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Italian Church Dinosaur

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evilsprout

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Anyone got any ideas on this?

This medieval painting was in San Marco church in Milan, Italy and shows Knight Visconti killing the dragon that terrorized Milan people in the middle age. It is interesting because differs from all others medieval versions of the dragon. The dinosaur-like shape of the body, the grey skin and the absence of wings, crest, spikes, makes it look zoologically correct. Unfortunately the head is no more visible because the wall painting was damaged during the II WW. Worst, the painting in kept in the church museum that is closed due to lack of funds. If I ever manege to sneak in I will take better pictures. I tried to enhance this old picture found on a book about my hometown.

http://www.cryptozoology.com/gallery/di ... hp?id=2569

A glyptodont? And has anyone got any pics from the church before WWII?
 
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Baby brontosaurus going by the size of the knight . It kind of reminded me of those underwater photos which allege to show the Loch Ness Monsters fins.
 
Evilsprout

I can see where you are coming from on the glyptodont, however this may just be a question of perception. My initial thoughts were "A 6 legged dinosaur?" but then I realised you may be interpreting the image slightly differently

To my eye it looks more Boschian than anything else, like something from The Garden of Earthly Delights

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/ ... 146133.jpg

I have outlined in white to show you what I mean
 
Swan said:
Evilsprout

I can see where you are coming from on the glyptodont, however this may just be a question of perception. My initial thoughts were "A 6 legged dinosaur?" but then I realised you may be interpreting the image slightly differently

To my eye it looks more Boschian than anything else, like something from The Garden of Earthly Delights

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/ ... 146133.jpg

I have outlined in white to show you what I mean
Click to expand...

Swan!! You made me realize that the feet are actually facing to the right which means the left portion of this is a tail! Probably I was the last to catch on, or the first?
 
This sounds a lot like the controversy over Babylon's Ishtar gate - basically it has a multitude of different animals on it that are all very accurately drawn. There is only one anomaly - the presence of a huge lizard that can only be described as a brontasaur type dinosaur. Now why would an artist go to the trouble of creating a gate that categorised all of the local wildlife only to undermine his work with the inclusion of a fantasy creature? When this is combined with the biblical records of the babylonian behemoth it gets quite intriguing. The behemoth has always been supposed to be a elephant or rhino, i wonder, however, if the babylonians had managed to find, and keep a living dinosaur?
 
my own theory about dragon-slaying is that it's a metaphor for overcoming disease.

I have a memory as porous as a sieve, but IIRC, there's a contemporary account following the battle of cadbury castle (somerset) which went along the lines of a dragon forming itself from the bodies of the slain and then killing the local villagers, only to be killed itself by a local knight.

forgive me for not coming up with any references... I'm at work, so I'm posting quickly!
 
Mesopotamian cylinder seal

The Mesopotamian cylinder seal is truly unbelievable. Has anything been written on it by :credible; scientist?


:shock:
 
Re: Mesopotamian cylinder seal

reddeath said:
The Mesopotamian cylinder seal is truly unbelievable. Has anything been written on it by a credible scientist?
Click to expand...

I checked Moortgat's Art of Ancient Mesopotamia, the book cited for the "dinosaur" seal, suspecting no such image was going to be there at all. And lo and behold, the cited plate 292 is something completely different: a wall from the throne room of Nebuchadnezzar II. However, the seal is pictured, on the facing page: as plate A1. Moortgat calls the animal a "snake-dragon". Pages 9-10:

Wild and domesticated animals also occupy an important place as motifs, as symbols of the powers promoting or threatening man's life. Sometimes, too, they are combined into composite creatures, such as, for example, the lion-headed eagle or the snake-dragon [Pl. A1]
Click to expand...

Page 10:

Even in those cases where the stone cutter has composed artificial heraldic groups with his animal figures with symbolic significance, the single animal-like figures remain noticably true to nature. The stone-cutter is visibly striving for shapes which are rounded, solid, and close to life; even indeed when he is depicting fabulous beings, the elements of which they are combined have been carefully observed.
Click to expand...

