The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

with the animal kingdom. 5 Regarding the art of the Renaissance, for example, the animal
paintings of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) have been considered testimony to this artist’s
close observation and rare accuracy of animals (e.g., Young Hare, 1502), and thus, to his
designation as animalier, that is, an artist skilled in portraying animals. 6 In addition,
Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) skillful drawings of animals (e.g., Studies of a Bear
Walking, 1519) have given rise to the view of the latter as a means through which
naturalism was studied, pursued, and measured at the time. 7 In a similar vein, both
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century animal art has been singled out for its careful
observation of its subjects and also their employment as elements of representational
fidelity. It has been noticed, for example, that Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s (1686-1755)
eighteenth-century paintings of animals present them as exotic specimens, isolated from
their natural environment, but still “beautifully observed” (e.g., Antelope, 1739), and also
as detached items of food that exhibit a “staggering visual realism” (e.g., Hare and Leg of
Lamb, 1742). 8 Similarly, nineteenth-century animal paintings, such as that of a dog in
5 See E. Morrison, The Medieval Imagination. Beasts. Factual and Fantastic (Los Angeles and London,
2007); also F. Mezzalira et al., Beasts and Bestiaries. The Representations of Animals from Prehistory to
the Renaissance (Turin and London, 2001); N. C. Flores, Animals in the Middle Ages (New York, 2000).
6 For Albrecht Dürer’s attention to animals, see F. Koreny, Albrecht Dürer and the Animal and Plant
Studies of the Renaissance (Boston, 1985); for his designation as animalier, see C. Eisler, Dürer’s Animals
(Washington, D.C., 1991) 16.
7 For the important position of animals including insects in Leonardo da Vinci’s study of naturalism as an
empirically based artistic pursuit and its impact on subsequent artists, such as Giovanni da Udine (1487-
1564), see L. Wolk-Simon, “Naturalism in Lombard Drawing from Leonardo to Cerano,” in A. Bayer, ed.,
Painters of Reality. The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy (exhibition catalogue, Museo
Civico “Ala Ponzone,” Cremona, February 14-May 2, 2004, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, May 27-August 15, 2004; New Haven and London, 2004) 46-47 and 89; also for da Vinci’s attention
to horses, see M. Kemp, “Drawings for Il Cavallo del Duca Francesco di Bronzo,” in D. C. Ahl, ed.,
Leonardo da Vinci’s Sforza Monument Horse: The Art and the Engineering; Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and
London, 1995) 64-78; For a short discussion of animals as a useful guide to the concept of realism in
Renaissance painting, see J. H. Rubin, Impressionist Cats and Dogs: Pets in the Painting of Modern Life
(New Haven and London, 2003) 6.
8 L. Lippincott and A. Blühm, eds., Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals, 1750-1900 (exhibition catalogue,
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; London and New York,
2005)19, and 34 and 38 respectively for depictions of Antelope and Hare and Leg of Lamb; for recent
attention to Oudry’s painted animals, see M. Morton, ed., Oudry’s Painted Menagerie. Portraits of Exotic
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