What is the deal with knights standing on top of animals in Medieval portraits?

Factual Questions
1

Sir Edmund Tudor

Sir Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick

King Henry II

Sir John D’Abernon

Sir Randolph St. Leger

MANY other Medieval portraits here

What do they all have in common? They are all standing on top of animals in their portraits, except for Henry II who is standing on top of a scimitar-wielding dwarf(!) The animals include lions, dogs and ducks. Without exception they are standing directly on top of the small animal, in some cases their feet actually conforming to the shape of the animal in a way which would not in reality be possible. What the hell is this all about?

2

Henry II is standing on a heathen Turk/Saracen/generic eastern crusades baddie, I expect. Some of those are epitaph stones; I suspect that the ones with dogs/lions are meant to have them at their feet and are not standing *on" them-- perspective didn’t work the same way.

3

I have no idea. However, that last link shows our ideals of male shape has changed a bit.

I’ve never thought of knights having child bearing hips…

I’d also like to invoke Rule 34. Perhaps there was an animal crushing fetish among knights?

4

Oh, I give you St. Denis, the church/abbey in France that serves as the burial place for French kings.

Their tombs are the kind that are above ground, with a statue of the dead person lying on top, as if they were on a bed. When you see them all together, you can see how it took the artists some time to work through the issues of sculpting dead guys in bed. (FYI, the bodies are not in the tombs any more, they were vandalized during the Revolution).

So here’s Charles Martel, and you see see that one issue that is clearly, his feet are sticky uppy, but when you have a statue, the sticking up parts are the ones that get knocked off most easily. So, the artist has left a little bridge for his feet to keep everything intact. This is probably also related the the belief that these statues were carved standing up, and then lowered on to the lid. So the feet would have been connected to a base as the artist was working. You can also see this in the robes - they make more sense, gravity-wise, if he were standing. It’s been a long time since I was an art history student, but I remember that when you look at them all as a group, you can see how the various sculptors were obviously trying different ways of making this look more normal. There’s also a theory (I think a little fringe, but I mention it for trivia) that the statues were intentionally made to be standing up, because when the day of judgment comes, the lids will rise up and then duh, you want the statue to look good.

So then you can see that with other kings (and queens, I should add), like Leon V, someone decided that you could protect the feet in a more decorative way, let’s make it a little lion. It’s an opportunity to get a little symbolism in there – lions are kingly, dogs are loyal … I think there’s one princess that has a little fawn, which is sweet.

Your link for Sir John specifies that it came from his burial monument. You see this a lot – there’s a practical reason that the kings have an animal, but then if you are not a king and your monument is not quite so fancy, maybe it is more of a bas-relief picture on top, you still want it to have that “royal” look and they have a dog so you would like a dog as well. Now it’s a fashion that no longer has a practical purpose.

5

It seems pretty clear to me that the animal (or dwarf, as the case may be) represents a vanquished foe. The animal of choice would be something associated with a specific enemy, perhaps an element in his coat of arms or some other heraldic representation. He who wishes to advertise a victory against Venice, for example, might show a heraldic lion (particularly one with wings) trampled underfoot, as St. Mark, the patron saint of that city, is represented by a winged lion. Just my 2¢ worth.

6

Animals are softer to stand on than rock.

I think it might be an artistic device to show dominance.

7

delphica has it, I think: structure necessitates some sort of bridge, and the medieval world had a rich tradition of symbolism, as you’d expect in a largely illiterate society. The cow and eagle are probable meant to represent St. Luke and St. John, respectively; the lion is a Christ symbol in addition to the modern connotations. I’m disappointed that I don’t see a duck: Randolph St. Leger’s looks a bit like a duck in the head, but the body makes it obviously a hound of some sort, probably for faithfulness. Some of them could easily be heraldric animals, too.

ETA: Just checked, and dogs and greyhounds do figure in English heraldry, and to a lesser extent Scottish. I don’t have a source on any other countries.

8

It’s symbolic and tied in with heraldry. It could be a vanquished foe, or it could mean something that supported the knight (like with Newton’s comment about standing on the shoulders of giants).

For instance, one picture seems to show a lamb, a pretty common metaphor for Jesus. The image indicates that he was supported by God.

