Full Ebook of Visual Engagements Image Practices and Falconry 1St Edition Yannis Hadjinicolaou Online PDF All Chapter

Visual Engagements Image Practices
and Falconry 1st Edition Yannis

Hadjinicolaou
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/visual-engagements-image-practices-and-falconry-1st
-edition-yannis-hadjinicolaou/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Mixed Messages American Correspondences in Visual and

Verbal Practices 1st Edition Catherine Gander
https://ebookmeta.com/product/mixed-messages-american-
correspondences-in-visual-and-verbal-practices-1st-edition-
catherine-gander/
Image Acts A Systematic Approach to Visual Agency 2nd

Edition Horst Bredekamp
https://ebookmeta.com/product/image-acts-a-systematic-approach-
to-visual-agency-2nd-edition-horst-bredekamp/
War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages East

West and Beyond Yannis Stouraitis (Editor)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/war-and-collective-identities-in-
the-middle-ages-east-west-and-beyond-yannis-stouraitis-editor/
Health and Difference Rendering Human Variation in

Colonial Engagements 1st Edition Alexandra Widmer
https://ebookmeta.com/product/health-and-difference-rendering-
human-variation-in-colonial-engagements-1st-edition-alexandra-
widmer/
International Student Mobility Exploring Identities and
Engagements 1st Edition Jasper Kun-Ting Hsieh
https://ebookmeta.com/product/international-student-mobility-
exploring-identities-and-engagements-1st-edition-jasper-kun-ting-
hsieh/
Regency Engagements Box Set 1st Edition Charlotte

Fitzwilliam Eliza Heaton
https://ebookmeta.com/product/regency-engagements-box-set-1st-
edition-charlotte-fitzwilliam-eliza-heaton/
Image Processing and Machine Learning, Volume 1:

Foundations of Image Processing 1st Edition Cuevas
https://ebookmeta.com/product/image-processing-and-machine-
learning-volume-1-foundations-of-image-processing-1st-edition-
cuevas/
Data Sleuth : Using Data in Forensic Accounting

Engagements and Fraud Investigations 1st Edition Leah
Wietholter
https://ebookmeta.com/product/data-sleuth-using-data-in-forensic-
accounting-engagements-and-fraud-investigations-1st-edition-leah-
wietholter/
Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the

Contemporary Local Contexts and Global Practices
Routledge Research in Art History 1st Edition Lynda
Klich
https://ebookmeta.com/product/visual-typologies-from-the-early-
modern-to-the-contemporary-local-contexts-and-global-practices-
routledge-research-in-art-history-1st-edition-lynda-klich/
Visual Engagements
Visual Engagements
Image Pr actices and Falconry
Edited by Yannis Hadjinicolaou

This publication was funded by
the generous support of
New York University Abu Dhabi.
ISBN 978-3-11-061646-0
e-ISBN (Pdf) 978-3-11-061858-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943232
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover illustration: Detail James Northcote, Self-portrait with Falcons, 1823, oil on canvas, 102 × 127 cm,
Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum (detail of fig. 1, p. 4).
Layout and typesetting: P. Florath, Stralsund

Printing and binding: Beltz Grafische Betriebe GmbH, Bad Langensalza
www.degruyter.com
Contents
VII A Bird’s-Eye View
2 Yannis Hadjinicolaou
Visual Encounters
Falconry as Image Practice
Embodied Inter actions
30 Andrea Pinotti
What is it like to be a Hawk?
Inter-specific Empathy in the Age of Immersive Virtual Environments
48 Herman Roodenburg
“Still be mindeful on you.”
Hints of Human-falcon Empathy in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Europe
67 Colour Plates
Symbolic Tools
84 Robert Felfe
Exploring Pictorial Space with Falcons
108 Monika Wagner

Leather and Feather: Material Interactions in
the Art of Falconry
124 Baudouin van den Abeele
The Hooded Falcon as an Allegory of
Hope (15th –17 th century)
147 Colour Plates
Gaze and Agency
164 Christine Kleiter, Gerhard Wolf

The Falcon, the Eagle and the Owl
Raptors’ and Falconers’ Gaze between Theory,
Practice, and Art(s)
196 Horst Bredekamp

Falconry as a Variant of the Image Act
214 Klaus Krüger

Art is Aiming for the Eye
Gazes as Arrows in the Early Modern Era
Epistemology
240 Frank Zöllner

Aby Warburg and Flying
256 Peter Geimer

Birds and Angels: A Physiologist Meets Mythology
272 Tanja Michalsky

Gaining insight through a Bird’s-Eye View
On the Chorography of Naples in the Early Modern Era
297 Picture Credits

A Bird’s-Eye View
A falcon held between two hands. The bird of prey does not seem to be bothered by the
human hand’s touch, which reveals a kind of hole on the side of her head. It is her ear.
The eyes, one of the falcon’s most powerful instruments, are covered by a kind of white
veil (fig. 1, plate I). She does not see as she is anaesthetised whilst her ear is “uncovered”
by one of the numerous members of staff working at the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital.
The United Arab Emirates on the Arabian Gulf belongs to a region whose heritage, and
especially visual heritage, is based, among other things, on falconry, which is truly an
ars vivendi.
Visual Engagements. Image Practices and Falconry focuses on intersections between
culture and nature, vision and the gaze, tactility and perception, perspective and surveil-
lance and questions concerning political iconology, as well as the migration of objects
and images. However, epistemic notions around flying or cartography are also addressed.
Any practice is blind without a theory, but theories which do not consciously rely
on practices are often problematic. It is of great importance to address the implicit
knowledge involved in the pursuit of falconry as is the case with the image in general.
The present studies are not based on practical experience (none of the contributors
is a falconer) but rather originate from a theoretical point of view that addresses the
symbolic and epistemological level of the very practice. For the first time, theoretical
reflection brings together two quite different areas in a non-systematic dialogue that
evolves in various directions following different associations.
Considerations on the conditions and possibilities of perception in human-
animal relationships through visual media and technology is certainly of primordial
concern for research. The relationship between falcon and falconer, seen both through
a cultural historical lens and by drawing on recent cognitive research on empathy,
touches upon basic aspects of human-animal interactions.
Exploration of the faculty of seeing and the respective visual practices also has
the result of stressing relationships between seeing and the handling of hawks in terms
VIII   A Bir d’s-Eye V iew
1 Anaesthetised falcon,
Abu Dhabi, Falcon Hospital.
of perception. In more concrete terms the material furniture of falconry such as the
hood and the lure, with the feathers that adorn them, bring together practical falconry
with image practices, since the falconer is dependent on visual tactile devices that also
have deeply symbolic connotations.
The faculty of seeing brings a metaphorical dimension to the topos of the gaze as
an arrow, having a parallel in the relationship between image and observer. This analogy
is also pertinent to relationships between the agency of the image and that of the hawk.
Falconry evokes a metaphor for surveying and cartographic gazing. It is a pros-
thesis of the human eye and body, involving touching and seeing. Here one has only to
think of the so-called bird’s-eye view that is a pictorial invention between perspective
and measurement, a monitoring as a kind of organic drone avant la lettre. In this sense,
visual engagements have a multisensorial dimension that one can combine not only
with theories on empathy but also embodiment and enactive perception.
In a broader sense, of course, falconry is inextricably linked with flight and, as
such, involves the human imagination. Aby Warburg worked exactly on this subject by
coining the term “image vehicle” (Bilderfahrzeug). Beyond their actual movement image
A Bir d’s-Ey e V iew IX
2 Falconer Mohammed al Hammadi during the workshop together

with Gregor Stemmrich, Abu Dhabi, New York University.
vehicles can be metaphorical instruments of reflection on symbolic representation.

However, there is also an epistemological notion of flying being a meeting point
between natural laws and artistic imagination, blending both together to result in a
rather paradoxical constellation of order and its negation, of possibility and impossi-
bility. This consideration could serve as an emblem for the present endeavour, namely
to prompt these different areas of comparison (falconry, visual imagery, the gaze or
image vehicles) as a new terrain for research, questioning about their differences and,
most of all, their similarities.
The aforementioned image (fig. 1) was taken during a visit on the first day of the
workshop that took place in April 2018 at New York University, Abu Dhabi, within the
framework of a research fellowship in the Humanities. I wish to especially thank
X   A Bir d’s-Eye V iew
Reindert Falkenburg, Martin Klimke and, last but not least, Alexandra Sandu for mak-
ing things as easy as possible during my inspiring sojourn. Gila Wells and Nora Yousif
also helped at different stages of the endeavour. The book was funded generously from
the NYUAD institute grants as well as the Humanities Fellowship programme.
Andreas Beyer and Reindert Falkenburg also contributed, with their papers and
their interventions at the overall discussions during the workshop. Gregor Stemmrich
kindly chaired some of the sessions. I wish also to thank Emirati falconer Mohammed
al Hammadi (Emirates Falconers’ Club), who brought his falcon to NYUAD and dis-
cussed with us various questions concerning falconry training and manning processes
(fig. 2). This was truly a moment when theory and practice indeed met in a fruitful
interaction.
I would like to thank Baudouin van den Abeele and Horst Bredekamp who,
although not present at the meeting in Abu Dhabi, contributed to the volume.
The publishing house De Gruyter expressed interest in undertaking this edition
and I wish to particularly thank Susanne Drexler and Katja Richter for this, as well as
Petra Florath for her imaginative work on the design and layout.
David Horobin of the British Archives of Falconry corrected all texts in English
with great enthusiasm, enriching all of the papers with his comments and questions
from the perspective of a practical falconer as well as that of a scholar.
The authors must be warmly thanked for their engaging contributions and for
their stimulating presence during the workshop at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Y.H.
Yannis Hadjinicolaou
Visual Encounters
Falconry as Image Practice
Artist cum Falconer
In a semi-darkened room appears a finely-clad male figure that is shown in profile

