ABSTRACT
The wildness of animals contrasted with human culture, but appropriating that wildness was also a demonstration of human power and magnificence. A great impetus to the study of animals was the variety of unfamiliar ones that entered Europe through the encounters with other continents from the late fifteenth century. Animals provided food, clothing, and medicine, but equally, they reflected human values, virtues, and conduct in heraldry, symbols, emblems, and many other ways. Animals were understood within a system of associations: they were significant to contemporaries because they embodied multiple associations and symbolic meanings on many different levels. In the sixteenth century, sculpted animals were an appropriate decoration for such a grotto; it was a commonplace that animals lived in caves, mountainous areas, and forests. The animals in the Florentine menagerie acquired their various meanings for contemporaries through the social practices in which they were involved.
