302, 5 39B5 screech 213, 214 Ox 46, 55, 164, 168, 175, 192, 199, 211, 215, 217, 234, 247, 347, 373, 395, 444, 458, 5012fi Oyster 152 emblem of monks 353

Panther 74, 109, 2i6, 384, 219b, 388, 449 Parrot 353, 405, 413, 422 Partridge 13, 72, 89, 153, 172, 257, 352, 372, 422, 482 Peacock 72, 78, 73, 89, 132, 172, 246, 159, 255, 257, 271-3 passim, 277, 280, 283-6 passim, 173, 323, 371, 375, 390, 396, 405, 413, 422, 429, 482

as symbol of the Resurrection 80 Pegasus 241, 151, 153, 245, 268, 292 Pelican 92, 93, 166, 213, 257, 346, 363, 51480 Perch 349 Pertelote 376-8 passim Pheasant 72, 172, 255, 375, 422 Phoenix 93, 110, 165, 166, 346 Pig 118, 128, 140, 170, 193, 200, 213, 215, 343, 373, 378, 384, 409, 266, 434, 452, 519;!(i Pigeon 257 Pike 349 Pisces 327 Plaice 353 Polecat 349 Polypus 176, 251 Popinjay 371, 375 Poultry 5 5, 56 Praeneus 448, 53615 Prunellus modulans 53615 Puppy 435, 268

Q Quail 72, 374

R Rabbit 164, 315, 400, 403, 406, 415, 418, 429, 434, 267, 473 Ram 41, 44, 45, 168, 191, 212, 216, 225, 230, 234, 174, 288, 314 315 in the thicket 136, 230 Rat 369, 370 Raven 33, 89, 100, 125, 130, 153, 158, 194, 213-16 passim, 257, 346, 362, 375, 406, 445, 459, 468 emblem of the clergy 353 Redstart 54 Reindeer 6, 97, 473, 49618 Remora 152, 165 Reptile 151, 165, 243, 327, 341, 354 Reynard 394, 226, 399, 400, 250, All, 422, 435 disguised as bishop 270 Rhinoceros 93, 485, 490 Ringdove 422 Roach 349 Robin 422, 445, 447, 471, 487, 302 Rook 422

Sagittarius see Centaur Salamander 165

Salmon 349, 350, 395, 452, 50723 Satyr 164, 170, 176, 213, 459 Scarab 92, 164 Scorpion 164, 200, 218 Sea-cow 102 Sea-horse 103 Seal 118 Sea-wolf 129 Serpent 36, 38, 89, 93, 95, 101, 106, 92, 115, 119, 123, 125, 130, 150, 165, 166, 170, 174, 179, 189, 199, 207, 208, 210, 211, 214, 225, 138, 247, 250, 257, 272, i65, 283, 302, 306, 313, 314, 330, 335, 362, 214, 453 Serra (saw-fish) 165, 217, 340, 384, 385, 5281 Sheep 74, 92, 168, 180, 116, 195, 199, 215, 216, 150, 250, 331, 347, 368 Shrew 92, 164 Shrike 54 Siren 63, 170, 292, 305, 327 Sleipnir 125 Snail 419, 479, 51936 Snake 11, 13, 87, 125, 131, 166, 200, 283 Songbird 72, 140, 402, 484 Sow 370 with litter 434 Sparrow 74, 92, 179, 330, 375, 422 Sparrow-hawk 351, 364 Sphinx 33h, 63, 283, 294 Spider 9, 262, 429, 479, 492 Spoonbill 271b, 437 Squirrel 215, 374, 396, 403, 413, 434 Stag 3, 9, 24, 37, 46, 73, 89, 97, 79b, c, 98, 100, 103, 87, 110, 117, 94, 120, 96b, 121, 125, 132, 153, 166, 170, 172, 174, 177, 189, 193, 239, 153, 245, 250, 283, 306, 191, 349, 361, 413, 416, 417, 434, 452, 453, 456, 468-70 passim. All, 475, 480, 482, 484 hunt 126, 129, 133, 254, 273, 248, Alb, 432, 468, 471, 298, 50958 Stagman 20 Stallion 91 Starling 421 Stoat 349 Stork 89, 92, 153, 213, 257, 273, 375, 392, 405, 449 nest 445, 276 Sturgeon 349 Swallow 83, 84, 92, 330, 375, 471 Swan 22, 57, 97, 100, 119, 192, 199, 213, 273, 346, 372, 374, 392, 429, 265, 432, 460, 461, 285, All, 487, 299, 538 s4 Dunstable Brooch 460, 284

Terrier, griffin 483 Thrush 366, 375, 413, 246 Tiger or tigress 68, 74, 76, 215, 216, 335, 342, 386, 433, 462 Toad 302, 310 Tortoise 89, 51936 Tree-pipit 53715 Turbot 349 Turtle-dove 342, 375, 376 Twrch Trwyth 128, 452

u Unicorn 93, 94, 133, 164, 170, 180, 117, 244, 282, 331, 384, 219a, 387, 220a, 396, 230, 413, 415, 432, 433, 456, 458, 463, 286, 288, 464-6 passim, 290 and elephant combat 290, 468 hunt 464, 287, 468, 472

Vermin 127, 354, 468, 470 Viper 152, 207, 51931 Vixen 307 Vulture 92, 213, 215, 216, 262, 429

w Wasp 93, 165, 479 Weasel 89, 165, 328, 349, 271a, 437, 51936 Whale 80, 131, 136, 152, 165, 192, 211, 168, 328, 218a, b, c, 386, 387 Whippet 109, 112 Widgeon 246, 413 Wolf 33, 38, 74, 73, 74, 86, 81, 94, 101, 121-2, 125, 129, 130, 131, 133, 140, 164, 210, 215, 216, 282, 316, 331, 358, 359, 363, 366-8 passim, 260, 456, 457, 459, 473, 539f"> and the Crane 86, 315, 327, 399 ofGubbio 456 Woodcock 404, 405, 422 Woodpecker 405, 413, 246, 422, 447, 479 Woodpigeon 413, 447 Worm 165, 247, 370, 380, 479 Wren 89, 366, 405, 422, 445, 472 as royal bird 471, 472 hunting of 471

z Zu 36