(fig. 1).1 With an elevated arm, he is pointing in the direction of two perches, on each
of which a hawk is depicted. One is in motion with open wings and looks towards the
man. The other, hooded on a perch, is captured in stillness. A dog accompanies the
man and observes the active hawk, that has jesses on its feet and is accentuated through
light. The light corresponds with the painting’s chiaroscuro and hence to the question
of darkness and light, a question that the hawks are also raising through kinesis and
stasis as well as seeing (unhooded) and not seeing (wearing the hood as a second skin;
its colour partly resembles the hawk’s feathers). The gaze of the person who wears a
falconer’s glove (thus simultaneously addressing the crucial role of tactility) and seems
to own the two hawks, is absorbed. At the same time the man’s gesture is in motion
whereas his left-hand rests on a chair as if combining the behavioural modes of both
hawks – activity and passivity.2 The male figure is not only, seemingly, a falconer but
is also an artist. A pupil of Joshua Reynolds, James Northcote has painted himself as a
falconer in the year 1823.3 This shows that the art of falconry and the art of painting
have structural resemblances. Northcote tries to tame the untamed as in his constant
struggle with painting media, which, however, have their own agency. Even if the sur-
face of this particular painting is quite tamed, it nevertheless unleashes, through its
1 I would like to thank Léa Kuhn, who brought my attention to this image.
2 Exhib. Cat. James Northcote, History Painting and the Fables, ed. Mark Ledburg, New Haven and
London 2014, p. 135. In the respective catalogue Northcote’s gesture has been interpreted as him having
a conversation with the hawks, something a bit far-fetched. His mouth remains demonstratively closed.
There is, however, certainly a bodily, non-verbal, communication between the different agents, including
the dog.
3 Exhib. Cat. James Northcote (as in note 2).
4   Ya n nis H a djinicol aou
1 James Northcote, Self-portrait with Falcons, 1823, oil on canvas, 102 × 127 cm, Exeter,
Royal Albert Memorial Museum.
V isua l Encou nters 5
powerful light, a motion that is connected both to the hawks and to the artist in the
previously mentioned dialectic tension, which constitutes one of the image’s principal
forces, namely to suggest motion on a two-dimensional motionless surface.
One of the basic assumptions of the interaction between falcon and falconer,
between image, image maker and beholder, is that vision is a crucial way of perceiving
and creating the world, as we briefly also saw with Northcote’s painting. It is no coin-
cidence that Frederick II, in his seminal De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus (ca. 1240), speaks
about the ART of hunting with birds.4 Falconry is an art form, a performance in time
and space.
An artist is like a falconer, pursuing his or her art in a constant dialogue with the
image as the falconer does with a hawk, but with the vast difference that a hawk has its
own will and vitality, which the work of art only suggestively possesses. The hawk’s
activity and the human-animal interaction have certain structural resemblances to the
way artists work with materials that have an intrinsic agency. To explore their affor-
dances, as well as letting one be guided through them, creates a reenactment between
artist, image and beholder. This could be said equally for the trinity of falcon, falconer
and beholder. Each one of the respective practices has its own rules, but vision and
tactility, simulation and dissimulation, are features, among others, that both activities
have in common.5 The artist and the falconer are gatherers, collectors of images or
quarry. It is about ruling and being ruled by, taming and being tamed by. The quarry
may become an image as the image may turn into quarry, notably through the ad
infinitum interaction of the different agents in each respective practice. The image
captures, in its slowness, the speed and almost imperceptible movement of the hawk
during its pursuit of quarry that may last mere seconds. It can be argued that the per-
formance of falconry is known to non-falconers, and even to a certain degree practi-
tioners, through images that shape our ideas and actions. This does not mean, however,
that the image is freed from any ambiguity. In its concreteness, it opens up a whole
reservoir of dynamic tensions. The image only seems to tame, while falconry opens
thus a new, untamed, iconic space of meaning for the beholder. Thus, hawks have their
own symbolic force, or dynamis, that is closely related to images representing them and
their materiality, especially when the hawk becomes an image itself. The hawk’s flight
and the intrinsic power of the symbiotic relationship fundamental to falconry are at
the core of this dynamis.6 The hawk’s role as both actor and symbol exemplifies a
critical material iconology that understands basis (i.e. matter) and superstructure (i.e.
symbol) as the horizontal field of an animal activity, or ergon. Form is united with
content but certainly not only in a harmonious kind of way. The hawk moves around
4 See Dorothea Walz, Das Falkenbuch Friedrichs II, Graz 1994.

5 See the paper by Christine Kleiter and Gerhard Wolf.
6 See the contribution by Horst Bredekamp.
2 Samuel Williams, after James

Northcote, The Brother of the Artist, 1797,
mezzotinto, 502 × 352 mm, London, British
Museum.
as the images do: it is perhaps no coincidence that the common name of one of the
most prized trained hawks is the peregrine falcon, Falco peregrinus – the Wanderfalke.
Analogous to this, one might speak of the peregrine image.
Northcote’s relationship to falconry, whether practical or, as seems most likely,
simply artistic, continued with a portrait of his brother painted in 1796 and which
became more famous through the mezzotint print by Samuel William Reynolds
(fig. 2). His brother is shown, in contradistinction to the artist’s self-portrait, outdoors
with his dog. He has just removed the hood and gently touches the falcon’s breast.
Those two elements capture the tension between tameness and wildness. The contrast
between the man’s illuminated face and the darker tones that overshadow the falcon’s
head are underlined through the forceful mezzotint as well as the respective gazes. We
watch the scene as if we are ourselves one of Northcote’s dogs. Searching with the sense
of smell, vision, tactility and hearing, and hence finding and targeting, corresponds to
the theme as well as to the formal characteristics of the mezzotint that starts from
darkness and works out its forms into light in a similar way that occurs with the falcon,
when one removes its hood. This fact underlines the transition from non-seeing into
3 David Dawson, Lucian Freud, 2009, photograph.
seeing and targeting quarry without implying that this cannot lead back to blurriness
and non-seeing. The “flying” medium of the print, in the sense of Aby Warburg’s
“image vehicle”,7 also corresponds in Northcote’s case to the falcon, which is being
prepared to be flown and whose beak almost hits against the picture plane. The contact
as well as distant point between hawk and beholder is the image’s outermost surface,
that also involves the viewer’s bodily movement towards and away from the picture,
constantly observed by the falcon. This interval, the space, being the image or the
physical distance between falcon and falconer, is their connecting point, a productive
continuum of the agents’ dialectic forces.
Hawks’ vision is about eight times more acute than humans’: in comparison, we
are like a black and white television, whereas a falcon is similar to a coloured one, as it
was eloquently put by Andy Bennett, specialist in avian vision.8 This is addressed in a
portrait by David Dawson of Lucian Freud with a kestrel from the year 2009 (fig. 3). It
7 See the contribution by Frank Zöllner in this volume. Andreas Beyer, Horst Bredekamp, Uwe Fleckner
and Gerhard Wolf, Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburgs Vermächtnis und die Zukunft der Ikonologie, Berlin
2018; Martin Warnke, “Vier Stichworte. Ikonologie/Pathosformel/Polarität und Ausgleich/Schlagbilder
und Bilderfahrzeuge”, in: Die Menschenrechte des Auges. Über Aby Warburg, Frankfurt am Main 1980,
pp. 53–83.
8 Quoted in: Helen Macdonald, Falcon, London 2016, p. 32.
4 Clifford Cauffin, Lucian Freud, 1947,

photograph.
is as if the relationship between foreground (sharp) and background (blurred in this

fuzzy, Hockney-like still life) corresponds to the way Freud’s absorbed and blurry gaze
centres the attention on the bird of prey and its interaction with the beholder. With
only one eye visible, the kestrel gazes sharply towards us and interacts with the photo-
graphic lens. An exchange of gaze “shootings” occurs (the falconer should not look a
hawk directly in the eyes as this upsets them). It is as if the hawk is now doing the
painter’s job in terms of looking and gathering images of the world. If Titian’s painting
became more daring, according to the negative undertone of the topic art literature of
his times, through his dimmed eyesight, one could argue that this does not happen to
Freud due to his kestrel or that he employs exactly those possibilities and limitations
of the sense of sight as a surplus (Freud was best familiar with this painting tradition
and art theory).9 Known to have kept hawks in his studio in the 1940s, Freud was
engaged with the pursuit of metaphorical “falconry” from early on, pursuing his own
“quarry” with his sharp gaze as a veritable “hunter”.10 The substitution of painter and
9 See Philip Sohm, The Artist Grows Old. The Aging of Art and Artists in Italy, 1500–1800, New Haven
and London 2007; Martin Gayford, Man with a Blue Scarf. On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud,
London 2014.
10 See Francesca Borgo, “Leonardo’s Hunts. Metaphors for the Physiology of Perception”, in: Hunting
without weapons. On the Pursuit of Images, ed. Maurice Saß, Berlin and Boston 2017, pp. 21–27; Exhib.
hawk is stressed in the physiognomy as well as the gaze. Freud’s gesture here (highly
untypical of a practical falconer with a trained hawk) is also noteworthy, as if he would
simultaneously present, protect and frame, like an image, the bird of prey (fig. 4).11
Falconry Furnitur e : The Case of the Hood
Items of falconry equipment, or “furniture”, allow elaboration on the question of illu-

sion, addressing a further form of visual engagement. When we hear the word “hood”
we primarily think of hip hop or demonstrations with people wearing hoods, alluding
to a “revolutionary” kind of modus vivendi. We also associate this term with burqas. In
the present context we will deal with a different kind of hood intended not for humans
but for animals and, more precisely, hawks, moving somewhere between subversive
resistance and wilfulness. The hood is a cover, a case, a container of a mobile living
being, as the hawk is. It addresses the question of covering and uncovering (the pres-
ence and absence of the gaze, seeing and not seeing, focussing and targeting and their
opposites).
In London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, two displays attract our attention
(fig. 5 and fig. 6): one identifies on the left, among weapons and porcelain, a falconry
hood with some red fabric cords (“braces”) which secure the hood on the hawk’s head,
and on the right we have a similar assemblage, an arrangement containing weapons as
well as a hood. It is clear that in the display on the left the objects are European,
whereas on the right Asian-Islamic influences predominate, especially when we observe
the shape of the daggers. Indeed, it is a display of objects from the Islamic-Indian sub-
continent. What is striking though is the fact that the two hoods do not differ greatly.
What we see is, in fact, a common, transcultural, technique.
The hood was brought to Europe from the Middle East, under the well-known
name of burqa. In Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II’s treatise we read: “The falcon’s
hood is a discovery of oriental peoples, the Arabs having, so far as we know, first intro-
duced it into active practice. We ourselves, when we sailed across the seas, saw it used
by them and made a study of their manner of manipulating this head covering. The
Arabian chiefs not only presented us with many kinds of falcons but sent with them
falconers expert in the use of the hood.”12 The hood should calm the hawk during the
Cat. Lucian Freud und das Tier, ed. Eva Schmidt and Ines Rüttinger, Siegen 2015.
11 This cover derives from the Italian edition of Breakfast with Lucian Freud by Geordie Greig (2013).
Unfortunately it hides the other images in Freud’s atelier: Geordie Greig, Colazione con Lucian Freud.
Ritrato di una vita nell’arte, Milan 2015.
12 See Frederick II, The Art of Falconry, ed. Casey A. Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe, Stanford 1983, p. 205.
See also Frederick’s descriptions on the hood, pp. 214–218. Robin S. Oggins, The Kings and their Hawks.
Falconry in Medieval England, New Haven 2004, p. 26. The falcon’s hood has led contemporary artists to
5 Hood, Punjab, 1880,

