What Did the Instruments in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights Sound Like? Oxford Scholars Recreate Them

in Art, Music | February 26th, 2026

Wel­come to The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

You’ll find no angel­ic strings here.

Those are reserved for first-class cit­i­zens whose vir­tu­ous lives earned them pas­sage to the upper­most heights.

Down below, stringed instru­ments pro­duce the most hell­ish sort of cacoph­o­ny, a fit­ting accom­pa­ni­ment for the horn whose bell is befouled with the arm of a tor­tured soul.

How do we know that’s what they sound­ed like?

A group of musi­col­o­gists, crafts­peo­ple and aca­d­e­mics from the Bate Col­lec­tion of Musi­cal Instru­ments at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, took it upon them­selves to actu­al­ly build the instru­ments depict­ed in Hierony­mus Bosch’s action-packed trip­tych—the hell harp, the vio­lat­ed lute, the gross­ly over­sized hur­dy-gur­dy…

…And then they played them.

Let us hope they stopped shy of shov­ing flutes up their bums. (Such a place­ment might pro­duce a sound, but not from the flute’s gold­en throat).

The Bosch exper­i­ment added ten more instru­ments to the museum’s already impres­sive, over 1000-strong col­lec­tion of wood­winds, per­cus­sion, and brass, many from the stu­dios of esteemed mak­ers, some dat­ing all the way back to the Renais­sance.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the new addi­tions don’t sound very good. “Hor­ri­ble” and “painful” are among the adjec­tives the Bate Col­lec­tion man­ag­er Andrew Lamb uses to describe the aur­al fruits of his team’s months-long labors.

Might we assume Bosch would have want­ed it that way?

Bran­don McWilliams, the wag behind Bosch’s wild­ly enthu­si­as­tic, f‑bomb-laced review of thrash met­al band Slayer’s 1986 Reign in Blood album, would sure­ly say yes, as would Alden and Cali Hack­mann, North Amer­i­can hur­dy-gur­dy mak­ers, who note that Bosch’s painter­ly des­e­cra­tions were not lim­it­ed to their per­son­al favorite instru­ment:

Bosch and his con­tem­po­raries viewed music as sin­ful, asso­ci­at­ing it with oth­er sins of the flesh and spir­it. A num­ber of oth­er instru­ments are also depict­ed: a harp, a drum, a shawm, a recorder, and the met­al tri­an­gle being played by the woman (a nun, per­haps) who is appar­ent­ly impris­oned in the key­box of the instru­ment. The hur­dy-gur­dy was also asso­ci­at­ed with beg­gars, who were often blind. The man turn­ing the crank is hold­ing a beg­ging bowl in his oth­er hand. Hang­ing from the bowl is a met­al seal on a rib­bon, called a “gaber­lun­zie.” This was a license to beg in a par­tic­u­lar town on a par­tic­u­lar day, grant­ed by the nobil­i­ty. Sol­diers who were blind­ed or maimed in their lord’s ser­vice might be giv­en a gaber­lun­zie in rec­om­pense.

To the best of our knowl­edge, no gaber­lun­zies were grant­ed, nor any sin­ners eter­nal­ly damned, in the Bate Collection’s caper. Accord­ing to man­ag­er Lamb, expand­ing the bound­aries of music edu­ca­tion was rec­om­pense enough, well worth the tem­po­rary affront to ten­der ears.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Song Writ­ten on a Sinner’s But­tock in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Mean­ing of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Explained

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Hierony­mus Bosch Demon Bird Was Spot­ted Rid­ing the New York City Sub­way the Oth­er Day…

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  

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How to Carve Hieroglyphs Just Like the Ancient Egyptians Did

in Art, History | February 24th, 2026

In ancient Egypt, writ­ing hiero­glyphs was a high­ly spe­cial­ized skill, one com­mand­ed by only a small frac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. The fact that there were more than 1,000 char­ac­ters to mem­o­rize prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with that, but the vari­ety of sur­faces on which hiero­glyphs were writ­ten could­n’t have made it any eas­i­er. Depend­ing on the occa­sion, ancient Egyp­tians used papyrus, wood, met­al, and pot­tery shards as writ­ing sur­faces. The most mon­u­men­tal or reli­gious­ly impor­tant texts, how­ev­er, got carved into stone, thus ensur­ing the words a kind of eter­nal life — a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in the cas­es of tomb walls and sar­copha­gi.

