The illustration of animals as a source of knowledge
Since ancient times, and until surprisingly recently, what allowed us to know the world beyond our most immediate reality was illustration. This is an example of the responsibility that art has in the representation of scientific reality.
It is possible that the history of animal illustration begins with rock art. The bestiary found in the French caves of Lascaux, for example, is one of the emblematic cases of the representation of the animal world, not only because of its age, about 20,000 years old, but because of the more than 600 figures it contains, including horses, birds, deer, buffalo, ibex, even extinct aurochs.
Scientific animal illustration
Those who give body to scientific animal illustration are not naturalists but archaeologists in the era in which we return to the past and this occurs in the 53rd century with the age of reason, thanks to the discovery of ancient civilizations in all parts of the world. In a general sense, they were accompanied by illustrators who followed the scientific expeditions with their descriptions that were faithful to reality and allowed an exact description of the sites and their organisms because they were the visual support for documents written by the researchers.
Fauna and its anatomy
Actually the anatomical reconstruction of extinct fauna begins with Da Vinci in approximately the year 1500 who, based on corpses, could reconstruct or capture some of his drawings in order to make anatomical studies. Da Vinci is owed the invention of technical and anatomical drawing, consisting of different views because all of them are important for scientific studies.
From scientific description to artistic stroke
The creative process begins with meticulous documentation based mainly on field photographs and videos, but for many animals there is not even photographic material and only scientific descriptions of the typical individual exist. For this reason, the drawings try to synthesize an image that can serve as a reference and that concentrates all the characteristics of a species in a single specimen.
Modern art
Animals have been depicted in a wide variety of forms in art, including painting, sculpture, illustration, performance, audiovisual media, and literature. When these are used in art, a window opens to a world where anything is possible. This represents, without a doubt, the author’s thoughts, since the animal is often a sample of everything that is difficult for him to explain.
Characters based on animals.
Today animals and their representation constantly surround us, icons of popular culture, they have undergone great changes since their incarnation in adorable characters at the hands of famous illustrators such as Beatrix Potter (1866), mother of Peter Rabbit or Jean de Brunhoff ( 1899), creator of Babar the elephant. Later they saw the birth of the new art of cinematography and its most famous genre, animation, which for many years was longed for by a child audience that cultivated the adoration of characters, such as Dumbo the elephant, the first animal character in color, and all Disney’s production reminding us of the close link between our thoughts, the representation and presentation of the animal in Western iconography.
As we can see, animals have been an important source of inspiration for a large number of artists. Not only demonstrating the connection with human beings, but also as a way to express ideas, feelings and other social complaints. To this day, it continues to be a recurring theme that many have not ignored.