This Classic Toast post originally ran on Mar 11, 2014.
From the year 800 AD to 1450 the entirety of Europe's approach to painting was "It's impossible to know what an animal looks like, just draw a guy's head on it." This is their story.
"Oh, but Mallory, aren't you being sort of deliberately obtuse, calling out a bunch of thirteenth-century illuminating monk dudes for drawing goofy-looking deer, knowing as we do that medieval art was only semi-representational and more concerned with iconography than naturalism?" No. I am not. "Okay, but are you willing to concede that maybe there are more kinds of deer than the, like, one American kind you have only ever seen?" I am unwilling. Let us proceed in…
Previously in this series: Two monks invent cartography. MONK #1: oh hey what did St. Mark look li-- MONK #2: tornado with a face on it MONK #1: what happens to your body when you hide behind a curtain what's the best way to draw that, I can't get it quite right MONK #2: it disappears entirely MONK #1: really! MONK #2: just...mmp. Vanishes. you pretty much just turn into a…