There may be lit­tle call to write hiero­glyphs today, but the tech­niques to do so haven’t been lost. In the new video above from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, sculp­tor and stone carv­er Miri­am John­son demon­strates how to carve into stone the name of Pharaoh Khu­fu, who built the Great Pyra­mid (and indeed, was buried in it).

The first step is to write that name, sur­round­ed by its car­touche, on a sheet of car­bon paper. This isn’t the brush and ink that the ancient Egyp­tians would have used, grant­ed, but for the rest of the project, John­son sticks to the old-fash­ioned ways. With the image trans­ferred, and using noth­ing more than a mal­let and a chis­el, she carves the hiero­glyphs into the stone not just once but twice.

The first time, John­son carves in “sunken relief,” a tech­nique that involves cut­ting the image out of the sur­face of the stone. The sec­ond time, she ren­ders Pharaoh Khu­fu’s name in “raised relief,” which requires cut­ting out every­thing but the image, cre­at­ing the effect of the hiero­glyphs ris­ing out of the stone. With the for­mer “you see more of the shad­ows”; with the lat­ter, “you’ve got more oppor­tu­ni­ty of putting more tex­ture into the char­ac­ters.” Seen in a state of com­ple­tion — by a lay­man, at least — John­son’s carv­ings would­n’t look out of place in a muse­um exhib­it on ancient Egypt. Even if tools man­u­fac­tured in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry pro­duce a few sub­tle dif­fer­ences from the real thing, give these stones a mil­len­ni­um or two to age, and they’ll sure­ly look even more con­vinc­ing.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Read Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs: A British Muse­um Cura­tor Explains

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Roset­ta Stone, and How It Unlocked Our Under­stand­ing of Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

What Ancient Egypt­ian Sound­ed Like & How We Know It

3,200-Year-Old Egypt­ian Tablet Records Excus­es for Why Peo­ple Missed Work: “The Scor­pi­on Bit Him,” “Brew­ing Beer” & More

You Could Soon Be Able to Text with 2,000 Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

Watch a Mas­ter­piece Emerge from a Sol­id Block of Stone

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published

in Art, Books | February 23rd, 2026

Imag­ine you could talk to Hierony­mus Bosch, the authors of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, or of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script—a bizarre 15th cen­tu­ry text writ­ten in an uncrack­able code; that you could solve cen­turies-old mys­ter­ies by ask­ing them, “what were you think­ing?” You might be dis­ap­point­ed to hear them say, as does Lui­gi Ser­afi­ni, author and illus­tra­tor of the Codex Seraphini­anus, “At the end of the day [it’s] sim­i­lar to the Rorschach inkblot test. You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speak­ing to you, but it’s just your imag­i­na­tion.”

If you were a long­time devo­tee of an intense­ly sym­bol­ic, myth­ic text, you might refuse to believe this. It must mean some­thing, fans of the Codex have insist­ed since the book’s appear­ance in 1981.

It shares many sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, save its rel­a­tive­ly recent vin­tage and liv­ing author: both the Seraphini­anus and the Voyn­ich seem to be com­pendi­ums of an oth­er­world­ly nat­ur­al sci­ence and art, and both are writ­ten in a whol­ly invent­ed lan­guage.

Ser­afi­ni tells Wired he thinks Voyn­ich is a fake. “The Holy Roman Emper­or Rudolf II loved ancient man­u­scripts; some­body swin­dled him and spread the rumor that it was orig­i­nal. The idea of made-up lan­guages is not new at all.” As for his own made-up lan­guage in the Codex, he avers, “I always said that there is no mean­ing behind the script; it’s just a game.” But it is not a hoax. Though he hasn’t mind­ed the mon­ey from the book’s cult pop­u­lar­i­ty, he cre­at­ed the book, he says, “try­ing to reach out to my fel­low peo­ple, just like blog­gers do.” It is, he says, “the prod­uct of a gen­er­a­tion that chose to con­nect and cre­ate a net­work, rather than kill each oth­er in wars like their fathers did.”