9

It’s not necessarily anything to do with vanquishing anyone. They’re not standing on them. The effigies are lying down, representations of the dead person (in a recumbent position: see also Crusader tombs with crossed legs and then imagine why on earth someone would stand like that!), with whatever heraldic or symbolic things around them that they or their relatives wanted. The dog (or whatever) makes more sense when you see it as lying at their feet, much as many of our pets do in life. Like the princess with the faun, sometimes it was literally a pet, sometimes it could represent something else. Dogs for instance are symbolic of loyalty, faithfulness and honesty. As such, they’re almost as commonly seen on women’s tombs as men’s.

10

I still really would like to know what is up with Sir Richard Neville’s portrait. This is a guy who was referred to as “The Kingmaker” because he was such a prestigious and powerful man. Yet his portrait shows him standing on top of a COW, and not just a cow but one with its tongue sticking out. There is also an eagle standing on top of the cow. (!) And Neville is clearly supposed to be standing up in this picture, not lying down. Anyone know?

The ideal of the body didn’t change. Those last knights, the ones from the 17th century, are wearing cuirassier armor. During the 1500s, when firearms became more and more important, they tried to adapt battlefield tactics to deal with this new weapon. There were basically two different approaches that were used: one was to do away with armored knights and horses and instead use light, highly mobile troops that could evade the firearms (which were at that point very inaccurate and slow to load.) The other approach was to make suits of armor so thick and heavy that they would stop a bullet. This was called Cuirassier armor and as you can see from that photo of an actual surviving suit of it, it had rounded hips and long, articulated “tassets” (the leg protectors) attached directly to the breastplate (cuirass.) Here are other examples. You can see the dents in the armor where they were shot at with bullets to test their strength. This was truly the last gasp of full suits of armor on the battlefield, and while cuirasses alone continued to be used for several more decades, these heavy, massive suits of Cuirassier armor signified the final evolution of the armored knight.

11

A cow or a bull? It looks like a bull to me, which would make sense; the lolling tongue shows it’s relaxed: it’s a tamed bull. The bull symbolizes brutish strength; the eagle intelligence. This was a man who tamed the strong and led the wise, per your own report…

Note: The bull and eagle are also the symbols of two of the Gospel writers, but it’s because St Mark is the most direct and unsubtle of the writers (so he’s “bullish”) and St John is the most ethereal and subtle (hence the eagle). I’m guessing the symbology in Neville’s case is representing the original meaning of the animals, no relationship with the Gospels.

12

Thanks for that info. Good points. I love symbolism.

13

That picture comes from what’s commonly referred to as the Rous Roll, a history of the Earls of Warwick written by John Rous, who was a chantry priest in their chapel in Warwickshire. As a priest, his source of artistic direction would have been influenced by the art around him - i.e. the brasses and effigies he saw in churches. So though it’s possible he intended it to be seen as a standing portrait, it’s inevitable that he was influenced by the recumbent images by which he was surrounded. Hence the animals at Neville’s feet. He wasn’t standing on them; that was just where the priest thought animals should go.
If you look in the top corners, you will observe that the bull and the eagle were family crests. The bull was the crest and symbol of the Neville family, and the eagle belonged to his wife’s, the Montacute/Montagu family. People are guessing and hypothesising wildly deeply into artistic symbolism. The crests were perhaps sometimes chosen for what they symbolised, but by the time they got onto that picture, they had been family crests for a long time (possibly hundreds of years, though that’s me guessing) and could not have been substituted with anything else. Observe for instance Richard III’s coat of arms. Two big white boars. I wonder what wild hypotheses we can come up with for what they might have meant.

14

On behalf of the Venice P.R. department, I’d like to remind you that St. Mark is the lion, usually winged. It’s St. Luke who is the bovine, often winged. John is the eagle, always winged, and Matthew is a man, also often winged but as far as I’m aware not an angel. You often see all four together, though just recently I saw an artifact from Pompeii that had a bull, eagle, and two other animals grouped in a foursome, which makes me wonder whether ultimately it’s not another Christian borrowing.

15

Ah, I was taught it was Luke (the healer) who was the man. I stand corrected. I did know about San Marcos being the lion, that was a crossed cable.

16

The eagle belonged to his mother’s. This was Richard “the Kingmaker” Neville, whose father was Richard Neville and whose mother was Alice Montagu.

17

It’s not like Mr. Denis was a poster child for accurate portraits. :dubious:

18

Sorry, thanks. I meant mother.