Bats in the Florentine Renaissance: from darkness to enlightenment (Chiroptera)

We highlight the use of the bat (Chiroptera) in the Florentine Renaissance art. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Bernardo Buontalenti, Albrecht Dürer and several others used images of bats in their sketches, sculptures and decorations and many bat images are still to be seen on the palaces and monuments in the Historic Centre of Florence, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The bats can usually be identified as such by the large ears or the characteristic wing membranes, although they constitute highly stylized artwork, often grotesque and certainly not intended to be morphologically correct. Furthermore, during the Renaissance it was not yet realized that bats are mammals, and some of the images could actually be interpreted as either birds or bats. The bat image was somehow tied to the Medici Noble Family, the undisputed rulers of Florence throughout the Renaissance, where it may have symbolized cultural darkness or ignorance. We speculate that the bat images could also have meant happiness and prosperity, with connections to China, and protected the buildings on which they appeared. In any case, the Renaissance bat had evolved far, artistically as well as conceptually, from the bat images that personified demons or the Devil in the European medieval literature and contemporary religious artwork.