Bear hunting
Still very present in all European forests until the 15th century, the bear, agile and ferocious, has suffered since the Middle Ages from a terrible reputation. For Saint Augustine, it is even the devil! Considered as the wild animal double of man, the bear can indeed stand upright, walk like a biped and sit down, but also mate face to face, like humans.
Determined to extinguish the pagan cults and festivals that the animal aroused, the Church fought the plantigrade by all means, ridiculing it as a fairground animal, thus ruining its reputation as king of the animals. Paradoxically, it will remain for a long time in good taste among European aristocrats and princes to evoke a mythical bear ancestor at the origin of their lineage while the hand-to-hand combat with the animal remains "a must" of warlike exploit.
Thus, the bear hunt placed man and animal in a face to face encounter that was for young men an important rite of passage. The hunter, fully protected by his armor, would hit the bear with a stake. The Church sought to devalue this bear hunt, which was considered too demonstrative and even licentious, in favor of deer hunting, which no longer required direct contact with the animal.
Originally from Bruges, Jan Van der Straet, known as Stradanus, brilliantly represented the different hunting and fishing methods practiced in his time. His various representations of hunting show the stalking of European or exotic animals, but also fantastic animals (dragons, satyrs, aquatic monsters...).
This print is taken from a series gathered in a collection entitled Venationes ferarum avium piscium, the first edition of which, dedicated to Como de Medici, was published in Antwerp in 1578.
Popularized by engraving and taken up by Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630), a famous contemporary Italian painter and engraver, the models of Stradanus constitute an important iconographic repertoire concerning hunting.