London, Victoria and
Albert Museum.
6 Falcon’s Hood,
England or Germany,
1600–1620, London,
Victoria and Albert
Museum.
manning and training stages, but also before its use in hunting. The goal is that the
hawk operates as if in a wild state, yet one created or enabled by the falconer. It is hence
an artificial wildness, where culture and nature merge with one another.
Falconry and ruling are interlinked with each other, something that is visible in
the famous image of Frederick II who rules with his hooded falcon by his side, a per-
formative metaphor of his sovereignty. There are dozens of images of rulers, men and
women, learning from an early age how to handle hawks. The handling of unexpected
situations makes falconry a perfect model for sovereigns to be engaged with because a
explore questions of emancipation in the Gulf region. One thinks, for instance, of Hoda Tawakol. I would
like to thank Eva Meyer-Hermann, who brought this artist to my attention. A photographic series with
men wearing huge hoods derives from Toufic Beyhum and shows another perspective on the subject.
7 Matthäus Merian the Younger, Landgraf Friedrich von Hessen-

Eschwege as Falconer, ca. 1655, oil on wood, 190 × 84 cm, Berlin, Jagdschloß
Grunewald.
hawk can never be fully tamed, when she is not wearing the hood.13 She can leave the
falconer at any time.
As one can observe here, falconry skills were handed down as practical techniques
from father to son, like in this image by the Legend of St. Madeleine Master depicting
Philippe the Handsome, who is shown with a virgula (a small implement for gently
stroking the hawk) and a hooded sparrowhawk.14 He handed down this practice to his
13 Yannis Hadjinicolaou, “‘Ich zog mir einen Falken.’ Das ikonische Nachleben der Falknerei”, in:
Pegasus. Berliner Beiträge zum Nachleben der Antike, 18/19 (2018), p. 177.
14 See here the text by Herman Roodenburg.
son Charles Vth, as a mobile kind of ancestral power, also including the technique of
hooding (plate VIII and plate IX).15
The Duke of Hessen-Eschwege is depicted by Matthäus Merian the Younger as a
heroic ruler who holds a hawk’s hood in his hand, presenting it as if he has just removed
it (fig. 7, plate II). He demonstrates that a true sovereign as a trainer-leader is the one
who knows when to take a decision, whether it is sending troops to battle or a matter
linked to hunting. The light falls from the upper left side, where another hawk – the
prized white gyrfalcon – is shown with a red hood. On the other side parts of a heron,
as quarry, are visible. The different textures of the feathers as well as the garments are
related but also differentiated from each other in bold brushstrokes. Alongside the
unhooded goshawk (a species generally difficult to make to the hood) darker shadows
predominate (chiasmus of light and dark). The Duke himself unites the modalities of
light and dark, seeing and not seeing, embodied by the hawks, hooded or otherwise,
dependent on the ruler’s intelligent handling. At the Brandenburg court, with his
mews at Lehnin16 the Duke used his hawks in his performative rituals as an unfolding
of power as well as an enhancement of the social courtly body. In this very case we can
speak of the hood as part of a certain ritual, a ritual, though, that cannot be wholly
controlled: the subversive force of the animal can totally change any given situation
within the respective hunting ritual, since it can fly away. However, failure is also part
of a ritual.17 The hood helps to control certain actions, but it also involves, as soon
as it is removed, a moment of contingency that goes beyond sovereignty. It is rather
the hawk’s sovereignty – the ruler’s acknowledgement of this fact makes him or her a
true leader.
A hood owned by Maximilian I illustrates that such material-haptic devices also
had a symbolic quality because the owner’s emblem, here the double eagle of the
Habsburgs, appears as an icon upon the hood’s gilded leather (fig. 8). When it is carried,
the hooded falcon becomes a symbol of imperial power, as it is in movement before its
use in a royal hawking expedition or during a diplomatic mission.18
In dozens of still lifes, especially in 17th century Dutch art, the hood is always
shown in a certain hierarchical, vertical, position in relationship to the hawk’s quarry,
even where the hawk itself is absent (falconry was in decline but falconry images were
produced in huge numbers, a fascinating paradox of pictorial mass mobility). The
15 Exhib. Cat. Kaiser Karl V. 1500–1558. Macht und Ohnmacht Europas, vol. 1, Bonn 2000, p. 131.
Antonie H. Jahn, Ikonographie der Bildnisse Kaiser Karls V. (1500–1558), unpublished PhD, University of
Kassel 2014, pp. 28–29.
16 Jagdschloss Grunewald. Königliche Schlösser und Gärten in Berlin, ed. Stiftung Preussische Schlösser
und Gärten, Berlin 2015, p. 21.
17 Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Rituale, Frankfurt am Main and New York 2019.
18 Most of the time, a hood has ornaments, often with dazzling colours. It is as if the “not seeing”
condition of the hawk is materialised in the hood’s colourful abstraction.
8 A hood of Maximilian I, ca. 1500, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
pictorial power of falconry furniture such as the hood implies a meta-political iconog-
raphy (as pars pro toto), a self-referentiality, an index, moving somewhere between
presence and absence. What we see is the result of a process: after its hood is removed,
the hawk targets its prey. In an image by Abraham Mignon, the painted hood underlines
its importance in the scene. In colour and texture it resembles the cockerel over which
it has, at least on a symbolic level, triumphed (fig. 9). The duality or better dialectics
of life and death, mobility of the insects and immobility of the dead animals as well as
the falconry furniture are brought together on the image’s single painted surface.
The art of painting and the art of falconry make the invisible visible and vice
versa. The work of Willem van der Aelst, a master in the specific genre of still life with
game, delivers this relationship in a nutshell (fig. 10).19 The verticality of the hoods
underlines their implicit power. The dead partridge appears quite alive through the
power of colour and lies, without any traces of blood, on a lure acting as a pillow, which
again is on a fictive marble-plate corresponding to its colours. The quarry is carefully
placed upon the instrument that not only lured the hawk but also the beholder since it
is tangibly placed up against us, slightly above the artist’s signature. The interplay
between artificiality and naturalness, between the hawk’s absence and the manifesta-
tion of its presence through the hood and the lure, addresses the core question of
19 Exhib. Cat. Elegance and Refinement. The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst, ed. Tanya Paul,
James Clifton, Arthur K. Wheelock and Julie Berger Hochstrasser, New York 2012; Exhib. Cat. Die Geburt
des Kunstmarktes. Rembrandt, Ruisdael, Van Goyen und die Künstler des Goldenen Zeitalters, ed. Franz
Wilhelm Kaiser and Michael North, Munich 2017, pp. 76–77.
9 Abraham Mignon, Still life with Dead Poultry, ca. 1663–1664, oil on canvas,
58.7 × 49,3 cm, Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum.
simulation and dissimulation, vision and tactility for both falconry and imagery, as a
multisensory experience that moves us.20
The instruments’ materiality is underlined by the trompe l’oeil effect in a painting
by Cornelis Gijsbrechts, appealing directly to the viewer’s sense of touch. By suggesting
the objects’ physicality and tangibility Gijsbrechts heightened the painting’s agency
(fig. 11).21 The hood’s prominent position among the instruments reveals itself in the
20 On the sense of touch and falconry see the contribution by Robert Felfe in this volume.
21 Exhib. Cat. Painted Illusions. The Art of Cornelis Gijsbrechts, ed. Olaf Koester, London 2000, p. 51.
10 Willem van der Aelst, Prey with Falcon’s Hood, 1671, oil on canvas,
57.5 × 45.7 cm, Schwerin, Staatliches Museum.
diagonal axis. The curtain hanging from the rod records how paintings could be pro-
tected from dust but also prevented from affecting the viewer.22 As the hood calms the
hawk, so may the closed curtain calm the viewer. At the same time, with its picture-
in-a-picture effect, the curtain offers a commentary on the art of painting. Indeed, like
the trompe l’oeil painting deceiving the viewer, the lure depicted had its trompe l’oeil
effect on the hawk, thus bringing it back to the falconer after its hood was removed.
22 Exhib. Cat. Hinter dem Vorhang. Verhüllung und Enthüllung seit der Renaissance, ed. Claudia
Blümle and Beat Wismer, Munich 2016.
11 Cornelis Gijsbrechts, Tromp l’Oeil with falconry furniture, 1671, oil on

canvas, 118 × 89 cm, Copenhagen, Rosenborg Slot.
The pictorial presence of the hooded falcon was compared in a magazine of 1893 with
another icon “as firmly impressed on the popular mind as that of St. George and the
Dragon”.23
In a family portrait from Ferrara, a man, appearing in profile, carries a hooded
hawk in a reference that extends to the window, showing men going hawking (fig. 12,
plate III). He is thus part of the outside presented in the inside, whereas his wife has
taken over the inside of the house with the child’s education. The hood carries the
23 Macdonald (as in note 8), pp. 49–50.

