While medieval artists had no problem painting religious scenes, portraits of royalty and naked ladies, cats offered an altogether different challenge. It looks like the medieval painters never laid eyes on a real cat.
While medieval artists had no problem painting religious scenes, portraits of royalty and naked ladies, cats offered an altogether different challenge. It looks like the medieval painters never laid eyes on a real cat.
Those were cats?
Many of these pictures were drawn by per Renaissance small children, while others were accurate reproductions of living cats. Ugly lot, what?
Cats are highly evolved. They just looked that ugly in Medieval Times
I think cats were thought of as evil and drawn grotesquely in some cases, or too small to draw accurately, but some of these are pretty laughable. I like the judgmental dog though.
Still better than anything I can draw
Most of these are marginalia, done by scribes as a bit of whimsey during their work. Medieval minds tended to be not so dully literal as ours, bombarded as we are with unimaginative unwanted corporate imagery 24/7. I think their versions portray the essence of ‘cat’ much better than an anatomically correct picture. These examples are interesting and amusing, thank you.