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- Newsgroups: rec.heraldry
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!habura
- From: habura@vccnorthc.its.rpi.edu (Andrea Marie Habura)
- Subject: Re: Balkanic Heraldry
- Message-ID: <l331gdr@rpi.edu>
- Nntp-Posting-Host: vccnorthc.its.rpi.edu
- Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
- References: <1992Nov17.234416.1413@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> <1992Nov20.111731.3403@odin.diku.dk> <1992Nov21.150451.27575@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
- Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 13:44:27 GMT
- Lines: 18
-
- Francois Velde speculates about the difference between English and Continental
- panthers.
-
- Right you are; there is a divergence. They are both based on the same critter,
- but the artistic variation was pretty severe in this case. For starters,
- the panther in the medieval bestiaries is not a fire breather, but issues
- sweet breath from its mouth and ears; all creatures are attracted to it...
- except the dragon, which flees to its den. (The panther is used as an
- allegory for Christ. Surprise.) The earlier artists drew the stuff as wavy
- lines, which was promptly misinterpreted as flames, and drawn that way
- thereafter.
-
- Dennys (in his _The Heraldic Imagination_) feels that the English panther is
- closer to that in the bestiaries; he says the Continental panther was
- hyper-exaggerated into its goatish-whatever form. He may be biased, however. :)
-
- Andrea Habura
-
-