12 Painter from Ferrara (Antonio de Crevalcore?), Family portrait, ca. 1480, oil on
canvas, 112.3 × 90.8 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek.
respective family’s coat of arms and appears in this domesticated interior as a material-
mobile bearer of this symbol. It unfolds an abstract dimension in its haptic presence.
The red cords on the woman’s clothing correspond to the hawk’s jesses with the golden
bells underlining the question of property. However, the gesture of carrying the hawk
as well as putting his hand on his wife’s shoulder also brings an analogy between both
human and animal as, ostensibly, the man’s “property”. The hawk has its greatest
power when it sees and hunts, as is the case with the wife who is the head of the house,
especially when the husband is absent and does not try to “tame” her (things can change
rapidly, at least for a moment, as the tale of Phyllis and Aristotle eloquently tells).
13 Joachim Camerarius, Et voluisse sat est,

1599.
A letter from Isabella d´ Este to Louis XII illuminates the pragmatic use of the
coat of arms on a hood: “have three dozen hoods made for the sakers, not painted or
gilded but rather stamped with the arms and the emblem of the King, which we send
you here enclosed”.24 In this way, the coat of arms is the indexical reference of power
on a mobile device. The hood refers to a power that goes along with questions of ruling
and becomes its metaphor, for instance about the falconer’s/ruler’s decision as to when
the hawk should see and therefore hunt. Turbervile’s falconry treatise of 1575 recom-
mends that a hawk “muste have a hood of good leather, well made and fashioned, well
raysed and bossed agaynst hir eyes, deep and yet streyght ynough beneath, that it never
hurt hir”.25 This speaks for both the aesthetic and functional dimensions of the hood
and its relation between freedom and surveillance. Every hood (and indeed its use)
should serve the hawk’s individuality and, hence, is unique. The somewhat inflexible
leather must become the hawk’s second skin: if the hood is uncomfortable, she will not
24 See Giancarlo Malacarne, Lords of the Sky. Falconry in Mantua at the Time of the Gonzagas, Mantua
2011, p. 134.
25 Arthur MacGregor, Animal Encounters. Human and Animal Interaction in Britain from the Norman
Conquest to World War I, London 2012, p. 182.
remain calm. Hoods are often decorated with feathers alluding to lightness and
flying,26 properties of the hawk herself, bearing a dynamic dialectic relation to the
leather’s inflexible authority as an image vessel.
A famous scene from A Clockwork Orange is a counter example to the hood with
seemingly similar goals. The opening of the eyes of young, undisciplined, Alex should
confront him with moving images, with the intention that he becomes disgusted by his
own former misdeeds; he undergoes a disciplinary of dubious means with the inten-
tion of taming his eyes’ visual stimuli. Something similar happens with the hood or
with a prior step known as “seeling” in which, traditionally, the hawk’s eyes were held
closed with a stitch for the duration of the initial manning process. There is also an
emblematic dimension to this, with an image from 1598 that goes hand-in-hand with
questions of obedience.27 A falcon wearing a hood (velamentum, meaning membrane,
since images were also seen as membranes of the visual realm), the serpentine braces
of which splay out like thunderbolts, flies with dangling jesses above a mountainous
landscape. This image is linked with the motto et voluisse sat est (“wanting is enough”
– i.e. often a small obstacle stands in the way of high pursuits but nevertheless a noble
person goes against it) (fig. 13).28 This idea is linked with someone who adamantly
pursues his or her goal of freedom, despite the difficulties. The hooded falcon’s image
is connected here to contradictory forces that involve the question of tamed and
untamed, pertaining to visual perception (or not) manifested through the ritualised
technique of the hood as a mobile wearing object device.
The image cult of falconry and its political power
In a very dense passage from Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly, illustrated by Hans Holbein
the Younger who painted famous portraits of falconers, 29 the Dutch humanist brings
image and animal (in this case hawks, as visible from the drawing) into explicit rela-
tion (fig. 14): “I cannot pass by without bestowing some remarks upon another sort of
fools; they keep a long list of their predecessors, while they themselves are but tran-
scripts of their forefathers’ dumb statues, and degenerate even into those very beasts
which they carry in their coat of arms as ensigns of their nobility […] they cry up those
26 See Thor Huson, Feathers. The Evolution of a Natural Miracle, New York 2011. See also the text by
Monika Wagner in the present volume.
27 Another emblem showing a flying falcon with jesses on her feet speaks of a perilous quest for free-
dom (Perniciosa libertas). See Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne, Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbild-
kunst des XVI. und XVII Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart 1967, p. 782.
28 See Baudouin van den Abeele’s contribution to this volume for tracking down the motif of the
hooded falcon as a symbol of hope (post tenebras spero lucem), which can also be connected here with
freedom (at least in a broader context).
29 See for instance Oskar Bätschmann and Pascal Griener, Hans Holbein, Cologne 2000.
14 Hans Holbein on the page of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, p. 63 (Berlin 1950 after the Basel
edition with the drawings of Holbein).
brutes almost equal to gods”.30 It is important to note Erasmus’ much discussed pre-
Reformation critique of images, in this case reinforced through Holbein’s drawing
with a nobleman carrying a hooded hawk, something that became an “emblem” of
falconry itself: Erasmus refers, not accidentally, to a coat of arms with beasts. Image
and Falcon move between Philia and Phobia, something addressing the nature of the
image itself. We are, for instance, informed how falconers went to church with ex voti
that depicted hawks and prayed for the return of lost ones.31 It is also worth mention-
ing that Luther accused Pope Leo X of neglecting his own duties because of his passion
for hawking (hence pursuing earthly amusements, such as falconry, instead of taking
the road of spirituality).32 This idea was already expressed in the case of Frederick II,
30 Erasmus, Lob der Torheit. Mit den Randzeichnungen der Basler Ausgabe von Hans Holbein d. J.,
Berlin 1950, p. 63.
31 John Cummins, The Hound and The Hawk. The Art of Medieval Hunting, London 1988, p. 211.
32 Robert Seidenader, Kulturgeschichte der Falknerei mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Bayern. Von
Augustinus bis Kurfürst Maximilian I., Datensammlung, Vol. 1, Munich 2007, p. 205. A contemporary
source says of Leo X: “Gentle and peaceable by nature, he was, nonetheless, so fiercely attached to this
who was praised but also condemned by contemporary ecclesiastical and political
voices for his attachment to falconry and for neglecting state affairs.33
Hawking and state business are interlinked with each other. Already in Oneiro-
criticon, a book on the interpretation of dreams by the Basra Scholar Achmet (end of
7th century), we find the idea that “the hawk and falcon signify a position of power
second after the king”.34 The Boke of St. Albans from 1486 contains a well-known social
commentary in the form of a taxonomy of trained hawks corresponding to different
positions in the court (and wider society): the king is associated with the gyrfalcon,
the saker falcon with a knight and so on.35
The transformation of a natural into a political landscape and the falcon, flying
high above the territory, substituting the ruler, defines the core of falconry’s political
power. Culture, the ruler’s handling of the falcon, was thus turned into nature and,
vice versa, the successful hawk’s quarry could be turned into culture, into the hunting
trophies, pictorial or physical, collected by the ruler. At the same time, the art of fal-
conry had to be cultivated. Europe’s high-ranking nobles were raised in this art during
their childhood years, just as they were taught the arts of dancing and horsemanship.
The true sovereign has to learn to rule and to be ruled by, just as the hawk can never
be fully tamed since it remains wild. The non-verbal communication between equals
(human and hawk) form, together with the horse, hound and indeed the quarry itself,
an inseparable and interdependent chain. The ability to handle unexpected situations
which falconry necessitates makes it a perfect model for sovereigns to be engaged with.
This idea, alluding to the notion of the shepherd, is referred to in a famous fresco
depicting a falconer leaving the town to go hawking in the countryside – an allegory
of “good government” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Dating from around 1340, the fresco
in Siena’s town hall showing The Effects of Good Government in the Countryside, portrays
a more participative moment beyond aristocracy (fig. 15).36 In this context, it is particu-
pastime that he spared not his wrath for anyone, were he stranger or known to him, when he acted against
the duty of falconry.” Christian Antoine de Chamerlat, Falconry and Art, London 1987, p. 113.
33 Michael Menzel, “Die Jagd als Naturkunst. Zum Falkenbuch Kaiser Friedrichs II.”, in: Natur im
Mittelalter, ed. Peter Dilg, Berlin 2003, p. 358.
34 The Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Medieval Greek and Arabic Treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams,
trans. and ed. Steven M. Oberhelman, Lubbock 1991, p. 239; Henry Maguire, “Signs and Symbols of Your
Always Victorious Reign. The Political Ideology and Meaning of Falconry in Byzantium,” in: Images of
the Byzantine World. Visions, Messages and Meanings. Studies Presented to Leslie Brubaker, ed. Angeliki
Lymberopoulou, Farnham 2011, p. 141.
35 Macdonald (as in note 8), pp. 52–53.
36 Nicolai Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art: The Frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and
Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico”, in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21/3–4
(1958), pp. 179–207; Quentin Skinner, “Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The Artist as Political Philosopher” in:
Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit, ed. Hans Belting and Dieter Blume, Munich 1989, pp. 85–103.
Cf. Max Seidel, Dolce Vita. Ambrogio Lorenzettis Porträt des Sieneser Staates, Basel 1999; Quentin Skinner
“Ambrogio Lorenzettis Buon governo Frescoes. Two old questions, two new answers”, in: Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 62 (1999), pp. 1–28. The rider on the horse is inspired by De Arte
15 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Effects of Good Government, ca. 1338, fresco, Siena, Palazzo Publico.
larly interesting that the whole scene is given from a bird’s-eye view, underlining the
role of the hawk to come.37 In a detail, one can discern another falconer already hawk-
ing in this cultivated landscape, where other people are also pursuing their daily activ-
ities.38 It is not by chance that the allegory of Security39 is shown above the other fal-
coner, as if she would extend, in an abstract way, the pursuit of quarry by hawks during
Venandi cum Avibus claim Randolph Starn and Loren Partridge, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy,
1300–1600, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1992, pp. 55 and pp. 76–77.
37 See Andreas Beyer, “Bildnis und Territorium”, in: Sprezzatura. Geschichte und Geschichtserzählung
zwischen Fakt und Fiktion, ed. Johannes von Müller, Camillo von Müller and Lukas Burkart, Goettingen
2016, p. 31. Beyer underlines that it is neither about the government of a single person, but rather of a
communal council. For the aerial and cartographic view, see Tanja Michalsky’s text in this volume.
38 Herfried Münkler, Politische Bilder, Politik der Metaphern, Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 60.
39 The motto reads: “senza paura ognúom franco camini, e lavorando semini ciascuno, mentre che tal
comuno. Manterra questa donna.” See Seidel (as in note 36), p. 45. The relation to the city and hence to
justice makes clear the fresco’s communal function. It is a kind of mirror image corresponding to the
habitus of every Sienese citizen. Rubinstein (as in note 36), p. 184 comments upon the role of republican
thought and its relation to the motif of Securitas: “In the Italian city Republics it was hailed as to be able
to secure civic peace and unity without recourse to despotism. It could thus serve as a republican alterna-
tive to the claims of the despots and their followers that only an autocratic ruler could bring salvation to
the towns torn by fractions and social struggle.”
16 Giotto, Justice, 1304–1306, fresco, Padua, Arena