The Codex, writes Abe Books, who made the short video review above, is “essen­tial­ly an ency­clo­pe­dia about an alien world that clear­ly reflects our own, each chap­ter appears to deal with key facets of this sur­re­al place, includ­ing flo­ra, fau­na, sci­ence, machines, games and archi­tec­ture.” That’s only a guess giv­en the unin­tel­li­gi­ble lan­guage.

The illus­tra­tions seem to draw from Bosch, Leonar­do da Vin­ci, and the medieval trav­el­ogue as much as from the sur­re­al­ism of con­tem­po­rary Euro­pean artists like Fan­tas­tic Plan­et ani­ma­tor René Laloux.

Ser­afi­ni has been delight­ed to see an exten­sive inter­net com­mu­ni­ty coa­lesce around the book, and has had his fun with it. He “now states,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “that a stray white cat that joined him while he cre­at­ed the Codex in Rome in the 1970s was actu­al­ly the real author, tele­path­i­cal­ly guid­ing Ser­afi­ni as he drew and ‘wrote.’” You can now, thanks to a recent, rel­a­tive­ly afford­able edi­tion pub­lished by Riz­zoli, pur­chase your copy of the Codex. Buy now, I’d say. First edi­tions of the book now fetch upwards of $6000, and its pop­u­lar­i­ty shows no sign of slow­ing.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

A Dig­i­tal Archive of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Com­plete Works: Zoom In & Explore His Sur­re­al Art

Explore a Dig­i­tized Edi­tion of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book”

Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Man­u­script The Red Book

The Foot-Lick­ing Demons & Oth­er Strange Things in a 1921 Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script from Iran

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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An Introduction to Outsider Artist Henry Darger and His Bizarre 15,000-Page Illustrated Masterwork

in Art, Books | February 18th, 2026

The expres­sion “Don’t quit your day job” is often used as an insult, imply­ing that the recip­i­en­t’s cre­ative skills aren’t up to attract­ing a career-sup­port­ing audi­ence. But it can also be prac­ti­cal advice in cer­tain cas­es, espe­cial­ly those of artists pos­sessed of a sen­si­bil­i­ty too par­tic­u­lar and strange to bear direct expo­sure to the mar­ket­place. So it was with Hen­ry Darg­er, who delib­er­ate­ly passed his 81 years in near-absolute obscu­ri­ty, work­ing increas­ing­ly menial jan­i­to­r­i­al jobs by day and, when not attend­ing one of his five dai­ly mass­es, obsess­ing over his art the rest of the time. That art took var­i­ous forms, most notably The Sto­ry of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unre­al, of the Glandeco–Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebel­lion, which has been described as the longest work of fic­tion ever writ­ten — and the strangest.

As described in the video above from Fredrik Knud­sen (and in the 2004 fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary In the Realms of the Unre­al), its 15,145 pages relate the adven­tures of a set of immac­u­late­ly vir­tu­ous lit­tle girls against the back­drop of an apoc­a­lyp­tic, ultra-vio­lent reli­gious war. When Darg­er’s land­lords dis­cov­ered the work after his death, they also turned up a vari­ety of draw­ings, paint­ings, and col­lages, many of them at least oblique­ly relat­ed to the sto­ry.

Against back­drops alter­nate­ly idyl­lic and har­row­ing, the Vivian girls often appear naked, some­times bewil­der­ing­ly out­fit­ted with male gen­i­talia. Though clear­ly com­posed with­out for­mal train­ing of any kind, Darg­er’s visu­al com­po­si­tions demon­strate an askew kind of pro­fi­cien­cy, or at least a kind of stag­ger­ing evo­lu­tion over the course of decades. What­ev­er the appeal of his work, there’s nev­er been an artist like him. Nor could there be, giv­en the high­ly spe­cif­ic stretch of his­to­ry occu­pied by his long yet rigid­ly bound­ed life.

