This is a depiction of a sixeenth century wolf hunt from a book that was originally published in Fraknfurt-am-Main in 1582.
It’s quite a scene.
Do not ask me what is eating that sheep in the lower left corner.
I have no idea.
It could be a wolf. It could be a wolf-dog (“demiwolves” as Shakespeare called them.)
But it could be a demon!
It could be a demon wolf that the heroic hunter is about to dispatch.
The animal pursued by dogs looks like an actual wolf.
So one wonders why the animal on the right looks so weird.
my WORD, what a chaotic, crowded, manic scene!
i would not want to be there – having used a scythe
[hand-held and long, steam-bent oak]
i wouldn’t trust that mob not to accidentally hack each other.
they are more of a hazard than the wolf, IMO –
and remember, no antibiotics; a minor injury that infected could kill a healthy adult.
i can just see one of those running figures tripping, and a heap of fallen people with blades flying from stunned hands.
yeeps…
– terry
That is obviously a girl wolf, which is why she has a curly tail and funny ears.
i thought the tail on the ‘demon’ was afire?
Fire goes up.
the medieval draftsmen were not realists… they actually didnt have the skills yet to draw very accurate animals. And for the most part they were drawing from dead models.
so don’t try so hard trying to decide what real animals these scenes depict.
Why is it that wolf in the center is very accurate, but the one on the right looks like a demon?
guess we have different notions of “accurate”…
BTW, this isn’t Medieval. This is early modern Europe.
Its print history may not be medieval but it is still done in the medieval style, which tended to exaggerate for effect (and YOU try to get accuracy in a woodcut!) Also, to me this looks like a reproduction of some older work.
To my eye (perhaps more accustomed to the style) there’s nothing “odd” about the wolf eating the sheep; it’s just got its head canted at a gnawing angle so its ears appear to flop. The wolf in the middle has a bent tail too, just not as obviously.
Artists in general didn’t really nail perspective- one, two, three point- until the Renaissance approx. ’round this same time. Enter vanishing points and perspective drawing. Of course there are exceptions, but foreshortening was an issue for many. So I think the issue is that the artist struggled with the wolf head that was meant to be facing the viewer.
The perspective is totally effed up.
Well, OBVIOUSLY people, the demon dog tearing apart the poor little sheeps is an Amurikan Pit Bull Terrier!!! The artiste did not depict it very well because he’d yet to actually see one or had any real experience with one–he was just drawing on hearsay…….