Capella.
a peaceful period that contributes in general to the whole of Sienese society.40 This has
a certain affinity, as already discussed by scholars, with Giotto’s depiction of Justice
from his Arena Frescoes, on which the inscription (freely translated) states: “as long as
Justice’s arm reaches, the brave soldier hunts, one sings and another trades” (fig. 16).41
40 Bram Kempers, “Gesetz und Kunst. Ambrogio Lorenzettis Fresken im Palazzo Pubblico in Siena“,
in: Belting and Blume (as in note 36), p. 78. The issue is, however, somewhat more complicated than a
strict divide between city and countryside because they both come under the auspices of the same territory.
This is manifested especially in the image of the falconer who connects nature and culture through his
practice. In this sense, Philippe Descola’s opinion that there is a clear dualism between nature and culture
holds firm. See Philippe Descola, Jenseits von Natur und Kultur, Berlin 2011 (French 2005). Descola is
criticised by, for instance, Hartmut Böhme, Aussichten der Natur. Naturästhetik in Wechselwirkung von
Natur und Kultur, Berlin 2017, p. 42.
41 See Hans Belting, “Das Bild als Text. Wandmalerei und Literatur im Zeitalter Dantes”, in: Belting
and Blume (as in note 36), pp. 37–39. The connection to the falconers is not made; Stephan Albrecht,
“Gemeinwohl”, in: Handbuch der politischen Ikonographie, ed. Uwe Fleckner, Martin Warnke and Hendrik
Ziegler, vol. 1, Munich 2011, p. 403. Cf. Skinner (as in note 36), p. 13 and p. 25, who comments that the
detail with the riders is taken from Lorenzetti. See also Klaus Krüger, Politik der Evidenz: Öffentliche
Bilder als Bilder der Öffentlichkeit im Trecento, Goettingen 2015.
It is notable that the riders on the left are not merely huntsmen but falconers, bringing,
as their extension, justice and security in a time of “good government”. They are part
of a category of privileged individuals assigned the authority to govern. The peasant
had no hunting rights, or only had them in accordance with the sovereign. Beyond
this, falconry is clearly perceived as an activity, practiced at a time with no indication
of war which would denote, according to Lorenzetti, bad government.
In the 13th century Spanish translation of Moamin’s 9th century Arabic treatise
on falconry (its author was presumably an Arab falconer given his name), the idea of
knowing how to hunt with falcons means knowing how to govern, and this stems from
a philosophical attitude (“saber governar es una grand partida de filosofia”).42 Accord-
ing to Moamin, falconry imitates true life, and the skills that kings need to exercise
therein so that their rule may be successful. In a similar vein, Machiavelli mentions
how the Principe has to understand the nature of animals as well as that of humans:
making the correct use of this knowledge enhances his sovereignty.43 He also under-
lines the importance of hunting and getting to know the landscape of one’s territory
(as political landscape), which is in fact a preparation for war, a topos that is found in
many cultures.44
Falconry, as a practice in political representation, simultaneously involves the
shepherd and the wolf theme, bringing a dialectic tension (cura publica and the war
paradigm) that is always involved in its pursuit.
Image, Weapon, Falcon
Many mobile objects that broaden the sovereign’s ruling power carry the name Falcon,
for instance jet fighters or missiles. The deep-rooted connection between hawks and
weapons, their substitutional relationship, shapes a living, bodily metaphor, lending an
iconic and hence symbolic quality.45 This idea also extends towards the direction of
the gaze as a connection between falcon and aircraft, as is visually captured in the 1944
film A Canterbury Tale, preluding the analogy between falcon and drone (fig. 17).
Through the gaze of a male falconer-soldier, a falcon’s transformation into an aircraft
becomes evident as a continuous line through successive images. The gaze makes the
42 Barbara Schlieben, “Wissen am alfonsinischen Hof - Der kastilische Moamin als Beispiel für höfi-
sches Wissen”, in: Kulturtransfer und Hofgesellschaft im Mittelalter. Wissenskultur am sizilianischen und
kastilischen Hof im 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Johannes Fried and Gundula Grebner, Berlin 2008, p. 335.
43 Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe. Der Fürst, ed. Pilipp Rippel, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 134–135.
44 A miniature from the Museum in Aurangabad (Maharashtra, India) attests to this with a hawking
scene, showing a falcon’s triumph over a heron, above a battle in which elephant riders kill a warrior on
a horse. S.B. Deshmukh, Maratha Painting, Part 1, Aurangabad 1992.
45 See Klaus Krüger’s contribution to this volume.
17 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, A Canterbury Tale, 1944, film stills.
18 Adolf Menzel, Falcon attacking a Dove, 1844, oil on paper concealed on wood,
102.7 × 119 cm, Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
19 Laurent Grasso, In Air, 2009, film still, Galerie Perrotin, Paris.
connection to what is pursued46 and, thus, we understand that seeing is hunting.47 The
sequence commences with pilgrims in the Middle Ages. A medieval falconer is trans-
formed into a soldier at the peak of the Second World War, when the film was made.48
These transformations occur right at the film’s beginning as a kind of frontispiece for
the whole, in which characters and themes from Chaucer’s original Canterbury Tales
are transformed into a wider tale of Britain’s wartime experiences, just as the falcon is
turned, as if in a natural development, from a bird of prey to a direct weapon.
Adolf Menzel’s painting of a Falcon Attacking a Dove graphically recalls not only
the allusion to war but also the connection between weapon, image and gaze as a single,
yet tense, entity since the painting, with its dramatic couleur, literally served as a target
for a Prussian shooting club (fig. 18).49 The painting somehow foreshadows the avian
aerial combats that happened less than three decades later between Prussia and France.
In 1870 during the Prussian siege of Paris, the French defenders of the city sent out
46 See Blickzähmung und Augentäuschung: Zu Jacques Lacans Bildtheorie, ed. Anne von der Heiden
and Claudia Blümle, Berlin and Zurich 2005. Cf. Georges Didi-Huberman, Was wir sehen blickt uns an.
Zur Metapsychologie des Bildes, Munich 1999 (French 1995).
47 James Elkins, The Object Stares Back. On the Nature of Seeing, San Diego, New York and London
1997, p. 11 and p. 21: “looking is just hunting or being hunted.”
48 Macdonald (as in note 8), pp. 150–151 even mentions that falconry “unites powerfully (and) natu-
ralises the ideology of military airpower […] War and Nature are not separated.”
49 Nationalgalerie Berlin. Das XIX Jahrhundert, Katalog der Ausgestellten Werke, ed. Angelica Wesen-
berg and Eve Förschl, Leipzig 2001, p. 264.
330 carrier pigeons, but the majority were caught by the Prussians’ trained falcons:
only 50 managed to reach their goal.50
The French artist Laurent Grasso brought a further point to this question in his
2009 video work On Air (fig. 19, plate IV), in which a camera was fitted to a falcon
prior to flight. This practice was also used during the First World War with pigeons
that took thousands of chance images from the front. A series of images results out of
these flights that are non-perceivable for the beholder, since they derive from the fast-
est animal on earth. The sharpness of the falcon’s sight dissolves into amorphic images
for the viewer. At the same time, another camera that accompanies the falcon from a
distance brings accuracy and fuzziness, slowness and fastness, animal and human,
into a playful interaction.51 A living and intelligent weapon is used, one that is not
explicitly aggressive but which acts in an intrinsic way against other invisible powers.
The low-tech drone falcon, which is much more intelligent than the high tech and non-
animated one,52 engages the question of vision, its sharpness and blurriness, in a para-
doxical kind of way that unleashes its iconic power by relating it to the practice of
image-making itself.53
50 Malin Gewinner, Die Anthropomorpha: Tiere im Krieg, Berlin 2017, p. 107. This tactic took place
during the Second World War with British falcons against pigeons used by Axis forces. See Daily Mirror
(June 5th, 1945) “Jap spy pigeons to face falcon terror.” See also Paul Beecroft and Peter Devers, We Were
Falconers, Marlborough 2018, pp. 39–40. I wish to thank David Horobin for this reference.
51 See the contribution by Andrea Pinotti in this volume.
52 See in general Gregoire Chamayou, Drone Theory, New York 2015 (French 2013). Surveillance
systems bear names such as falcon and kestrel. The latter is an American drone in the form of a Zeppelin
close to the US/Mexican border. See Drone Theory, p. 35 and p. 203.
53 See Peter Geimer’s paper in this volume.
Embodied Interactions
Andrea Pinotti
What is it like to be a Hawk?

