Morning early risers, today in the #LockdownBestiary R is for Raven (Corvus Corax), that blackest of beasts; shiny feathers, twinkling eyes, shiny beaks that speak doom and bad luck. (Engraving by Whimper) 
But ravens were once white. Here one of Apollo’s white ravens, spying on Coronis. Drawn by Hendrick Goltzius in 1728. When the bird returned with bad tidings, Apollo scorched its plumage. Raven became raven: shiny black. (@rijksmuseum, BI-1892-3357-32)
Some white ravens escaped Apollo’s wrath. A prophecy of the Mandan, along the Missouri banks, speaks of the ‘bird that made the meat bitter’, and a white raven that heralded the return of mankind to spirituality.
Ravens as harbingers of bad luck and doom: the story of Apollo’s rage set the tone for how the appearance of a raven was interpreted ever since. You see, the history of the raven isn’t so black and white. (I'll be making these kinds of puns throughout the day, subscribe here)
In the marginalia in his copy of Joannes Pantheus’ Voarchadumia (1530, 39r), John Dee wrote of corruption and putrefaction in nature: ‘understand that the origin of the artifice is the head of a raven and what follows’
In his copy of Voarchadumia, Dee mentions the raven’s head twice as alchemical ingredient. Alchemists saw in the blackest black – caput corvi – the most fertile space for the transmutation of nature. (37v)
Nigredo, the black guardian of the threshold. Viatorium spagyricum, Herbrandt Jamsthaler (1625)
Time for breakfast (I'm ravenous), see you later in the day for more #LockdownBestiary. Do jump in with your raven stories and images!
From Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (1775-1778), or rather, a French edition: 'Figure humaine compare avec celle du corbeau'
The raven is a popular corvid in fable and myth, and subject to / victim of endless anthropomorphising. The raven is a trickster, a doomsayer, a thief, a bit of a goth, a Romanticist outcast in German pine forests.
A biblical bird. Before dove, Noah sent out raven from the Arc, ‘and it went out, back and forth until the waters dried up off the earth’, but then didn’t bother coming back. (Genesis 8:7) R. Moberly wrote a good article about this in 2000: ‘Why did Noah send out the raven?’
Not sure, really. This 11th-century mosaic in St Mark’s Basilica, Venice shows the priorities of the raven as slightly different from Noah’s as he sought a way to end his own #LockdownBestiary
BL MS 11639 (1280) has the raven wistfully ignoring that do-good dove. #LockdownBestiary
Raven nevertheless makes an effort for prophets, sometimes even representing providence. Feeding Elias as other animals merely look on, for example. Etching by C. Murer, early 17th century.
… or as on this lead-glazed earthenware from late 18th-century Staffordshire, with the raven perched on Elijah’s shoulder. (V&A, 2473-1901)
Or feeding St Paul the Hermit, as in this oil painting by an anonymous Spanish painter
Or, one for @mcegillion, in the illumination of this German antiphoner (c. 1490), with St Benedict blessing the raven while a demon prods a bell (V&A 1107.10 (MS 572))
