#aurochs

🌘NOCTURNAL or 🐂THE AUROCHS RETURN

Reproduction of gold Vapheio cups with repoussé decoration showing a calm scene of a youth tying a captured bull, and a wild bull hunt in action. The originals were found in a tholos tomb in Vapheio, Laconia

Walton Ford's Tur is an allegory rendered in the style of nineteenth-century naturalists' illustrations. It centers on an aurochs, the huge ancestor of cattle that was hunted on royal Polish preserves until 1627, when the last of the species was killed. In Ford's symbolic painting, the aurochs stands on the edge of a dense forest, and human bones lay before him. These remains allude to the fate of trespassers on the royal lands who, like the aurochs, died at the hands of noblemen who controlled and protected their hunting grounds.

Qurta, Egypt, 21000-9000 BCE

Qurta, Egypt, c. 21000-9000 BCE

Romito Cave, Italy

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