Inter-specific Empathy in the Age of Immersive Virtual Environments1
Views from above
The fascination exerted by the capacity for flight (one of the most ancient anthropo-
logical desires, as attested by the myth of Icarus) has encouraged an identification of
human beings with animals. Men have desperately tried to put themselves in the shoes
(or rather in the wings) of birds. Unsurprisingly, therefore, echoes of such attempts
have reverberated through the centuries in the history of visual arts and, more gener-
ally, of image production.
A particularly interesting case is offered by the so-called “bird’s-eye view”: an
elevated view of an object or of a landscape from above, as if the observer were a bird.
Such views are often employed in the making of blueprints, plans and maps for both
natural and urban spaces. Remarkable examples are Leonardo’s Bird’s-Eye View of Sea
Coast (ca. 1515) (fig. 1) or Jan Micker’s Bird’s-Eye View of Amsterdam (ca. 1652). Such
a view is complementary to the opposite perspective of the so-called “worm’s-eye
view” (in German “frog’s-eye view”: Froschperspektive; in Italian sottinsù), the view of
an object from below, as if the observer were a worm.
It is difficult to establish the precise origin of the bird’s-eye view genre of repre-
sentation. Some scholars claim it can even be traced back to archaic times, as in, for
instance, the case of a bird’s-eye view petroglyphic topographic rendering located north
of Prescott (Arizona), attributed to the Hohokam people2. Certainly, ever-increasing
1 This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. [834033 AN-ICON]).
I wish to thank here Federica Cavaletti, Pietro Conte, Anna Caterina Dalmasso, Barbara Grespi, Giancarlo
Grossi, and Giacomo Mercuriali for their valuable suggestions.
2 James A. Dockal and Michael S. Smith, “Evidence for a Prehistoric Petroglyph Map in Central Ari-
zona.” in: Kiva: The Journal of Southwestern Archaeology and History, 4 (2005), pp. 413–420. See also the
contribution of Tanja Michalsky in the present volume.
32   A ndr ea Pinotti
1 Leonardo, Bird’s-Eye View of Sea Coast South of Rome, ca. 1515, pen, ink and
watercolour on paper, 272 × 400 mm, Windsor, Royal Library.
efforts in aerial representation can be recognised from early modern times3 through
recourse to military ballooning in the Napoleonic and Franco-Prussian wars, down to
our contemporary aeroplane4, satellite and drone views.5 It is no surprise that many
aircraft have been named after birds, with a remarkable occurrence of hawks and fal-
cons. Amongst numerous examples from the early days of human flight, one might
consider the Nieuport Nighthawk fighter (first flight in 1919), the Sikorsky UH-60
Black Hawk utility helicopter (first flight in 1974), the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Glo-
bal Hawk surveillance drone (first flight in 1998), the HawkEye micro-satellite
(launched in 2018), the Dassault Falcon business jet (first flight in 1963), the SpaceX
Falcon 9 rocket (first launched in 2010) and the TwoDots Falcon drone (released in
2016). We should not omit the Millennium Falcon, the famous spaceship in the Star
Wars saga.
3 Andrew John Martin, “Das Bild vom Fliegen, dokumentierte Flugversuche und das Aufkommen
von Ansichten aus der Vogelschau zu Beginn der frühen Neuzeit.”, in: Fliegen und Schweben. Annäherung
an eine menschliche Sensation, ed. Dieter R. Bauer and Wolfgang Behringer, Munich 1997, pp. 223–240;
Daniela Stroffolino, L’Europa “a volo d’uccello”: dal Cinquecento ad Alfred Guesdon, Naples 2012.
4 Wolfgang Sonne, “Weisungen der Vogelschau: Luftbild und Ästhetik der Gesamtstadt im frühen
20. Jahrhundert.” in: Architektur Fotografie. Darstellung – Verwendung – Gestaltung, ed. Hubert Locher and
Rolf Sachsse, Berlin 2012, pp. 84–96.
5 Andreas F. Beitin, “Imagination, Elevation, Battlefield Automation. From the Elevated View to Battle
Drones”, in: Exhib. Cat. Mapping Spaces. Networks of Knowledge in 17 th Century Landscape Painting, ed.
Ulrike Gehring and Peter Weibel, Munich 2013, pp. 460–471.
W h at is it lik e to be a H aw k? 33
Despite an obvious family resemblance among the various perspectives generally

termed “view from above”, it is crucial to underline the fact that, prior to the advent of
manned flight, the term “bird’s-eye view” designates an imagined viewpoint, as distinct
from a mere high vantage point allowing direct and actual observation, as from a
mountain, from a tower or from an aircraft. Human beings have attempted to adopt
the perspective-taking of flight through an imaginative operation.
The evolutionary link from an imagined bird’s view to actual aerial photography
or video-recording taken from manned or unmanned aircraft could be identified in
experiments like Julius Neubronner’s Bird Photography, patented in 1907. Neubronner
designed a camera that could be fastened to a pigeon’s body and would automatically
take pictures during the bird’s flight.6 Unsurprisingly, this animal-machine combina-
tion was employed in both the First and Second World Wars as a reconnaissance aircraft.
The CIA’s surveillance experiments with pigeon cameras went on until the Seventies:
“Pigeon imagery was taken within hundreds of feet of the target so it was much more
detailed than imagery from other collection platforms. (Aircraft took photos from
tens of thousands of feet and satellites from hundreds of miles above the target). […]
Details of pigeon missions are still classified”.7 Neubronner’s integration of animal
flight and a mechanical eye can be considered as a precursor of recent visual practices,
such as the Dubai World Record Eagle Flight set in 2015 as the highest recorded bird
flight from a man-made structure: Darshan, a male imperial eagle with a camera
installed on his back, majestically descended the 830 metres of the Burj Khalifa sky-
scraper to the arm of his trainer, Jacques-Olivier Travers.8
A severe caveat: Nagel
From the viewpoint of the phenomenology of perception, the human imaginative

adoption of the bird’s-eye perspective is not without problems. In a famous article
published in 1974, American philosopher Thomas Nagel asked: “What is it like to be a
bat?” Is it actually possible for human beings to understand the experiential world of
these fascinating creatures? His answer was definitely a negative one. In the context of
a radical criticism of reductionist approaches to the Mind-Body problem, aiming at
explaining mental phenomena as effects of physical causes, Nagel focuses on the
notion of the “subjective character of experience” as the mark of consciousness: “Fun-
6 Franziska Brons, “Bilder im Fluge: Julius Neubronners Brieftaubenfotografie,” in: Fotogeschichte,

Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie, 100 (2006), pp. 17–36; Julius G. Neubronner, The
Pigeon Photographer, Bolzano 2017.
7 From the virtual tour of the official CIA Museum website: https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-
museum/experience-the-collection/#!/artifact/24 (accessed June 8 2020).
8 See the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um8M9azpmb4 (accessed June 8 2020).
34   A ndr ea Pinotti
damentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something
that it is like to be that organism – something it is like for the organism”.9 This “for” – the
pour-soi of the experience, its phenomenological implications – is precisely what his
argumentation deals with. “Like” in the expression “what is it like” therefore does not
imply any form of analogical resemblance between two different experiences, but
rather means: “How it is for the subject himself?”10
In order to develop his reflections, Nagel has recourse to the intuitive case of the
bat: “Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some
time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a funda-
mentally alien form of life”.11 This alien character is clearly illustrated by comparing
the operation of “location” as performed by both bats and humans: namely of the
procedures of discriminating size, distance, shape, motion and texture of objects in
the space. Whereas humans locate objects mainly by vision, bats accomplish this via
sonar: they emit high-frequency sound pulses through their shrieks and detect objects
by measuring their return when reflected: their kind of location is echolocation. How-
ever, Nagel argues that bat sonar, “though clearly a form of perception, is not similar
in its operation to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it
is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine. This appears to create dif-
ficulties for the notion of what it is like to be a bat”.12
From this introductory presentation of the problem, it appears that “subjective”
in the above-mentioned expression “subjective character of experience” refers not so
much to the individual aspect of experience (as lived by this particular bat or by this
particular man), but rather to the specific access to experience itself: namely to the
experience as lived by bats rather than by humans insofar they are species of beings.
Nagel employs the term “type” to refer to the possibility of objectively ascribing expe-
riences in the third person, provided this person is sufficiently similar to us so that we
can adopt his or her point of view. Of course, individual variations within a type can
be significant: within the human species, blind subjects accomplish location tasks by
tactile or auditory stimuli, and the understanding of such practices from the viewpoint
of non-visually-impaired subjects raises difficulties similar to those related to the
human understanding of bat sonar.
Are there practicable ways to solve that problem, provided that we as humans do
not possess a sense comparable to the bat’s sonar? Scientific explanation of bats’ nervous,
sensory and motor systems evidently does not offer us the “experience” of a bat. One
possible way could be the recourse to imagination. We could try to imagine what is it
9 Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” in: The Philosophical Review, 4 (1974), p. 436.
10 Nagel (as in note 9), p. 440.
W h at is it lik e to be a H aw k? 35
like to have inter-digital webbing enabling us to fly, to catch insects with our mouth,
to hang upside down by one’s feet from the ceiling, even to perceive the surroundings
through an acoustic reflection. However, objects Nagel, “in so far as I can imagine this
(which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat
behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a
bat”.13 Since imagination is a faculty which works on materials provided by previous
experience via operations of additions, subtractions and modifications, and since my
previous experience does not entail anything even close to being a bat, imagining will
not help me at all in this attempt to understand what is it like to be a bat.
The species-specific constitution of my human experience prevents me from
being able to even imagine what it could be like to be a bat; even if I imagine undergoing
a progressive metamorphosis transforming me into a bat, “nothing in my present con-
stitution enables me to imagine what the experiences of such a future stage of myself
thus metamorphosed would be like”.14
Are there further alternatives other than the imaginative strategy to be pursued?
Nagel considers a Martian scientist who is not endowed with vision but tries neverthe-
less to understand what a rainbow is: the rainbow is a phenomenon which is not reduc-
ible to its visual appearance as offered to a human viewpoint, and which could be
investigated in its objective, physical features. However, if we talk of “experience”, such
“objective” features must, necessarily, be translated into “subjective” experiencing,
both for the Martian and for the human being, who remain, ultimately, alien to each
other:
Members of radically different species may both understand the same physical
events in objective terms, and this does not require that they understand the
phenomenal forms in which those events appear to the senses of members of
other species. Thus, it is a condition of their referring to a common reality that
their more particular viewpoints are not part of the common reality that they
both apprehend. The reduction can succeed only if the species-specific view-
point is omitted from what is to be reduced.15
“Viewpoint”, here, evidently means not simply visual perception, but rather perception
through the senses as a whole, as configured by species-specific determinations. In this
respect, no species can put itself in other species’ shoes. No perspective taking, no
empathy is ever possible here. Transcending inter-species barriers is precluded if we
insist upon assuming a subjective phenomenological stance.

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of As the hart
panteth
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.
Title: As the hart panteth
Author: Hallie Erminie Rives
Release date: May 31, 2022 [eBook #68207]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: G. W. Dillingham Co, 1898
Credits: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by University
of California libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AS THE

