When I look at art from way back, I wonder if they didn't see, as in maybe some people who never saw nature were drawing from verbal descriptions? Were there constraints due to a lack of materials to paint etc? Did society say make it look thus? What happened?
Like for gargoyles, builders or artisans from the Middle Ages liked to get their own back by giving them human faces,usually resembling the ones who had done them wrong. Fixed there in stone or glass for all eternity. What sweet revenge!
More than that owls were religiously unclean so couldn't be eaten, they were also heavily associated with evil and wickedness and of course there was their antisemitic connotations. Owls lived in the dark and were blind (or so it was thought) just like Jews (apologies, it's what they believed).
And so owls with faces are often used as an almost stained glass or illuminated manuscript shorthand for Jews. So in this context (I can't see the whole window) the owl was probably being used to show an entire people outside of god's protection.
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Still, I would be most happy to have this item.
Even after the middle ages the association with