The cry of nature2013

"The cry of nature' reveals how humans engaged in the struggle for animal emancipation and examines for the first time the role of visual art in the growth of animal rights. Embracing the lessons of Montaigne, Rousseau, and many others, they proposed that humans and animals have a shared evolutionary heritage of sentience, intelligence and empathy, and deserve equal access to the domain of moral rights. From the mid-eighteenth century a new and more compassionate understanding of animals began to challenge prevailing views. Witnessing the pain and hearing the outcry of the animals massed together in the great cities of Europe, sympathetic writers and artists argued that animals were neither slaves nor automata, and possessed the capacity to feel and even think. Refuting the biblical...