Starting from the last decades of the 13th century something changes abruptly in Western Europe. A new iconography was born, showing for the first time in Western arts, a hallucinating, supernatural, fantastic element: the representation of animated corpses.

This iconography circulated in such a strong and widespread way that it suggests a true epochal change in our ways of perceiving death. A remarkable fact and underestimated so far: these representations of the encounter between the living and the dead also featured, almost systematically, the image of a bird of prey. Why did the artists decide to add this figurative element, like a footnote, to a composition that was, beside this, very sober?

This talk will present some of the questions addressed by the presence of the falcon in the bountiful macabre iconography and investigate its role in the visual definition of a sensitive perception of the beauty of life.

Speakers
Anne-Lise Tropato, Falconry Fellow, NYUAD