A bit shitte withal, muchlike their cattes.
Tag Archives: depiction
Depictions of the elephant created in the scriptoria of largely elephant-free Medieval Europe – many of which feature in Uli Westphal’s fascinating Elephas Anthropogenus project.
Yikes!
Related: Medieval Elephants and Ugly Renaissance Babies
MORE: Hilariously Ugly Medieval Paintings Of Cats (Eatliver)
Uli Westphal’s Elephas Anthropogenus project – a collection of images depicting how Europeans imagined elephants from the Fall of Rome to the end of the Rennaissance. to wit:
After the fall of the Roman Empire, elephants virtually disappeared from Western Europe. Since there was no real knowledge of how this animal actually looked, illustrators had to rely on oral and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct the elephant, thus reinventing an actual existing creature.
MORE: Elephas Anthropogenus
Many Renaissance artists depicted babies (most often the baby Jesus) as miniaturised old men, possibly because they conceptualised childhood differently to how we do now. Judging by some 15th and 16th century works, it’s almost as if the painter never laid eyes on a baby.
More unsightly old chiselers at the Ugly Renaissance Babies Tumblr. Their motto:
The kids aren’t alright.