An Analysis of the Image of Animals in the History of Figurative Painting from a Jungian Archetypal Perspective

• Published in: Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology
• Main Author: Zeng H.; Fuad M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cultura 2025
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85208921919&partnerID=40&md5=c21b391801a532df396e00d385ed4fb7

Animals play a crucial role in the historical narrative of art, serving as subjects, backgrounds, and mediums for artists to convey emotions and spiritual dimensions. Drawing on Jungian analytical psychology, this study explores the symbolic richness of animals as projections of archetypes. The first part of this paper is introduction, which contains the background and current status of the research, problem statement, research objectives, methodology, basic ideas, as well as explaining the basic concepts of this paper. In the second part, animal images in the development history of figurative painting are sorted out and analysed with the help of iconographic methods. In the third part, the symbolic metaphors of animal images in figurative painting are classified and summarised. In the fourth part, several common Jungian archetypes are explained and analysed to see how the animal image gives expression to these archetypes. The final concluding section includes a summary and discussion of the research findings, a description of the limitations of the paper and an outlook for the future. By intertwining Jungian psychology with the canvas of art history, the analysis delves into the psychological intricacies of paintings, shedding light on how Jung's archetypal model deepens our comprehension of these works. © 2025, Cultura. All rights reserved.