Representation of animals in Western medieval art

They were popular in churches, on stained glass windows, bas-reliefs, or paving stones, the only learning media for the illiterate who made up the majority of medieval society.

[5] The very existence of imaginary animals, particularly those that appear in the Bible such as dragons and unicorns, was not called into question until much later: Edward Topsell still includes them in his History of Four-Footed Beasts (1607).

[5] The list of animals known in the Middle Ages includes a number of hybrid beings such as mermaids, centaurs,[8] and the Bonnacon, a bull-headed horse with ram's horns.

She retains her former appearance as a mermaid-bird with wings and talons, an image that Isidore of Seville justifies by saying that "love flies and claws".

What's the point, in these places, of these foul apes, these ferocious lions, these chimerical centaurs, these half-human monsters, these variegated tigers, these soldiers who fight, and these hunters who give horn".

[note 1] The Statutes of Cîteaux (1150–1152) proclaim: "We forbid the making of sculptures or paintings in our churches or other places of the monastery because while one looks, one often neglects the usefulness of a good meditation and the discipline of religious gravity".

[13] An early Renaissance painter, Hieronymus Bosch used animals and fantasy creatures in some of his works, particularly in The Garden of Delights.

[5] In the Middle Ages, the lion's title as king of the beasts came from both the Bible and Greco-Roman heritage, as evidenced by scriptures, fables, encyclopedias, and bestiaries.

It is a scene often depicted in the Middle Ages, for example on church tympanums in bas-relief, carved on capitals, in illuminated manuscripts, or on the enameled altarpiece by Nicolas de Verdun created for Klosterneuburg Abbey.

The version with the lion appears, for example, on the Begon lantern in the treasury of the Abbey of Conques and is one of the fourteen full-page illustrations in the Psaultier de Paris, a 9th-century Byzantine manuscript.

[5] Illuminated manuscripts depict the lion according to the three fundamental characteristics given in the Physiologos: he stands at the top of the mountains, his eyes are open even when he sleeps,[note 4][18] and he brings his dead-born cubs back to life after they have spent three days in limbo.

[5] This last characteristic associates him with resurrection: he therefore is also interpreted as having a role in protecting men in death and is said to be found at the feet of those who lie dead.

[20] At the same time, according to Michel Pastoureau, many medieval theologians drew inspiration from Saint Augustine and Pliny the Elder to paint a portrait of the bear more related to the figure of the Devil.

The bear's hairy appearance and brown color became a sign of diabolical bestiality, and the animal was attributed capital sins.

[19] The first unicorns in medieval bestiaries rarely resembled a white horse, but rather a goat, a sheep, a doe, a dog, a bear, or a snake.

[22] Often confused with the rhinoceros, descriptions of the two began to merge as early as Pliny the Elder, who described the unicorn as existing in two varieties: one, very discreet, resembling an antelope or a goat with a single horn on the forehead, the other a huge, uncapturable animal with a very tough skin.

[22] In the late 12th and early 13th centuries, the unicorn became a popular theme in bestiaries and tapestries in the Christian West, and to a lesser extent in sculptures.

This series, probably executed for a French patron (perhaps to mark a large wedding) by the Brussels[24] or Liège[25] workshops, subsequently came into the possession of the La Rochefoucauld family, before being purchased by John D. Rockefeller, who donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains today.

The Lady and the Unicorn is a series of six tapestries dating from the late 15th century and exhibited at the Musée de Cluny in Paris.

Five of these representations illustrate a sense,[note 5] and the sixth tapestry, on which the phrase "Mon seul désir" (My only desire) can be read on a tent, is more debated by specialists.

[26] There are hundreds, if not thousands, of miniatures of unicorns with the same staging inspired by the Physiologos: the beast is seduced by a treacherous virgin and a hunter pierces its flank with a spear.

[21] This idea that the unicorn can only live apart from men, in a wild state and in a remote forest from which it cannot be torn, in which case it would die of sadness, was taken up by other authors much later, among which Carl Gustav Jung.

It was the attribute of knights and was the subject of a specific vocabulary: palfrey, destrier, or rouncey designate different types of horse for different uses.

In the Middle Ages, chanson de geste heroes rode palfreys or fairy horses to serve courtly love.