HART PANTETH ***
AS THE HART PANTETH
BY
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES.
NEW YORK:
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY
G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers,
MDCCCXCVIII.
[All rights reserved.]
TO
A MEMORY.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE CHILD 7
THE GIRL 104
THE WOMAN 185
AS THE HART PANTETH.
THE CHILD.
————◆————
CHAPTER I.
He sat just outside the lofty doorway, that opened between the
bare hall and front verandah. The great white columns held a wild
clematis vine, the leaves of which almost concealed the bricks where
the plaster had fallen off. Presently a child came out with a violin in
her hand. She went up to him, and laying her full cheek against his
shrunken one, caressed him. Her blue eyes that went black in an
instant, from the pupils’ swift dilation, had the direct gaze of one
knowing nothing of the world and never fearing to be misunderstood.
She was slim yet strong; her waving hair that fell softly about her
face was the color of sunburnt cornsilk, her skin ovalling from it,
smooth and white, like a bursting magnolia bud.
“Grandpa, I can play ‘The Mocking Bird’ for you now.”
“Play it, God’s child; play it,” he said.
As she leaned against the column and began playing, his face,
old and worn with many griefs, seemed, for a moment, rejuvenated
by the spirit of his lost youth. His heart stirred strangely within him,
and he was minded of another slim, little girl, who came down to the
gate to meet him when the day was done in the long ago. She had
the same glorious hair, and tender, fearless eyes and love for him.
But that was more than forty years gone by and she was dead.
As the strains became fuller and sweeter, a bird began twittering,
trilling among the leaves, imitating the sounds it heard.
“Listen. Do you hear that, Esther?” whispering, as he searched
for a sight of the singer. “There it is. It’s a mocking bird,” he said,
pointing to the young thing, as the fluting feathers on its throat stood
out like the pipes of an organ. Its song, accompanying the tune,
never ceased until the violin was tossed upon the bench and the
child was in the old man’s arms.
“That was beautiful, beautiful!” His eyes were filled with tears of
enthusiasm that fell upon her hair.
“Your mother used to play that, when she was young.” He spoke
with the weight of profound emotion, that glowed in his eyes, and
quivered on his lips.
“And did the bird sing with her?” a softer look coming upon the
childish face.
“I don’t remember that it did, though she was always a friend to
the birds that built their nests about us. She kept the boys from
breaking them up or trapping them. Every spring they sang here in
the trees. They seemed to know that she was looking after them.
That must have been what she was born for. She was always
watching over something or somebody.” He swallowed hard. “I can
see her now, bending over her work, late at night, stitching away,
with her fingers on those gray clothes for the boys in the army—your
Uncle Billy and your father.”
“Was she little, then?” Esther inquired, while with one hand she
clasped his wrist, and with the other stroked his brow.
“No. When the war broke out, she was just about to be married to
your father, who had been appointed Captain under General Lee.
She made a coat for him and quilted money in the collar. She had a
way of doing things that nobody would have thought of. You remind
me of her.” He folded his hands across his stick and was silent for a
moment. “There is much about her life that I want you to know, and
bear in mind, now that you are getting old enough to understand.
She had great hopes for you, for your music. I’ve been thinking how
proud she would be if she could know that you had got along well
enough to be invited to play at the University—on commencement
night at that. I ask nothing higher for you than that you make such a
woman as your mother.”
They did not see the old negro, ragged to the skin, coming
around the corner of the house, carrying his discolored straw hat in
one hand and mopping his face on a faded cotton handkerchief.
CHAPTER II.
“G’mornin’, Marse Hardin.”
“Howdy, Sandy. Where did you come from? I thought you’d gone
clear out of the country, for good.”
“Nor sir, nor sir. You jes’ let a nigger git a taste of dis here spring
water, and he’s charmed, conjured, he kyant stay away if he do go.
But I come back, dis time, to see my young marster—Marse Davy
Pool.”
“How is he to-day?”
“He daid. Dat’s what I was sent to tell you. Dey guinter bury him
up at de old place.”
“I am sorry to hear of his death, Sandy. He was the best one of
the boys.”
“Dat’s so, sir; ’tain’t nobody guine to miss him like his mammy do.
She’s told me to ax you for your hoss and buggy. She’s afeared of
the boys’ hosses, dey keep such wild uns. Marse Davy sold his’n,
dat was the onliest one she would ride behind. She said she wanted
Marse Hardin Campbell’s. It was so trusty and gentlelike.”
“I was going to use it after dinner.” Mr. Campbell hesitated.
“Send it on, grandpa. Send it on.” Esther saw the inquiring look
her grandfather turned upon her. “Something will turn up.”
“Suppose it shouldn’t; would you be disappointed?” he asked.
“I never count on being disappointed,” she responded, quickly.
“Ain’t she some kin to Miss Mary Campbell?” The negro’s face
lighted as he asked the question.
“That’s her daughter, Miss Esther Powel.”
“It ’peared to me like I seed de favor in her face. Ev’ybody loved
your mammy, honey. ’Twarn’ nobody that didn’t,” he said, turning to
look again at Esther.
“The horse is in the pasture.” Mr. Campbell turned to the child.
“Can’t you run and show him where the bridle is?” Bareheaded, she
bounded down the steps, and motioned to the old negro to follow.
She took the bridle and swung it over his arm. “Mind the foot log.
Uncle Sandy, the hand rail has been washed away. The pasture is
over the creek. There is Selam now, under the sweet gum tree.” She
pointed. “You will find the harness in the carriage house here.”
She watched him go over the slope to the creek, then stood
gazing about her in childish contemplation. It was nearly noon. The
shadow straightening in the doorway indicated it.
Mr. Campbell looked and saw her. His heart warmed toward her
comeliness; moreover she was sweet of nature and had a ready
smile even for those who had not been kind to her. Suddenly she
disappeared in the direction of the carriage house. She feared that
her pony could not pull the heavy vehicle that alone was left to take
her to the University. It taxed her strength to draw the heavy bar from
across the carriage house door. She sprang backward, as she
dropped it upon the ground; then went in to examine the carriage
that had not been used since she was a baby, almost fifteen years
before. The clumsy conveyance had small iron steps that let down—
steps that her mother’s child feet had pressed in climbing to the seat.
The wheels were so heavy and cumbersome that she shook her
head doubtfully. The green satin lining was in shreds; the worn
leather seats covered with tufts of hair, while here and there a dead
leaf or twig was tangled in its coarse mesh. It had required a pair to
draw it in those old days. She had forgotten that. The tongue was
held up in its position above by a girder in the loft. Esther gave it a
strong, hard pull; the tongue fell forward, and as she skipped out of
its path the lumbering old carriage went rolling down the incline, and
clouds of dust, as though indignant at being disturbed, sullenly rose
and fell about her.
Old and dilapidated harness that hung down from the walls
swayed slowly in the general commotion. Esther wiped the dust from
her eyes and drew a long breath, looking defiantly at the result. She
looked down. There, at her feet, lay a bird, fluttering beside its fallen
nest. Her face lost its look of defiance.
“You poor, little thing,” bending down and cuddling it to the
softness of her cheek. “Don’t die, please, don’t die!” she said, in
dismay. “It will break my heart if I have killed you.” With tears
streaming down her face she ran swiftly to the house.
“Grandpa, do something for it,” laying it in his hand. “Can you
save it? It’s a mocking bird, too. I shook it out of the carriage.”
“They have nested there for years,” he said as he drew the wings
gently through his fingers. “They are not broken,” he assured her.
“Are you sure it will live?” She was looking at him with frightened
eyes.
“Live? Yes; and have a nest and young ones of its own next year.
It is only stunned. Leave it in the parlor where it will be safe from the
cats and it will be all right soon.”
A faint rumbling noise broke in upon their voices. They looked up
to listen. It was like the sound of a wagon rolling. “Put it away, quick,
and run to the creek to show them how to cross the ford.” They had
kept close watch over the passers since the winter hauling had cut
deep holes in the bed of the stream. It was a treacherous crossing.
Closing the door upon her charge, Esther ran through the garden,
the nearest way. She sped with the lithe agility of a young fawn, and
before the newcomer was fairly into the stream she was there giving
directions. The mountain stream ran fleet between its low banks,
winding in haste through the valley. Tall sycamores, sentinels in
silver armor, stood beside it on either hand.
CHAPTER III.
Mr. Campbell stood watching. Very soon the front gate opened
and a boy came in, driving two white mules, with red tassels on their
bridle bits. Amazement filled his eyes when he saw that it was a
wagon load of coffins, and on the topmost one Esther sat smiling. As
they drove up near the door, he went out to help her down.
“Didn’t I tell you something would turn up, grandpa; this wagon is
going right by the University this evening.” She threw her arms about
his neck; her laugh rang out in pure triumph. “Hitch your team, young
man; a boy will come to take it out and feed it.” When they saw
Esther again she was ready for her jaunt. Her violin was in its case;
her fresh white organdie folded with as much care as she gave to
anything—duty and care were unknown to her. Her visit to the
University by such a conveyance would be the extreme limit of
indulgence, yet she had no thought of being denied.
“I am ready,” she announced at table. Mr. Campbell burst into a
laugh, half of annoyance, yet touched with the ring of true
amusement.
“I really believe you would go.”
“I’d go on foot if necessary to keep my promise,” she answered
quickly.
“How could the college folks know that Mr. David Pool had to be
buried to-day when they printed my name on the programme?”
Watching her eyes, he caught their softness, their innocence, and
knew that her eagerness was sincere.
“Let her go, Mr. Campbell, I’ll take good care of her.” The boy was
a Rudd. Although he held a lowly position, he was not counted of the
common people. Mr. Campbell had the old Virginia pride of race in
him.
“I know you would.”
Esther looked steadily into his gray eyes and saw a relenting
twinkle.
“Am I going?” Turning to her with a quiet smile: “Yes, you may
go.” He could not see her disappointed when her heart was so
determined. With a little cry of joy she brought her hands together. “I
wish you could come along, grandpa. It will be such fun, and I
wanted you to hear me to-night.” When the wagon came around
Esther was helped up with her case and bundle. Her violin she held
tenderly across her arm. Mr. Campbell went with them to close the
gate.
“Good-bye; you will be in for me to-morrow.” Leaning down, she
embraced his head. “Be sweet, God’s child,” he said, as they drove
off. Esther kissed her hand to him, as he stood by the roadside
looking after them. The cook, at the kitchen door, waved her dish rag
for a frantic moment. The whirl of dust from the wheels soon clouded
the view. The old man turned, and went slowly back to the house
with a misty smile over his features.
A quaint, pathetic figure that, of Hardin Campbell, with his age,
his poverty and the care of this child. Here had once been planter life
in its carelessness and lavishness. It had been the home of friend
and neighbor and the hospitable shelter of the transient guest. All the
grand folk that came that way made this place headquarters in the
days when Mr. Campbell was reckoned rich. But what he had lost in
wealth he had more than gained in pride, and the child was brimming
over with it. Generous, impetuous, enthusiastic, as she was, this wild
young creature of nature, unhindered, venturesome and full of
whims, would, he hoped, find pride her safeguard. He did not believe
in curbing her. He guided, but did not limit her and tried to keep from
her all warping influences. This was the way her mother had begun
with her and he was only continuing her way for a while—it could not
be very long before he would have to resign his charge. To whom—
he did not know and could not bear to dwell upon the thought.
About the whole place there was evidence of departed glory. In
the great white buildings which rose from the labyrinth of shrubbery
like grim ghosts of the past; in the rows of cabins, formerly the
dwellings of a horde of happy-hearted negroes, everywhere was
evidence of the bygone prodigal days. The house, of colonial style,
with its series of tall columns standing about the broad colonnade,
was partially screened by the live oaks and was set some distance
back from the big road. These encircling columns were built of brick,
with a coating of plaster, once as white as the teeth of Uncle Simon,
the plantation white-washer, who in former days would put an
immaculate dress on them regularly once a month by means of an
elevated step-ladder, but now Uncle Simon’s labors were done. The
neglected columns were crumbling with age and sadly splotched
with the red of exposed masonry. At one side of the verandah there
spread the delicate green of the star-jassamine, with its miniature
constellations flecking the background. Through the vista, leading to
the house, from the big gate in front, flashed the crimson of a
flowering-pear in full blossom. The blinds of the house that had once
been green, were now hanging from their hinges, weather-stained,
giving full view of a number of broken window panes, in one of
which, on the second story, was perched a wren, whose energetic
chattering over her nest hardby was the most decided indication of
active life.
In the rear of the buildings stretched the cabins. To the right of
them were the stables and the carriage house, with its weather vane
of a flying steed on the top, but for years the most vigorous gales
had failed to spur this steed to action and its tail, at one time proudly
aflaunt to the breeze, had yielded to time and rust, and, like that of
Tam o’Shanter’s mare, knew naught of direction. There was the
dreary stillness of desolation over all things. But still a hospitable
glow was in the summer sunshine and shone as well in the eyes of
the old master.
Esther took off her hat when she got into the depths of the woods
and drew out her violin. “I will amuse the boy,” she thought, “if I play
to him,” for she had tired of talking against the rumbling of the wagon
and its load. In his way, he appreciated her motive, for now and
again he called back to her, awkwardly commending her, and urging
her to continue. Near the spring they saw the negro washerwomen,
with sleeves rolled to their shining shoulders, bending over their
tubs; faded, limp skirts, bloused through apron belts, and dangled
about their bare legs. A big wash kettle heaped with white linen
stood to one side. Around it a fire was burning low for want of fuel.
“O—o—h! Yo’ Tagger, Tag-g-e-r; you’d better come on here, ef
you know what’s good for you,” called one of the women with a long,
resounding echo that drowned the answer of the small voice that
said he was on his way. A troop of little niggers came to the roadside
pulling a wagon load of brush and bark gathered through the woods.
They looked back and spied Esther on the coffins. With a wild yell
the children, load and all, tumbled over the embankment, rolling over
each other in the dust, screaming, “Mammy! mammy!” at the top of
their voices, scrambling to their feet and running with might and main
down the road. As Esther drew up to the wash-place, the little fellows
were clinging frantically to the knees of their mothers.
“It’s a little ha’nt blowin’ Gabel’s trumpet. Don’t let it ketch me!
don’t let it ketch me!”
“In de name ob de Lawd!” said one of the women, seeing what
had caused the fright; “ain’t you all got de sense you was born wid?
Don’t you know Miss Esther Powel, Marse Hardin’s granddaughter?”
The eyes of the pickaninnies were blinded by the wads of wet aprons
they had covered them with, and the sound of the wheels filled them
with terror. “Dry up!” The big dripping hand pounded on their heads.
“Scuse ’em, Miss Esther, you’d think dese youngun’s been fotch up
wid wild injun’s.”
“Tagger,” Esther called the boy, whose name, Montague, she had
been responsible for. “Don’t you know me? I played for you to dance
a jig for the young men who used to visit Will Curtis before he died.
You haven’t forgotten that, have you?” Hearing her familiar voice, he
slowly peeped out with scared eyes.
“You little monkey. Dip me some water out of the spring.” She
saw a long, yellow gourd hanging from a striped bough above their
heads. “I want a drink.” He sprang up and snatched the gourd, and
before she could say more, he was holding it up to her, standing on
his tiptoes, grinning, as the tears ran down and stained his dusty
face.
“I am going to play at the University to-night,” she said, hanging
back the gourd.
“You don’ say? One of dem ’Varsity gemmen’s coming out to see
Marse Will’s folks next week.” Tagger’s mother lived with the
Curtises, whose home was just beyond the spring. “I’ll be bound, you
beat ’em all dar if you does play to-night,” she said when she saw
they were leaving.
Bareheaded, Esther rode on, as long as the shade was over
them, tying on her hat only when they got to the sunny way of the
road. A man plowing in a cornfield, looked up as he stopped at the
turn of the row. He gazed intently, rapping the line mechanically
about his wrist.
“What is her grandpa thinking of?” seeing it was Esther, whom he
knew. “But she’d a gone in spite of hell and high water.” With this
aloud to himself, he drew his shirt sleeve across the sweat on his
brow and trudged back down the row, relieved.
After two hours or more, through the heat, Esther was glad when
at last she could see the end of her journey. The sunlight lay radiant
upon the stretch of country famed for this honored institution of
learning. Just before her, upon an eminence, spread the University
buildings, the tall spires marking their profile on the sky. The sun’s
rays shot up behind them its last warm flashes. Its heat had already
dampened Esther’s hair, deepening the red tint of its waves against
her temples. The campus was alive with students coming and going
in every direction. The tenor of the glee club, in his striped sweater of
the college colors, humming a popular air, walked leisurely across to
where one fellow was sprawled on the ground, gazing at the wagon
with an amused curiosity on his handsome face.
“By Jupiter! that’s a pretty child.” The tenor turned to look, as his
friend spoke.
“Well, if that isn’t a caper! Wonder where she is bound?” Just
then a pert freshman, standing in a group, gave a college yell. Then
there was a chorus of rapturous cheers, in which most of them
joined. Before the noise had subsided, the man on the grass had
leaped to his feet, full of indignation, and dashed off toward the
freshman.
“Silence! you fellows! Have you forgotten yourselves?” A few
hisses were mingled with the applause that greeted him, but the
freshman was quick to say at his elbow:
“I didn’t mean it for her.”
“How could she know that?” He walked away saying: “I’ll wager
there is something out of the ordinary in that girl.”
He was of the fiber that commanded the respect of men at a
glance.
“Andrews always turns up at the right time, you may count on
that,” said one of the students as he watched him sauntering in the
direction of the wagon, his eyes following the child. She was perched
like a white winged bird of good omen on a funeral pyre. Only a
nature adventurous to audacity would do such a thing as that. But he
loved daring personalities, strong motives and even a misadventure,
if it were a brave one.
CHAPTER IV.
Glenn Andrews was, by every gift of nature, a man. His
sensitive, expressive face, his brown eyes glowing with a light that
seemed to come from within, his clear and resolute bearing, all gave
evidence of his sterling qualities. All through his college years he
was known among his fellows as a dreamer. His was one of those
aloof—almost morbidly solitary natures, to whom contact with the
world would seem jarring and out of key. The boys had nicknamed
him “Solitaire.” He had a womanly delicacy in morals, his sense of
honor was as clean and bright as a soldier’s sword.
Those who knew him well loved him, and all of his school fellows
sought for his notice, the more, perhaps, because he gave it rarely.
Whenever he played with them, it was as one who unconsciously
granted a favor. He was looked upon as a man who would be a
sharer in the talents of his race. This was his ambition. He had
strong literary tastes and was a serious worker.
Often he champed at the bit through the slow routine of college
life—the genius within him thirsting for action like a spirited horse,
just in sound of the chase.
After the exercises that night, the pretty faces and scent of roses
filled the chapel with light and fragrance. Everything was in warm
confusion, congratulations blended with tender farewells and honest
promises that youth was sure to break.
Glenn Andrews, with the dignity that went well with his cap and
gown, was making his way out. The tenor touched him on the
shoulder.
“What did you think of that violin solo?”
“Fine, my boy, fine! She played just before my turn, and she must
have been my inspiration, for I was surprised to get the medal.”
“I’m jolly glad you got it anyhow.”