Not long after Darg­er’s birth in the Chica­go of 1892, the death of his moth­er fol­lowed by the inca­pac­i­ta­tion of his father plunged him into a child­hood of Dick­en­sian-sound­ing hard­ship, spent in insti­tu­tions with names like the Illi­nois Asy­lum for Fee­ble-Mind­ed Chil­dren. An aggriev­ed lon­er seem­ing­ly afflict­ed by what we would now call men­tal health dif­fi­cul­ties from the start, he took a kind of refuge in the fan­ta­sy coher­ing in his head, one shaped equal­ly by mass print media phe­nom­e­na like Win­nie Win­kle and Lit­tle Annie Rooney, Civ­il War pho­tographs, and ultra-devout Catholi­cism. Since his posthu­mous dis­cov­ery and ele­va­tion to the sta­tus of the ulti­mate “out­sider artist,” there’s been no end of spec­u­la­tion about his per­son­al habits, sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties, and state of mind. But with all such ques­tions beyond res­o­lu­tion, we can, for the moment, leave the last word to the artist him­self: “It’s bet­ter to be a suck­er who makes some­thing than a wise guy who is too cau­tious to make any­thing at all.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Hen­ry Darg­er, the Most Famous of Out­sider Artists, Who Died in Obscu­ri­ty, Leav­ing Behind Hun­dreds of Unseen Fan­ta­sy Illus­tra­tions and a 15,000-Page Nov­el

The Artistry of the Men­tal­ly Ill: The 1922 Book That Pub­lished the Fas­ci­nat­ing Work of Schiz­o­phrenic Patients, and Influ­enced Paul Klee, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky & Oth­er Avant Garde Artists

Japan­ese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eat­en for 32 Years: Behold the Deli­cious Illus­tra­tions of Itsuo Kobayashi

Explore a Dig­i­tized Edi­tion of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book”

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Hilma af Klint, the Mys­ti­cal Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Untold Story of Bauhaus Women: The Avant-Garde Artists Who Helped Shape Modernism

in Art, Design, History | February 13th, 2026

It does­n’t take too long a look at the almost sur­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly clean-lined build­ings of Wal­ter Gropius to get the impres­sion that the man want­ed to ush­er in a new world, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that many of them went up before World War II. Take the Bauhaus Dessau build­ing, which, though com­plet­ed exact­ly a cen­tu­ry ago, looks like a con­crete trans­mis­sion from the future that nev­er arrived, or one that may indeed still be on the way. It once housed the Ger­man art school turned polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al engine he found­ed in 1919, whose prin­ci­ples includ­ed absolute equal­i­ty between male and female par­tic­i­pants — or they did at first, at any rate.

Soon decid­ing that the new insti­tu­tion would­n’t be tak­en seri­ous­ly with too high a pro­por­tion of women, Gropius lim­it­ed their enroll­ment to one-third of the stu­dent body. That episode, among oth­ers that under­score the ways in which Gropius and the Bauhaus’ osten­si­ble com­mit­ment to the advance­ment of women was­n’t all it could be, fig­ures into Susanne Radel­hof’s doc­u­men­tary The Untold Sto­ry of Bauhaus Women.

Yet what­ev­er the short­com­ings in that depart­ment one might iden­ti­fy from a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry van­tage, the fact remains that the Bauhaus made pos­si­ble — or at least encour­aged — more endur­ing and influ­en­tial work by female artists and design­ers than almost any art school in ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Europe.

Among the almost 500 women who stud­ied at the Bauhaus, the film pro­files fig­ures like Alma Busch­er, “who cre­at­ed pro­to­types of avant-garde fur­ni­ture and toys”; “vision­ary met­al­smith and design­er” Mar­i­anne Brandt; Gun­ta Stöl­zl, whose “weav­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ized mod­ern tex­tile design” (weav­ing even­tu­al­ly being the main pro­gram to which women were admit­ted); Friedl Dick­er, a “mul­ti­tal­ent­ed artist” ded­i­cat­ed to the Bauhaus; and Lucia Moholy, whose “excep­tion­al pho­tographs still influ­ence how we view Bauhaus design today.” The school itself may have shut down in 1933, owing to the con­flict between its aes­thet­ic and polit­i­cal ends and those of the ris­ing Nazi Par­ty, but the for­ward-look­ing nature and world­wide cul­tur­al influ­ence of the Bauhaus have ensured that we still feel the influ­ence of its alum­ni, male and female alike.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

