When people who've never seen an elephant try to draw one, the results can be ... interesting.
German artist Uli Westphal has created a family tree of imaginary elephants, based on old accounts and travellers' tales, as drafted by medieval European artists, then elaborated by subsequent copyists.
The resulting bestiary ranges from the conservative (tapier-like creatures, drawn by artists who presumably wanted to keep the reported trunk down to a plausible-looking size), to fanciful beasts sporting fanned-out ears, ribbed like fish fins, or bat wings.
Interestingly, it's some of the most conservative visions, with a modest trunk, or bodily proportions based on a known animal like a horse, that look the least like a real elephant.
The universe, as someone* once mused, is not only odder than we imagine, but probably odder than we can imagine. Although a few of these illustrators got pretty close to out-odding nature with elephants that wouldn't have been out of place in a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
Via
*Someone who could also have explained exactly why an animal the size of an elephant doesn't have the same proportions as a horse.
German artist Uli Westphal has created a family tree of imaginary elephants, based on old accounts and travellers' tales, as drafted by medieval European artists, then elaborated by subsequent copyists.
The resulting bestiary ranges from the conservative (tapier-like creatures, drawn by artists who presumably wanted to keep the reported trunk down to a plausible-looking size), to fanciful beasts sporting fanned-out ears, ribbed like fish fins, or bat wings.
Interestingly, it's some of the most conservative visions, with a modest trunk, or bodily proportions based on a known animal like a horse, that look the least like a real elephant.
The universe, as someone* once mused, is not only odder than we imagine, but probably odder than we can imagine. Although a few of these illustrators got pretty close to out-odding nature with elephants that wouldn't have been out of place in a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
Via
*Someone who could also have explained exactly why an animal the size of an elephant doesn't have the same proportions as a horse.
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