Product Code Database
Animal style art is an approach to decoration found from Ordos culture to Northern Europe in the early Iron Age, and the barbarian art of the Migration Period, characterized by its emphasis on animal motifs. The zoomorphic style of decoration was used to decorate small objects by warrior-herdsmen, whose economy was based on breeding and herding animals, supplemented by trade and plunder.Emma Bunker, Animal Style Art from East to West, Asia Society. p. 13 Animal art is a more general term for all art depicting animals.
Steppe jewellery features various animals, including stags, cats, birds, horses, bears, wolves and mythical beasts. The gold figures of stags in a crouching position with legs tucked beneath the body, head upright and muscles bunched tight to give the impression of speed, are particularly impressive. The "looped" antlers of most figures are a distinctive feature, not found in Chinese images of deer. The species represented has seemed to many scholars to be the reindeer, which was not found in the regions inhabited by the at this period. The largest of these were the central ornaments for shields, while others were smaller plaques probably attached to clothing. The stag appears to have had a special significance for the steppe peoples, perhaps as a clan totem. The most notable of these figures include examples from:
Another characteristic form is the openwork plaque including a stylized tree over the scene at one side, of which two examples are illustrated here. Later large Greek-made pieces (Greek artists interacted with Scythians via Greek colonies on the northern Black Sea coast
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often include a zone showing Scythian men apparently going about their daily business, in scenes more typical of Greek art than of nomad-made pieces.
Although gold was widely used by the ruling élite of the various Scythian tribes, the predominant material for the various animal forms was bronze. The bulk of these items were used to decorate horse-harness, leather belts and personal clothing. In some cases these bronze animal-figures when sewn onto stiff leather jerkins and belts, helped to act as armour.
The use of the animal form went further than just ornament, these seemingly imbuing the owner of the item with similar prowess and powers of the animal which was depicted. Thus the use of these forms extended onto the accoutrements of warfare, be they swords, daggers, scabbards, or axes.
A distinct Permian style of bronze or copper alloy objects from around the 5th–10th centuries AD are found near the Ural Mountains and the Volga and Kama River rivers in present-day Russia.Ivanova, Vera, " Perm Animal Style", Russia.ic.com (23 June 2006), retrieved 23 March 2018
Style I. First appearing in northwest Europe, first expressed with the introduction of the
"Decoding Anglo-Saxon art", Rosie Weetch and Illustrator Craig Williams, British Museum blog, 28 May 2014
Style II. After about 560–570 Style I, declining, began to be supplanted. The animals of Style II are whole beasts, their bodies elongated into "ribbons" which intertwined into symmetrical shapes with no pretense of naturalism—rarely with legs—tending to be described as serpents, though heads often have characteristics of other animals. The animals become subsumed into ornamental patterns, typically interlace. Examples of Style II can be found on the gold purse lid (picture) from Sutton Hoo (c. 625). Eventually about 700 localised styles develop, and it is no longer very useful to talk of a general Germanic style. Rituals of power: from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, By Frans Theuws, Janet L. Nelson, p. 45
Salin Style III is found mainly in Scandinavia, and may also be called Viking art. Interlace, where it occurs, becomes less regular and more complex, and if not three-dimensional animals are usually seen in profile but twisted, exaggerated, surreal, with fragmented body parts filling every available space, creating an intense detailed energetic feel. Animals' bodies become hard for the unpractised viewer to read, and there is a very common motif of the "gripping beast" where an animal's mouth grips onto another element of the composition to connect two parts. Animal style was one component, along with Celtic art and late classical elements, in the formation of style of Insular art and Anglo-Saxon art in the British Isles, and through these routes and others on the Continent, left a considerable legacy in later Medieval art.
Other names are sometimes used: in Anglo-Saxon art Kendrick preferred "Helmet" and "Ribbon" for Styles I and II. Hills
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