The Pol­i­tics & Phi­los­o­phy of the Bauhaus Design Move­ment: A Short Intro­duc­tion

The Women of the Bauhaus: See Hip, Avant-Garde Pho­tographs of Female Stu­dents & Instruc­tors at the Famous Art School

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

The Bauhaus Book­shelf: Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books, Jour­nals, Man­i­festos & Ads That Still Inspire Design­ers World­wide

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Cats in Medieval Manuscripts & Paintings

in Art, History, Religion | February 5th, 2026

Renais­sance artist Albrecht Dür­er  (1471–1528) nev­er saw a rhi­no him­self, but by rely­ing on eye­wit­ness descrip­tions of the one King Manuel I of Por­tu­gal intend­ed as a gift to the Pope, he man­aged to ren­der a fair­ly real­is­tic one, all things con­sid­ered.

Medieval artists’ ren­der­ings of cats so often fell short of the mark, Youtu­ber Art Deco won­ders if any of them had seen a cat before.

Point tak­en, but cats were well inte­grat­ed into medieval soci­ety.

Roy­al 12 C xix f. 36v/37r (13th cen­tu­ry)

Cats pro­vid­ed medieval cit­i­zens with the same pest con­trol ser­vices they’d been per­form­ing since the ancient Egyp­tians first domes­ti­cat­ed them.

Ancient Egyp­tians con­veyed their grat­i­tude and respect by regard­ing cats as sym­bols of divin­i­ty, pro­tec­tion, and strength.

Cer­tain Egypt­ian god­dess­es, like Bastet, were imbued with unmis­tak­ably feline char­ac­ter­is­tics.

The Vin­tage News reports that harm­ing a cat in those days was pun­ish­able by death, export­ing them was ille­gal, and, much like today, the death of a cat was an occa­sion for pub­lic sor­row:

When a cat died, it was buried with hon­ors, mum­mi­fied and mourned by the humans. The body of the cat would be wrapped in the finest mate­ri­als and then embalmed in order to pre­serve the body for a longer time. Ancient Egyp­tians went so far that they shaved their eye­brows as a sign of their deep sor­row for the deceased pet.

Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty Library, MS 24  f. 23v (Eng­land, c 1200)

The medieval church took a much dark­er view of our feline friends.

Their close ties to pagan­ism and ear­ly reli­gions were enough for cats to be judged guilty of witch­craft, sin­ful sex­u­al­i­ty, and frat­er­niz­ing with Satan.

In the late 12th-cen­tu­ry, writer Wal­ter Map, a soon-to-be archdea­con of Oxford, declared that the dev­il appeared before his devo­tees in feline form:

… hang­ing by a rope, a black cat of great size. As soon as they see this cat, the lights are turned out. They do not sing or recite hymns in a dis­tinct way, but they mut­ter them with their teeth closed and they feel in the dark towards where they saw their lord, and when they find it, they kiss it, the more humbly depend­ing on their fol­ly, some on the paws, some under the tail, some on the gen­i­tals. And as if they have, in this way, received a license for pas­sion, each one takes the near­est man or woman and they join them­selves with the oth­er for as long as they choose to draw out their game.

Pope Inno­cent VIII issued a papal bull in 1484 con­demn­ing the “devil’s favorite ani­mal and idol of all witch­es” to death, along with their human com­pan­ions.

13th-cen­tu­ry Fran­cis­can monk Bartholo­maeus Angli­cus refrained from demon­ic tat­tle, but nei­ther did he paint cats as angels:

He is a full lech­er­ous beast in youth, swift, pli­ant, and mer­ry, and leapeth and reseth on every­thing that is to fore him: and is led by a straw, and playeth there­with: and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth sly­ly in wait for mice: and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and reseth on them in privy places: and when he taketh a mouse, he playeth there­with, and eateth him after the play. In time of love is hard fight­ing for wives, and one scratch­eth and ren­deth the oth­er griev­ous­ly with bit­ing and with claws. And he maketh a ruth­ful noise and ghast­ful, when one prof­fer­eth to fight with anoth­er: and unneth is hurt when he is thrown down off an high place. And when he hath a fair skin, he is as it were proud there­of, and goeth fast about: and when his skin is burnt, then he bideth at home; and is oft for his fair skin tak­en of the skin­ner, and slain and flayed.

