Two monkeys smoking pipe
Etching by Coryn Boel (1620–1668), after David Teniers

From symbolising sensory pleasure to poking fun at the follies of mankind: Lucy Cutler on the role of the monkey in art

To contemporary eyes man has become the naked ape, but this was not always the case. The similarities between monkeys and men have always been recognised, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries monkeys formed part of the great chain of being and, like men, occupied a position between angels and animals. They were linked to the angels above by virtue of sharing their faculty of reason, while also being linked to the animals below through the experience of the senses. Monkeys and apes also became emblematic of man’s baser nature; dependent on or trapped by sensory pleasure. —http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/stories/cutler_monkey.html

[Dec 2006]