The Age of Reptiles

Infobox Painting


title=The Age of Reptiles
artist=Rudolph F. Zallinger
year=1947
type=Fresco
height=490
width=3,500
height_inch=
width_inch =
museum = Yale Peabody Museum
city =New Haven, Connecticut

"The Age of Reptiles" in the Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, Connecticut, is a 110-foot mural depicting the the period of ancient history when reptiles were the dominant creatures on the earth, painted by Rudolph Franz Zallinger. The fresco was completed in 1947 after more than three years of work. "The Age of Reptiles" was at one time the largest painting in the world, and depicts a span of nearly 350 million years in Earth's history.

Painted in the Renaissance fresco secco technique, "The Age of Reptiles" showcases the contemporary view of dinosaurs as slow, sluggish creatures (a view that has been gradually replaced by more active dinosaurs.) Zallinger would go on to receive the Addison Emery Verrill medal in 1980 for the mural.

Background

Zallinger was an art student who in the early 1940's had been painting seaweed drawings for the Peabody museum. Dr. Albert E. Parr, then director of the Peabody Museum, had been unhappy with the appearance of the Great Hall of the museum, which he felt was devoid of color and barren.Scully, 18.] Parr asked Lewis York, Zallinger's professor at art school, if he knew anyone who would be able to fill a large wall space in the Hall; York recommended Zallinger. On March 1, 1942, Zallinger was officially appointed to the wall-painting project.

Initially, Zallinger planned on dividing the wall space—measuring 110 feet in length, 55 feet in width, and 26 feet in height— into separate panels.Scully, 19.] After discussions with his supervisors, Zallinger instead decided on a different concept which would use the entire wall for a "panorama of time". Because Zallinger had never painted dinosaurs, Dr. G. Edward Lewis, the museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology, and Dr. George Wieland proceeded to give Zallinger a six-month crash course in vertebrate paleontology and paleobotany.Zallinger.]

Painting

Zallinger sketched out his plan for the mural on a 10 foot-long sheet of rag paper which could be unrolled to edit individual sections. Due to the position of entrances to the hall, and the sequence of which Peabody's fossils are arranged, the mural "reads" from right to left instead of the customary direction.Scully, 20.]

Zallinger used a Renaissance-era painting technique known as "fresco secco". Though rarely used due to the difficulties of using egg tempera, "fresco secco" allowed Zallinger to delineate character, as well as create a painting with good durability.Scully, 22.]

Composition

In total, "The Age of Reptiles" spans about 350 million years, from the Carboniferous period at the mural's beginning to the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago.Ostrom.] Each period's length on the mural is proportional to the period's length in geologic time. Each period of time is divided by large trees in the foreground.Gauthier, Hickey.]

Impact

"The Age of Reptiles" won Zallinger several awards. Zallinger was awarded with a Pulitzer Fellowship in Art in 1949, and the painting was featured as a postage stamp in 1970. [Associated Press.]

Despite its now-outdated view of dinosaurs, "The Age of Reptiles" is still the largest natural history painting in the world and has served as an inspiration to many visitors. Robert Bakker and Peter Dodson both credit seeing the mural with helping them choose to become paleontologists; Dodson said he was nearly moved to tears upon first visiting it as a college senior. [Wallace, xvi.]

Notes

References

*cite news|author=Associated Press|date=1995-08-02|title=Rudolph Zallinger, Scientific Muralist, Dies at 75|work=The New York Times|page=D19
*cite book|author=Scully, Vincent|coauthors=Hickey, Leo; Ostrom, John|year=1990|title=The Great Dinosaur Museum at Yale: The Age of Reptiles|publisher=Harry Abrams Inc. Publishers|location=New York|isbn=0-8109-3203-2
*cite web|author=Gauthier, Jacques; Hickey, Leo |url=http://www.peabody.yale.edu/explore/reptiles01.html |title=The Plants and Animals in The Age of Reptiles Mural|publisher=Yale Peabody Museum|accessdate=2008-09-03
*cite video | people = Ostrom, John (interviewee)| title = [http://imdb.com/title/tt0103400/ The Dinosaurs!] Episode 2: "Flesh on the Bones" | medium =TV-series | publisher = PBS Video, WHYY-TV |year=1992
*cite book|author=Wallace, David Rains|year=2004|title=Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal Evolution|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=0-5202-3731-5
*cite web|author=Zallinger, Rudolph|year=2005|url=http://www.peabody.yale.edu/explore/makingmural.html|title=The Making of The Age of Reptiles Mural|publisher=Yale Peabody Museum|acccessdate=2008-09-02

External links

* [http://www.peabody.yale.edu/archives/ypmmurals.html#AOR Age of Reptiles] at the Yale Peabody Museum