Pigs and rats also had a bad rep, and like cats, were tor­tured and exe­cut­ed in great num­bers by pious humans.

The Work­sop Bes­tiary Mor­gan Library, MS M.81 f. 47r (Eng­land, c 1185)

Not every medieval city was anti-cat. As the Aca­d­e­m­ic Cat Lady Johan­na Feen­stra writes of the above illus­tra­tion from The Work­sop Bes­tiary, one of the ear­li­est Eng­lish bes­tiaries:

Some would have inter­pret­ed the image of a cat pounc­ing on a rodent as a sym­bol for the dev­il going after the human soul. Oth­ers might have seen the cat in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent light. For instance, as Eucharis­tic guardians, mak­ing sure rodents could not steal and eat the Eucharis­tic wafers.

Bodleian Library Bod­ley 764 f. 51r (Eng­land, c 1225–50)

St John’s Col­lege Library, MS. 61 (Eng­land (York), 13th cen­tu­ry)

It took cat lover Leonar­do DaVin­ci to turn the sit­u­a­tion around, with eleven sketch­es from life por­tray­ing cats in char­ac­ter­is­tic pos­es, much as we see them today. We’ll delve more into that in a future post.

Con­rad of Megen­berg, ‘Das Buch der Natur’, Ger­many ca. 1434. Stras­bourg, Bib­lio­thèque nationale et uni­ver­si­taire, Ms.2.264, fol. 85r

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats in the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & More

Cats Migrat­ed to Europe 7,000 Years Ear­li­er Than Once Thought

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

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The World’s Oldest Cave Art, Discovered in Indonesia, Is at Least 67,800 Years Old

in Archaeology, Art, History | January 26th, 2026

Image by Ahdi Agus Okta­viana

Over the cen­turies, a vari­ety of places have laid cred­i­ble claim to being the world’s art cen­ter: Con­stan­tino­ple, Flo­rence, Paris, New York. But on the scale of, say, ten mil­len­nia, the hot spots become rather less rec­og­niz­able. Up until about 20,000 years ago, it seems that cre­ators and view­ers of art alike spent a good deal in one par­tic­u­lar cave: Liang Metan­duno, locat­ed on Muna Island in Indone­si­a’s South­east Sulawe­si province. The many paint­ings on its walls of rec­og­niz­able humans, ani­mals, and boats have brought it fame in our times as a kind of ancient art gallery. But in recent years, a much old­er piece of work has been dis­cov­ered there, one whose cre­ation occurred at least 67,800 years ago.

The cre­ation in ques­tion is a hand­print, faint but detectable, prob­a­bly made by blow­ing a mix­ture of ochre and water over an actu­al human hand. To deter­mine its age, researchers per­formed what’s called ura­ni­um-series analy­sis on the deposits of cal­ci­um car­bon­ate that had built up on and around it.

The num­ber of 67,800 years is, of course, not exact, but it’s also just a min­i­mum: in fact, the hand­print could well be much old­er. In a paper pub­lished last week in Nature, the researchers point out that its age exceeds both that of the old­est sim­i­lar rock art found else­where in Indone­sia and that of a hand sten­cil in Spain attrib­uted to Nean­derthals, “which until now rep­re­sent­ed the old­est demon­strat­ed min­i­mum-age con­straint for cave art world­wide.”

It isn’t impos­si­ble that this at least 67,800-year-old hand­print could also have been made by Nean­derthals. The obvi­ous mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the hand’s shape, how­ev­er, an exten­sion and taper­ing of the fin­gers that brings to mind ani­mal claws (or the clutch­es of Nos­fer­atu), sug­gests to cer­tain sci­en­tif­ic eyes the kind of cog­ni­tion attrib­ut­able specif­i­cal­ly to Homo sapi­ens. This dis­cov­ery has great poten­tial rel­e­vance not just to art his­to­ry, but even more so to oth­er fields con­cerned with the devel­op­ment of our species. While it had pre­vi­ous­ly been thought, for instance, that the first human set­tlers of Aus­tralia made their way there through Indone­sia (in a time of much low­er sea lev­els) between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, the hand­print­’s exis­tence in Liang Metan­duno sug­gests that the migra­tion took place even ear­li­er. All these mil­len­nia lat­er, Aus­tralia remains a favored des­ti­na­tion for a vari­ety of immi­grants — some of whom do their part to keep Syd­ney’s art scene inter­est­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er the World’s First “Art Stu­dio” Cre­at­ed in an Ethiopi­an Cave 43,000 Years Ago

