Have been running some fanciful thoughts about this picture that I "repaired" just to satisfy what I got in mind as I study this tapestry from the Cloisters. The tapestry, just like all medieval pieces of tapestry are kept away from light, just as to really slow down very long winded efforts to preserve works like the above, that the elites used to show the kind of lifestyle they've got back then.
I've always wondered why we have all these animals that are represented in a lot of art forms, or surviving cultural works, or even architectural diggings showing all these animals that are not even existing at all these days!
Have you thought about seeing real dragons (which you find represented often in Chinese works)? A real horse with wings (in the form like that of horse named "Pegasus"---reminding me of an expensive, high class for-adults-only entertainment/fun place back in the Philippines!--which got me into thinking, why name a bar after a flying horse?), or a horse with horns like that of a unicorn. I'd like to believe though that they're not exactly figments of imagination of those people who have drawn them up, in one form or another. They must have represented ideals, or something about the glorious past of our ancestors and the kind of society that they lived in. Or more strangely, they must have been animals like them before humans started recording happenings one fateful time, such that these "animals" have survived in this form in our time.
But it's actually somehow scary thinking that these animals would actually be living in our midst now. They'd be looking so strong, so powerful, so full of wisdom, that we people would feel so insecure, we'd soon wipe them out by our own cunning, cruel means, just to make sure we hold control of this domain called "earth."
And if you compare these "mythical" animals with large-prehistoric animals whose fossils survive now, they're actually bordering along the whimsical, the mysterious thoughts we've got about animals, or even those thoughts we got of ourselves, most probably in our dreams!