Moortgat has this to say about the snake-dragon on the famous Ishtar gate (pages 161-162):

But on the walls of the Ishtar gate we meet two fresh symbols of life or death, the bull and the mushhush. The bull, as the symbol of life and the friend of man, had its origins in the oldest pictorial language of Mesopotamia. In the same way the mushhush -- i.e., the snake-dragon, the attributive animal of the gods of the Underworld, Ninazu, Ningizzida, Marduk, and Nabu -- can also be traced back to the proto-historical period, if its meaning has an intellectual connection with the dragons with the twisting necks seen in the glyptic of the Uruk IV period."
Click to expand...

The seal photo as reproduced in the book is a little better than I've seen on the web. The art work is exquisite, the muscling on the animals quite realistic looking, and this is from Uruk VI-IV, about five thousand years old (assuming Uruk IV, 5200-5300 years). You can tell the animals have cloven feet, but not really what their heads look like.
 
I wonder if there was a tradition in early cultures of using a fantastic or unknown beast to represent the unknown? The only example that comes to mind right now is from the Egyptian pantheon, all the representations of the gods had the heads of actual animals, save for Seth, whose head is not of any known creature.

Are there more parellels with this?
 
In the same way the mushhush -- i.e., the snake-dragon, the attributive animal of the gods of the Underworld, Ninazu, Ningizzida, Marduk, and Nabu -- can also be traced back to the proto-historical period, if its meaning has an intellectual connection with the dragons with the twisting necks seen in the glyptic of the Uruk IV period
Click to expand...

Hmmm... but *if* the prevaling orthodoxy was not that all dinosaurs died out 65m years ago, we would assume that the seal simply showed an extremely lifelike representation of a living brontosaur. Where the artwork shows "real" animals, it is assumed the scupltor was working from life.

I agree it seems hugely unlikely that such large dinosaurs could have survived into fairly recent history, but I do think artwork such as this does at least give us pause for thought.

It's a fascinating subject and it's a shame that the topic has been hijacked by creationists determined to prove that the earth is only a few thousand years old and jumping on any evidence which casts doubt on the fossil record...
 
It is known that in Australia a huge monitor lizard measuring around 20 foot long (much bigger than the Komodo Dragon) called Megalania prisca lived until around 19000 years ago. Well within man's existance and sufficiently big enough to be discribed as a dinosaur or dragon. There are still apparent 'sightings' of this creature reported in modern times.
Australian salt water crocodiles can also reach similar sizes as can the nile crocodile in Africa.
Who's to say that a similarly large reptile didn't exist elsewhere during medievil times?
It's interesting that the ancient Greek myth of the gryffin (lion's body, eagle's head) is now thought to have come about due to the ancient Greeks discovery of protoceratops fossil remains, known to be found in Greece. For me, the best explanation of dragons would be something similar to this, people discovering hugh dinosaur remains and thinking they've found dragons.
 
Oddly enough, my first thought was of Bosch. The artist may have decided that a certain sort of shape was needed for that spot, and the painting is allegorical instead of representational. Religious paintings, and a painting in a church almost has to be religious, are poor place to look for images of real world beasts.

On the other hand, items like the Ishtar Gate Beast do give one pause for thought.

As for protoceratops remains inspiring the gryphon, it's certainly possible. There is the Greek vase with an image of a hero fighting a monster that looks like a Samotherium skull. Hard to say anything definite, but the evidence is suggestive.
 
Quake42 said:
In the same way the mushhush -- i.e., the snake-dragon, the attributive animal of the gods of the Underworld, Ninazu, Ningizzida, Marduk, and Nabu -- can also be traced back to the proto-historical period, if its meaning has an intellectual connection with the dragons with the twisting necks seen in the glyptic of the Uruk IV period
Click to expand...

Hmmm... but *if* the prevaling orthodoxy was not that all dinosaurs died out 65m years ago, we would assume that the seal simply showed an extremely lifelike representation of a living brontosaur. Where the artwork shows "real" animals, it is assumed the scupltor was working from life.
Click to expand...
Except it doesn't look remotely like any dinosaur that has ever lived. You can't call it an extremely lifelike representation when the only thing it has in common is that it's got four legs.
 
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