A Recent­ly Dis­cov­ered 44,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing Tells the Old­est Known Sto­ry

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 200,000-Year-Old Hand & Foot­prints That Could Be the World’s Ear­li­est Cave Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Discover Michelangelo’s First Painting, Created When He Was Only 12 or 13 Years Old

in Art, History | January 15th, 2026

Think back, if you will, to the works of art you cre­at­ed at age twelve or thir­teen. For many, per­haps most of us, our out­put at that stage of ado­les­cence amount­ed to direc­tion­less doo­dles, chaot­ic comics, and a few unsteady-at-best school projects. But then, most of us did­n’t grow up to be Michelan­ge­lo. In the late four­teen-eight­ies, when that tow­er­ing Renais­sance artist was still what we would now call a “tween,” he paint­ed The Tor­ment of Saint Antho­ny, a depic­tion of the tit­u­lar reli­gious fig­ure beset by demons in the desert. Though based on a wide­ly known engrav­ing, it nev­er­the­less shows evi­dence of rapid­ly advanc­ing tech­nique, inspi­ra­tion, and even cre­ativ­i­ty — espe­cial­ly when placed under the infrared scan­ner.

For about half a mil­len­ni­um, The Tor­ment of Saint Antho­ny was­n’t thought to have been paint­ed by Michelan­ge­lo. As explained in the video from Inspi­rag­gio just below, when the paint­ing sold at Sothe­by’s in 2008, the buy­er took it to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art for exam­i­na­tion and clean­ing.

“Beneath the lay­ers of dirt accu­mu­lat­ed over the cen­turies,” says the nar­ra­tor, “a very par­tic­u­lar col­or palette appeared. “The tones, the blends, the way the human fig­ure was treat­ed: all of it began to resem­ble the style Michelan­ge­lo would use years lat­er in none oth­er than the Sis­tine Chapel.” Infrared reflec­tog­ra­phy sub­se­quent­ly turned up pen­ti­men­ti, or cor­rec­tion marks, a com­mon indi­ca­tion that “a paint­ing is not a copy, but an orig­i­nal work cre­at­ed with artis­tic free­dom.”

It was the Kim­bell Art Muse­um in Fort Worth, Texas that first bet big on the prove­nance of The Tor­ment of Saint Antho­ny. Its new­ly hired direc­tor pur­chased the paint­ing after turn­ing up “not a sin­gle con­vinc­ing argu­ment against the attri­bu­tion.” Thus acquired, it became “the only paint­ing by Michelan­ge­lo locat­ed any­where in the Amer­i­c­as, and also just one of four easel paint­ings attrib­uted to him through­out his entire career,” dur­ing most of which he dis­par­aged oil paint­ing itself. About a decade lat­er, and after fur­ther analy­sis, the art his­to­ri­an Gior­gio Bon­san­ti put his con­sid­er­able author­i­ty behind a defin­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion that it is indeed the work of the young Michelan­ge­lo. There remain doubters, of course, and even the noto­ri­ous­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing artist him­self may have con­sid­ered it an imma­ture work unwor­thy of his name. But who else could have cre­at­ed an imma­ture work like it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of Leonar­do da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

When Michelan­ge­lo Cre­at­ed Artis­tic Designs for Mil­i­tary For­ti­fi­ca­tions to Pro­tect Flo­rence (1529–1530)

How Four Mas­ters — Michelan­ge­lo, Donatel­lo, Ver­roc­chio & Berni­ni — Sculpt­ed David

A Secret Room with Draw­ings Attrib­uted to Michelan­ge­lo Opens to Vis­i­tors in Flo­rence

Michelan­ge­lo Entered a Com­pe­ti­tion to Put a Miss­ing Arm Back on Lao­coön and His Sons — and Lost

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed Gro­cery List

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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