15 Times Medieval Artists Tried To Paint Animals Without Actually Seeing Them And Produced Hilarious Results

Back in the medieval times, people couldn't just look up the information they wanted on the internet like we can now. Even access to books was extremely limited or outright impossible. That meant that a lot of information had to be passed using word of mouth - and if you've played a game of 'telephone', you probably know that it's not the greatest way of forwarding important information. Such was the case in many medieval paintings of exotic animals that look almost nothing like the real thing - and Twitter user Daniel Holland recently shared some hilarious examples. In a recent interview with Bored Panda, Daniel said he was inspired to start the thread after seeing a segment in the TV show Horrible Histories about the inaccuracies in medieval art. He collected some examples of terrible paintings of animals and they quickly went viral. More info: Twitter | Instagram | DannyDutch.com

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Image source: DannyDutch Daniel says he has been educated by a lot of replies that some of the pictures were painted this way not necessarily because of the poor descriptions that the artists received. “I’d assume if artists were given descriptions today without seeing animals and asked to paint them the only difference would be technical ability and materials used, they’d likely look just as inaccurate,” pondered the user. See more of the most ridiculous medieval depictions of animals in the gallery below!

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