{"id":756941,"date":"2019-05-02T08:58:05","date_gmt":"2019-05-02T12:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=756941"},"modified":"2019-05-02T08:58:05","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T12:58:05","slug":"leonardo-da-vinci-saw-in-animals-the-image-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=756941","title":{"rendered":"Leonardo da Vinci saw in animals the \u2018image of the world\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Leonardo da Vinci chipped away at the walls between 'us' and 'them' by placing all life on a level field, all things as micro-reflections of a macro-whole. <\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

ARIELLE SEIBER:<\/strong> ‘Unlike many thinkers of his time who anthropomorphized the Earth, Leonardo da Vinci terra-morphized man. But it was not just man that Leonardo saw as a Platonic microcosmic-world-in-miniature. Animals, he wrote, are \u201cthe image of the world.\u201d They reflect the Earth, just as we do… Leonardo chipped away at the walls between \u201cus\u201d and \u201cthem\u201d by placing all life on a level field, all things as micro-reflections of a macro-whole. And as he envisioned in his terrifying visual and verbal depictions of catastrophic deluges and global disasters, we\u2019re all in this together…<\/em><\/p>\n

Leonardo never challenged the Christian belief that human beings were made in the image of God, nor the classical notion that man\u2019s proportions and symmetries (albeit a white, middle-aged, able-bodied, European man) were beautiful and worthy of imitation in architecture and art. But he also never claimed other living beings were less beautiful, soulless, or lacked intelligence.<\/em><\/p>\n

When comparing animals and humans \u2013 which he did often \u2013 animals often came out looking better. In one of his notes, Leonardo wrote, \u201cMan has much power of discourse, which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.\u201d He often pointed out how much more powerful animals\u2019 senses were, how much faster, stronger, more efficient and capable they were of performing remarkable feats, such as flight.<\/em><\/p>\n

And animals were not nearly as \u201cbestial\u201d to one another as humans could be. \u201cKing of the animals \u2013 as thou hast described him \u2013 I should rather say king of the beasts,\u201d he wrote. Leonardo lamented how human stomachs have become \u201ca sepulcher for all animals\u201d and how \u201cour life is made by the death of others”… This passage, along with other writing about humans as killing machines and their esophagi as animal cemeteries, as well as a few comments by his contemporaries, have led many to believe that Leonardo was a vegetarian…<\/em><\/p>\n

Whether he ate a totally meat-free diet or not is unclear, but his love for animals is unquestionable. He lived with animals on a farm as a child and they were ever-present in his studio \u2013 likely cats and dogs, insects, birds and reptiles (some alive, some deceased). Leonardo studied them, depicted them, wrote about them and built machines \u2013 even war machines \u2013 inspired by them…<\/em><\/p>\n

In his \u201cProphecy\u201d riddles \u2014 which read like predictions of a horrendous apocalyptic future \u2014 one encounters legions of cruelty and pain. \u201cI see children of thine given up to slavery to others \u2026 paid with the severest suffering, and spend[ing] their whole life benefiting those who ill treat them.\u201d As a riddle, this is not what it seems. He\u2019s writing not of humans, but rather, of donkeys, and how humans repay their services with unkindness and even violence. That said, in an empathic move, Leonardo was also linking humans to donkeys, and pointing to the ever-present fact that humans subject other humans to terrible fates. In another riddle he noted the twistedness of horned animals being slaughtered by horn-handled knives, and the ostensible cannibalism of masters of estates \u201ceating their own laborers\u201d \u2013 oxen…<\/em><\/p>\n

Animals proliferate in Leonardo\u2019s visual art. In his sketches we see horses run, trot, rear up on back legs, fall. Birds, bats and insects extend their wings. Cats stretch, wrestle and lounge. Lions roar. Bears, dogs, crabs, rhinoceroses quietly stand or walk. Beetles and ants bend their appendages… Leonardo\u2019s depictions of animals emerge not only as forces that teach us about ourselves and challenge our sense of human primacy, but as powerful, creative forces, on their own terms.<\/em> SOURCE…<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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