Runderen before 1650

This engraving of oxen or cattle is by Antonio Tempesta, an Italian artist working in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At this time, the rise of scientific observation was changing how artists depicted the natural world, and prints like this one contributed to a growing visual archive of animals and plants. How reliable is this archive, though? This image is a reminder that these kinds of images were not neutral or objective. The strange musculature and proportions of this animal, for example, are the products of artistic license as much as careful observation. As historians, we have to remember that all images, whether they are paintings, prints, or photographs, are made by someone, for someone, in a specific time and place. To understand them better, we can look at sources like natural histories, popular bestiaries, and emblem books, to discover the cultural meanings that animals held at the time.