Fin de siècle, Art Nouveau, and Art Déco Portrayals of Animal Angst: a Few European, and Especially Some Italian, Cases

Animals often represent symbolic elements in the visual tradition of the late nineteenth century. Thus, in the age of the diffusion of idealist and vitalistic philosophies, we see how animals find fertile expression in the artistic imagination sometimes freed from the cultural categories in which the way of thinking had placed them. To analyze the field, three categories are considered: the relationship between animals and human beings; the vivification of intermediate worlds where beings half-human and half-animal take life; the symbolic interpretation of animals that take the value of specific feelings such as anguish.