Full Ebook of Visual Engagements Image Practices and Falconry 1St Edition Yannis Hadjinicolaou Online PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Full Ebook of Visual Engagements Image Practices and Falconry 1St Edition Yannis Hadjinicolaou Online PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Visual Engagements Image Practices

and Falconry 1st Edition Yannis

Mixed Messages American Correspondences in Visual and

Image Acts A Systematic Approach to Visual Agency 2nd

War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages East

Health and Difference Rendering Human Variation in

Regency Engagements Box Set 1st Edition Charlotte

Image Processing and Machine Learning, Volume 1:

Data Sleuth : Using Data in Forensic Accounting

Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the

Edited by Yannis Hadjinicolaou

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943232

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Layout and typesetting: P. Florath, Stralsund

VII A Bird’s-Eye View

Embodied Inter actions

108 Monika Wagner

147 Colour Plates

Gaze and Agency

164 Christine Kleiter, Gerhard Wolf

196 Horst Bredekamp

214 Klaus Krüger

240 Frank Zöllner

256 Peter Geimer

272 Tanja Michalsky

297 Picture Credits

2 Falconer Mohammed al Hammadi during the workshop together

vehicles can be metaphorical instruments of reflection on symbolic representation.

Artist cum Falconer

In a semi-darkened room appears a finely-clad male figure that is shown in profile

4 See Dorothea Walz, Das Falkenbuch Friedrichs II, Graz 1994.

2 Samuel Williams, after James

3 David Dawson, Lucian Freud, 2009, photograph.

4 Clifford Cauffin, Lucian Freud, 1947,

is as if the relationship between foreground (sharp) and background (blurred in this

Falconry Furnitur e : The Case of the Hood

Items of falconry equipment, or “furniture”, allow elaboration on the question of illu-

5 Hood, Punjab, 1880,

7 Matthäus Merian the Younger, Landgraf Friedrich von Hessen-

8 A hood of Maximilian I, ca. 1500, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

11 Cornelis Gijsbrechts, Tromp l’Oeil with falconry furniture, 1671, oil on

23 Macdonald (as in note 8), pp. 49–50.

13 Joachim Camerarius, Et voluisse sat est,

The image cult of falconry and its political power

16 Giotto, Justice, 1304–1306, fresco, Padua, Arena

Image, Weapon, Falcon

19 Laurent Grasso, In Air, 2009, film still, Galerie Perrotin, Paris.

What is it like to be a Hawk?

Views from above

Despite an obvious family resemblance among the various perspectives generally

A severe caveat: Nagel

From the viewpoint of the phenomenology of perception, the human imaginative

6 Franziska Brons, “Bilder im Fluge: Julius Neubronners Brieftaubenfotografie,” in: Fotogeschichte,

13 Nagel (as in note 9), p. 439.

Title: As the hart panteth

Author: Hallie Erminie Rives

Release date: May 31, 2022 [eBook #68207]

Original publication: United States: G. W. Dillingham Co, 1898

Credits: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AS THE

You might also like