Tea at Trianon: Animals in Medieval Art

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Animals in Medieval Art

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Animals also served as vehicles for religious allegory and moral instruction. The Bestiary developed in medieval Europe in the twelfth century. Based on the Greek Physiologus of around the second century, often with important additions from Christian scholars like Saint Ambrose, Isidore of Seville, and Rabanus Maurus, the Bestiary is a collection of descriptions and interpretations of animals, intended as both a natural history and a series of moral and religious lessons. It was widely read in the Middle Ages and served as a source for artistic invention (22.58.1). In addition to providing intriguing interpretations of animals, bestiaries offered tales about the existence of bizarre and loathsome creatures, many of which appeared in medieval art. Legends associated with these imaginary creatures proved particularly enduring. The basilisk, for example, described in Pliny the Elder's Natural History of ca. 79, is mentioned in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales of the late fourteenth century. Equated with the devil, the basilisk reputedly could kill by its very smell, by a glance, or even by the sound of its hissing. The manticore, from Persian legend, with the face of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, possessed a seductive voice likened to the sound of a fine flute. It represented the siren song of temptation that surrounded the Christian soul on its perilous journey through an earthly existence. The centaur of Greek mythology, with the body of a horse and the upper torso of a man, was deemed particularly lustful but sensitive enough to cry in sorrow (10.37.2). (Read more.)