>>5109552
how else would you depict an animal that you have never seen in person?

>>5109552
The world used to be goofier and sillier.

Think of medieval art as storytelling. It's like written communication for the illiterates and not so much about making something look as good as possible.

No reference pics and also not all ancient artists were talented.

>>5109659
>No reference pics
this. most of these drawings were made by monks that never seen the real thing.

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Everyone talks about why they sucked but no one considers if it was never their intention to look lifelike and instead is just old style toons.

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>>5109666
Check em'

they had no reference images

>>5109684
So why do cats in medieval art look so bad despite them being everywhere?

>>5109685
>despite them being everywhere
Historical revisionism at its finest

>>5109685
That's because they weren't.

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Sweden's Royal coat of arms made in the 14th century

>>5109685
They were rather infamously killed en masse during the black plague

>>5109954
4 lions and 13 crowns
isn't that a bit much?

Imagine never ever seeing an elephant and a dude asks you to draw a big ass creature with a long ass nose, two long spikey things, flappy doohickeys, and the melancholic eyes of a fallen angel.

>>5110145
you might not know this but cats are a highly effective plague vector and are fully incapable of routing rodent infestations

they are however effective at transmitting rodent borne diseases to humans

black cats are bad luck because you cant see if they have fleas or cysts or blood on them until its too late

>>5110229
it's absolutely crazy how shit cats are for anything.
they brought dogs into the mills and those fuckers killed every single rat in a few days, meanwhile cats over here in ancient tapestries giving tea to rats.

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Close enough.

>>5110278
This is my favorite
>massive horses with tusks and a trumpet on its face
>also men ride in tiny castles on their backs

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What's even happening?

>>5110364
Alexander the Great in his glass diving bell, from a famous medieval tale (the Alexander Romance, a late antique work that was rewritten dozens of times later)

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>>5110384
Here's another version from the 12th century Roman d'Alexandre

>>5110274
AYO
This goofy ahh spider be eating fly ass!!!!!
YOOOO!!!!!!

>>5109552
1. Many animals were large and fat because farmers were commissioning advertisements. It's the equivalent of food companies faking ads in modern times.

2. Horses float because before the invention of video photography, nobody could figure out exactly how they stepped

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>>5110384
>>5110387
Very cool, I didn't know this tale. Thanks.

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>>5110391
>2. Horses float because before the invention of video photography, nobody could figure out exactly how they stepped
Correct.

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Brutal mogging incoming. Close your eyes monk sisters.

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However...

>>5109552
That's how they used to look 600 years ago

>>5110391
brainless retard moron idiot dipshit loser

>>5110274
I don't get this one. There are spiders everywhere. How come this artists rarely saw a fucking spiders in order to draw it like that?

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>giraffe

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okay, that's a bit better

>>5109566
this

>>5110586
>>5110585
lol

>>5110568
bat

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>>5110585
>>5110586
china's contemporaneous artists shit all over them

>>5110586
>>5110703
I like how both are obviously male.

>>5110578
Draw a spider right now if it's so easy

>>5109666
Satan has spoken

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>>5110719

>>5110731
Silly spidy.

>>5109685
they look fine in turkic and chinese art where they were far more common

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>>5110703
debatable

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I wonder how they would have drawn dinosaurs

>>5111314
dragons

>>5110283
>>5110281
Kind of fascinating. It's kind of similar to how animals can't undersrand their own reflection in the mirror. Like the artists could not compehend the animals faces and just saw human faces instead to even grasp what they were seeing

>>5111314
I love this art. I can imagine the description being something like "a lizard that stands on two legs with bull horns and no arms" and the artist coming up with this

>>5110279
wtf is their problem

>>5110586
>A strange and wonderful Animal. Of it's kind never seen by us. This animall is called Gurnappa and is from the ground up to its head taller than five men.

>>5110234
Yeah you need to be infected by a brain parasite to like them

>>5110234
Cats don't kill off vermin but actively deter when present in an area as vermin like mice instinctively hide when they know a cat is about as there is always a risk of a catching one of them for sport. That's why you have sayings like:
>when the cats away, the mice come out to play

It's actually quite literal in terms of context. But in terms of actual pest control dogs are better in everyway.

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>>5110278
You see a few 'castle on an elephant' things around in England, not sure what it's all about though.

>>5109552
Whales are my favorite
https://www.reddit.com/r/MedievalCats/comments/okvwy6/can_we_talk_about_medieval_whales/

My guess is, illustrator never studied animals larger than dogs or pigs IRL. When tasked to depict whale does some research (check prior art) give it a go.

