The Eagle's Nest / Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, Given Before the University of Oxford, in Lent Term, 1872

by John Ruskin

223. The beginning of heraldry, and of all beautiful dress, is, however, simply in the wearing of the skins of slain animals. You may discredit, as much as you choose, the literal meaning of that earliest statement, “Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skin, and clothed them:” but the figurative meaning of it only becomes the stronger. For if you think of the skins of animals as giving the four great materials of dress—leather, fur, wool, and down, you will see in this verse the summary of what has ever since taken place in the method of the providence of the Maker of Man and beast, for the clothing of the naked creature who was to rule over the rest.

224. The first practical and savage use of such dress was that the skin of the head of the beast became a covering for the head of its slayer; the skin of its body his coat; the skin of the fore legs was knotted in front, and the skin of the hind legs and tail became tassels, the jags of the cut edges forming a kind of fringe here and there.

You have thus the first conception of a helmet with the mane of the animal for its crest or plume, and the first conception of a cuirass variously fringed, striped, or spotted; in complete accoutrement for war, you have to add spear, (or arrow), and shield. The spear is properly a beam of wood, iron pointed; the shield a disk of leather, iron fronted.

And armed strength for conflict is symbolized for all future time by the Greeks, under the two types of Heracles and Athena; the one with the low lion’s crest and the arrow, the other with the high horse’s crest, and the spear; one with the lion-skin, the other with the goat-skin;—both with the round shield.

225. The nebris of Dionusos and leopard-skin of the priests of Egypt relate to astronomy, not war; and the interest in their spots and bars, as variously symbolic, together with real pleasure in their grotesqueness, greatly modified the entire system of Egyptian colour-decoration. On the earliest Greek vases, also, the spots and bars of the animals are carried out in spots or chequers upon the ground, (sometimes representing flowers), and the delight in “divers colours of needlework,” and in fantasy of embroidery, gradually refine and illumine the design of Eastern dress. But only the patterns derived from the colours of animals become classical in heraldry under the general name of “furres,” one of them “vaire” or verrey (“the variegated fur,”) rudely figuring the material composed of the skins of small animals sewn together, alternately head to tail; the other, ermine, peculiarly honourable, from the costliness, to southern nations, of the fur it represents.

226. The name of the principal heraldic colour has a similar origin: the “rams’ skins dyed red” which were used for the curtains of the Jewish tabernacle, were always one of the principal articles of commerce between the east and west: in mediæval Latin they were called “gulae,” and in the French plural “gules,” so that to be dressed in “gules” came gradually to mean being dressed in the particular red of those skins, which was a full soft scarlet, not dazzling, but warm and glowing. It is used, in opposition to darker purple, in large masses in the fresco painting of later Rome;—is the dominant colour of ornamental writing in the middle ages (giving us the ecclesiastical term “rubric”), and asserts itself finally, and most nobly, in the fresco paintings of Ghirlandajo and Luini. I have tried to represent very closely the tint of it Luini has given to St. Catherine’s mantle, in my study in your schools. Titian keeps it also as the keynote of his frescoes; so also Tintoret; but Raphael, Correggio, and Michael Angelo, all substituted orange for it in opposition to purple; and the entire scheme of colour in the Vatican frescoes is of orange and purple, broken by green and white, on a ground of grey. This orange and purple opposition in meaner hands became gaudy and feeble, and the system of mediæval colour was at last totally destroyed by it; the orange remaining to this day the favourite, and most distinctive, hue in bad glass painting.

227. The forms of dress, however, derived from the skins of animals are of much more importance than the colours. Of these the principal is the crest, which is properly the mane of lion or horse. The skin of the horse was neither tough, nor of convenient size for wearing; but the classical Greek helmet is only an adaptation of the outline of its head, with the mane floating behind: many Etruscan helmets have ears also, while in mediæval armour, light plates, cut into the shape of wings of birds, are often placed on each side of the crest, which then becomes not the mane of the animal merely, but the image of the entire creature which the warrior desires to be renowned for having slain.

228. The Heraldic meaning of the crest is accordingly, first, that the Knight asserts himself to have prevailed over the animal it represents; and to be stronger than such a creature would be, therefore, against his human enemies. Hence, gradually, he considers himself invested with the power and character of the slain creature itself; and, as it were, to have taken from it, for his spoil, not its skin only but its strength. The crest, therefore, is the heraldic indication of personality, and is properly to be distinguished from the bearing on the shield, because that indicated race; but the crest, personal character and valour.

229. I have traced the practical truth which is the foundation of this idea of the transmitted strength of the slain creature becoming the inheritance of its victor, in the account given of the coins of Camarina, in “The Queen of the Air.“ But it is strange and sad to reflect how much misery has resulted, in the history of man, from the imaginative excuse for cruelty afforded by the adopted character of savage animals; and how many wolves, bears, lions, and eagles, have been national symbols, instead of gentler creatures. Even the heraldic symbol of Christ is in Italy oftener the lion than the lamb: and among the innumerable painters of his Desert Prophet, only Filippo Lippi understood the full meaning of the raiment of camel’s hair, and made him wear the camel’s skin, as Heracles the Lion’s.

230. Although the crest is thus essentially an expression of personal character, it practically becomes hereditary; and the sign on shield and helmet is commonly the same. But the shield has a system of bearings peculiar to itself, to which I wish especially to direct your attention to-day.