Introduction to the History of Art Four Figures of the Lion

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This introduction to the history of art aims to observe, describe, decipher, contextualize and analyze in depth four representations of the lion preserved at the Musee d'Orsay. These four representations in painting, sculpture and photography will be linked to many others. They will serve to familiarize oneself with a history of art at the crossroads of the human and social sciences, which draws on history, philosophy, literature, anthropology, psychology, economics or ecology. The preferred subject, the king of animals, invites us to think about a species which does not speak our language and which has its own world. Associated over the long term of history with power but also with governance and even human excess, it refers to a rich imagination which opens onto these key words: human non human, animal and animality, nature and artifice, menagerie and zoo, hunting, power and might. Our contemporary issues will inevitably be invoked because it is with our current mentality that we perceive the works of the past. However, we must strive to think of the past as a mysterious continent to be discovered, where the convictions of our time were far from being shared.