1. (Wednesday 17th April) ANIMAL IMAGINATION

IMAGE: Scythian golden stag, gold. Seventh century AD, State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

We continue with the theme of animals, as we look at the images that arose from the first settled human societies, of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. With settled agricultural and pastoral forms of human life, the long tradition of animal imagery was pushed to the peripheries. We look at the afterlife of animals in the art of the plain and islands, from ancient Scythia to the ‘barbarian’ art of Celtic and pre-Christian Europe, to the art of the Northwest Pacific Coast of America. How did images of animals fare in the new era of civilisation — and what has been the legacy of animal imagery in our own times?