3 - The Age of Reptiles

Courtesy of Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

Artist: Rudolph Zallinger
Year: 1942-1947
Unsurprisingly, viewing paleoart is not usually akin to a religious experience; The Age of Reptiles in Yale's Peabody Museum is the one excepetion I know of, and it's a big one. This was an intentional choice on the part of artist (and Seattleite!) Rudolph Zallinger, who painted it as a fresco (that is, on a plaster base applied directly to a wall), a style generally associated with church decoration in the Middle Ages. The mural is easily the biggest and most influential work in this style since the Renaissance, and Zallinger completed it over several years while the museum was open, just as Medieval artisans added on to cathedrals in a piecemeal fashion. What truly makes the mural awe-inspiring, though, is its scope, as it covers over 350 million years of Earth history and 110 feet of the Peabody's Great Hall wall. There's a lot more to The Age of Reptiles than its enormous scale, though. Clarity, contrast, and attention to detail are hallmarks of Zallinger's work, and these are on full display in this masterpiece. As a fresco, the images on the mural remain as colorful and vibrant today as the day they were painted (all the more remarkable considering a color palette that is much more muted than in many works of paleoart). This, again along with their sheer size, gives so many of the animals here a truly monumental feel; the best examples are the wallowing Apatosaurus and lumbering Tyrannosaurus (supposedly the model for Godzilla). My favorite part of the mural, though, is that Zallinger takes advantage of its scale to prominently feature the landscape. I don't know that vegetation features as prominently in any other work of paleoart; not only has Zallinger clearly done his paleobotanical homework, but he uses full-sized trees as breaks between adjacent geological periods. The background is also suitably epic, particularly the soaring cliffs of the Permian and the menacing volcanoes of the Cretaceous. Scientifically speaking, depictions of many of the animals (especially the dinosaurs) have not aged well, but that does not detract one iota from the mural's status as one of the truly great works of paleoart; it would not, however, be Zallinger's most influential piece, for which you should stay tuned...
Want to see more? If you want to see this mural soon, you should get to Yale ASAP, as the Peabody Museum closes for renovations later this month. Don't despair if you can't make it on such short notice, though, as it looks like the planned renovation is going to make the mural even more visible and integral to the exhibit.