>Not having any real training beyond being able to write well enough to be trusted around paper
>If actually you bothered to practice any sort of anatomy whatsoever it was probably adult humans and human faces, so you subconsciously keep trying to draw everything else humanlike
>Literally interpreting descriptions like "it looked like a really big dog"
>you're only doodling for fun as a break from copying bibles all day anyway, who cares

>>5110283
>cant thou givest me a nibble of thine food

>>5111637
But then you still have vermin and you also have parasites everywhere, a rabies reservoir, and the single most effective plague vector that isnt a flea or rat itseld that readily transmits plague between flea infested rats and clueless humans (this is why black cats are bad luck)
Just get rid of the rodents ffs. It is not the 1300s. We know they arent spontaneously generated by holy curses as punishment for our sins.

Using cats as working animals is a completely pointless activity and the anger with which many cat people often defend it makes it sound like they are deeply ashamed of owning pets without purpose (due to their incelly, schopenhaueresque pseudo-intellectualism) or actually strongly dislike the realities of cat ownership despite wanting to like cats and need a way to cope

>>5110703
>giraffe :|
>giraffe, japan Ö

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>>5109565

>>5111936
That's pretty good all things considered

>>5111936
I had a coloring book as a child with this drawing in it and i colored it green and purple for some reason

>>5111943
Thanks doctor

>>5111943
Thanks, Doc, almost missed today's

>>5111936
I like how the wikipedia article for this repeats over and over that it's not an accurate representation, but like if you disregard the blatant embellishments it's pretty fucking spot on for what an indian rhino looks like.

>>5112065
>if you disregard the bits that are wrong then it's right
I know what you're trying to say but come on man

>>5111936
>On the first of May in the year 1513 AD [sic], the powerful King of Portugal, Manuel of Lisbon, brought such a living animal from India, called the rhinoceros. This is an accurate representation. It is the colour of a speckled tortoise,[1][d] and is almost entirely covered with thick scales. It is the size of an elephant but has shorter legs and is almost invulnerable. It has a strong pointed horn on the tip of its nose, which it sharpens on stones. It is the mortal enemy of the elephant. The elephant is afraid of the rhinoceros, for, when they meet, the rhinoceros charges with its head between its front legs and rips open the elephant's stomach, against which the elephant is unable to defend itself. The rhinoceros is so well-armed that the elephant cannot harm it. They also say that the rhinoceros is fast, merry and jovial.[26]
Chat is this true

>>5112304
What can an elephant actually do though? If you hug its hind legs it can't reach you with its truck, and its too sluggish to get away while you repeatedly pommel it from behind. If you stand to the side of its hind legs then it won't even be able to hit you with a back kick. If it raises its leg to perform a stomp then all you have to do is back off until it finishes its slam, then move back in to continue punching.

>>5110796
That's Korean.

Its common in Korean art to depict tigers (the aristocracy) as derpy dumbasses while the magpies (the commonfolk) are more dignified

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What was the deal with rabbits riding snails back then?

>>5112547
I have no idea, so I'm just going to make up an answer.

My assumption would be one guy started drawing them just as kind of like a doodle, and then other people found them amusing, so they started adding more of them in books, and it just kind of took off as kind of a meme.

>>5109552
you hear of a lion from a guy who read about it in a language he half understands by an author who himself never actually saw one with his own eyes. that's how.

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>>5111732
>not sure what it's all about though.
War elephants

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I'll drop in this one from a copy of Fior di Battaglia (a martial arts treatise by Fiore de'i Liberi)
this page in the preface conveys four ideal qualities in the martial artist, each with an animal motif representing them
starting from the top and going clockwise:
>Lynx (prudence)
>Lion (audacity)
>Elephant (fortitude)
>Tiger (celerity)
clearly they hadn't got much reference to work from with the latter two (I'd never have guessed that was even a tiger if it didn't explicitly say)

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>>5112577
the section on mounted combat at the end at least gives them an opportunity to redeem themselves with something they're more familiar with

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>>5112578
this one's from a different copy that was seemingly illustrated by a different artist, but I just wanted to include it because I think they were getting pretty tired of drawing horses over and over again by this point

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>>5111580
I'd be more inclined to just put it down to artist sameface syndrome: dude learned to draw exactly one (1) face and puts it on absolutely everything. Many such cases!

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>>5111580
>>5112637
They did work from premade patterns used by their workshops so as to speed and cheapen production when they werent being commissioned by someone with cartoonish sacks of money.

Another thing that I think most people dont realize is that those drawings can be very small, sometimes the size of thumb, and that they arent put front and center, but rather small decorations on the conner of pages. There is a reason why they are called miniatures or marginalia.

>>5112547
I'm taking a shart in the dark answering this but perhaps it's the plain humor of the fastest critter riding the slowest into battle?

>>5112547
They're both bastards that get into your monastery's garden and eat all the crops. So you draw them being in cahoots, because it's funny.

>>5111931
>multiple posts with paragraphs of completely unprovoked seething
>cat owners are the angry ones

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>>5110364
Hmm

>>5109552
A lot goofy medieval artwork was done by people who never saw those animals and they were not professional artists.

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Here is 1 of my medieval cats (I only have 2)