While medieval artists excelled at painting religious scenes and portraits of royalty, lions offered an altogether different challenge. It looks like the medieval painters never laid eyes on a real lion.
If you enjoyed this medieval weirdness, you will also like our previous posts from this era: Knights Fighting Giant Snails, Medieval Rabbits Murdering People, and Medieval People Enjoy Being Slaughtered.
Of course. Even nowadays no one tries to stand in front of a lion to make a painting.
“Stupid lion, I said smile, not lick your lips!”
I love the first one
Some of these are manticores, not lions!
At least one of these drawings actually depicts a pard, a nonexistent animal (falsely) believed to be the parent of a leopard. Leopards were incorrectly believed to be a sterile F1 hybrid (like a mule) of a pard and lion until the 18th century